But instead of simply hiding this architectural gem behind plain construction material--as has been done with Parliament Hill--the likeness of the building was printed onto the construction webbing so that tourists like us could still get an idea of what was under there. That's a very sensitive way of restoring and appreciating heritage buildings.
Note also in the above photo the Falun Dafa group in blue and white in the square next to City Hall. The group looked smaller than Ottawa's.
In Old Montréal, this little piece of street art was in an alley. We were hoping to see a swap box, but alas we found none.
When we got off the subway station at Côte-Vertu, we walked around to see some of the things Montréal in its further-out central neighbourhoods. This old mixed-used building has a steel exoskeleton:
Walking around the neighbourhood, I was a bit unsettled by these oval-shaped street name signs. They seem to be of fixed size, and require relatively small print to fit the street name onto them. 
I noticed this downtown as well. As I remarked in part 2 of the series, Montréal doesn't have large street signs above major intersections like Ottawa does. This makes it hard to find where you're going if you're not familiar with an area, because you have to look for a small sign on the other side of major arterial to see where you are. I mentioned this to someone from Vélo Québec the other day, and he said the large signs help people go faster, and therefore is unsafe. I don't buy this argument: while yes people may slow down to look for the signs, while they're doing so they aren't paying attention to other traffic.
I noticed that the multi-unit houses in Montréal have a front door for each apartment, in contrast to Ottawa's tendency to have a single front door with internal separation of the apartments. It was interesting to go by row houses and see three or four doors on each one. I didn't get a photo of it, but it's not hard to find on Google Street View. Here's an example.
I'll finish off the series with a photo of a really nice mural on the side of a shop. Click to see the full-size photo to see all the intricate linework.
And that is What I Learned in Montréal. I hope you enjoyed it and learned some things about Montréal and Ottawa along the way. 
As soon as we got off the Greyhound bus, we crossed the street and came upon a Bixi station, as pictured above. They Bixi stations are labelled on the big advertising poster boxes, and this one at Berri and Maisonneuve had a very big capacity. Just behind the bikes, you can make out the segregated bike lane I posted about in Part 2 of this series.
Further from the downtown core, it's a different story. This station at Bernard/Bloomfield has 20 spots, and all but four are occupied. Lots of people take bikes from the outer areas into the downtown, which is why these smaller stations are so empty, and the downtown ones are so big and full. I'm curious about the stop sign that seems to be loosely placed in the middle of the street. We sure don't get that in Ottawa. Is it permanent/semipermanent?
At Saint-Viateur and Clark (the red L next to the street names indicates which street is which), this station was completely empty. At one point, only one of us could find a bike. I believe a console at a different station (which had the one bike that we rented) directed us to this one, telling us a bike was available. Alas, when we got there, it wasn't. While in theory the console directing you to the nearest station would be helpful, we found the interface confusing to get to that information, and when we got the information, we didn't know where to go to get to the station it was directing us to. It would have been better if it showed a map, or at least if it had said "1 block west". Luckily, the stations are so close together that we just had to walk around for a couple of blocks in either direction and we found other stations that had bikes.
The Bixi stands are put right on the street, except where there are large, wide sidewalk areas like at the downtown stations we saw. When they're put on the street, they occupy about two car parking stalls. For non-Bixi cyclists, two parking stalls are taken over to accommodate bike racks that are delineated by yellow road paint and green bollards.
Both the Bixi stands and the standard parking stalls are installed between April 1 and October 31 of each year; the rest of the time, they are used for car parking. Even with this parking, you can see lots of cyclists locking their bikes to pipes along the wall of a nearby building.
There are a couple of key differences between Montréal and Ottawa on this. First, Montréal seems to have a lot more on-street parking spots than Ottawa, owing to its wider streets, so the loss of a couple parking spots to bicycles doesn't have the same impact as it would in Ottawa (where the loss of a single parking stall is met with hue and cry).
Where the parking stall is being used for Bixi or standard bike parking, the identification head is removed and a bag placed over the post, which is still usable for secure bike parking because of the little ring.
That's the last I have to talk about regarding Montréal and cycling, though I'm sure I'd have more to share if I spent more time cycling there. Stay tuned for the last post in the series, Part 8, where I'll share some miscellaneous observations of the civic aesthetic in Montréal.
As these "Bienvenue aux vélos" signs indicate, they are permitted all day on weekends, and on weekdays between 10am and 3pm, then from 7pm to midnight. The sign also lists other restricted hours for special events, and includes a general warning that bicycles may be refused at any time if it gets too busy:
We only saw two bicyclists on the Saturday that we were there, though we didn't check out the front car, which can be a long walk from the stairs, as this cyclist demonstrates in Outremont:
That cyclist took the escalator, but the fixie-rider in this photo at Berri-UQÀM opted instead for the stairs. The unicyclist was indecisive.
At many stations, cyclists can't get through the turnstiles, and instead must get the attention of the ticket clerk to remotely open one of these gates. 
Unfortunately, these gates are often far from the ticket booth. Here in Côte-Vertu, the ticket booth is off camera, to the left of the turnstiles. At one station, the ticket person was so engrossed in her crossword that the cyclist couldn't get her attention; we had to knock on her window to get her attention on his behalf.
Outside the stations, there is limited bicycle parking. Here at Lionel-Groulx, you can make out some racks on the other side of the glass. They're obviously difficult to get to, which is good for deterring thieves, but inconvenient, I'm sure, for cyclists. I don't know if the rack was empty because it was a weekend, or because it was too far out of the way.
At Outremont, there were some more bike racks which had a number of flaws: they aren't bolted to the ground, they aren't spaced conveniently, and they aren't covered by a canopy. (see my June 2009 post on Bike Rack Blunders in Ottawa. Also, the APBP has released the second edition of its Bicycle Parking Guidelines, available to non-APBP members for $45. The first edition remains free for download). There is also a Bixi station around the corner.
There are a few lessons for Ottawa, many of which are already a part of our Transitway and O-Train infrastructure. Good, secure, weather-protected bicycle parking is important at our major stations--especially those outside the downtown core. Elevators will be helpful for cyclists getting to the surface. Transit stations should also include room for bike rental stations, to help fill in the "last mile" of the trip.
Each station had a unique look, and many had artistic motifs on the walls. At Henri-Bourassa station, there were some neat terra-cotta patterns that raised out of the walls.
At Outremont station, there is an installation called "light well"--as in a well of light--that brings light all the way down to the platforms. Because of these efforts, the Métro's deep stations are much more open and welcoming than Toronto's, which are shallower but much darker and more cramped. I've got a photo of the ground level end of this light well coming up in part 7 of this series.
At Charlevoix--which has the deepest platform in Montréal's system, another scheme to brighten up the depths of the station is this faux-stained glass motif on the light well alongside the escalators to the mezzanine level. 
Further down Charlevoix, switching from light themes to darker ones, this service passageway is gated off from the platform, but still in plain view. You can see the last little bits of light coming down the light well that didn't spill out of the coloured windows. I suspect it also functions to balance the air pressure between the stacked platforms.
The Jean-Talon station has platforms on both the orange and blue lines. As a subtle but clear way of informing passengers of which line they're on, the Sialex floor tiles are coloured accordingly. You can see the blue stripe leading to the escalator down to the blue line platform.
On the blue line platform, which intersects with the orange line one level down, there are blue tiles. A two-storey mural covers the wall of the opening looking down from the orange line.
Not all platforms have large open spaces. The Place d'Armes platform is just one floor below the entrance we saw at the top of the post. As a result, it has a relatively low ceiling. Nevertheless, the side platform configuration and bright lighting keeps the station open.
Back again at Outremont station, the open area and wide balcony reminded me of a brutalist version of the extravagant Moscow metro. 
The Place-des-Arts station is very bright, and the perimeter balcony reminds me of the Carlingwood library. You'll also note the blue light, which indicates the location of the emergency telephone.
In the discussions for the Ottawa tunnel stations, one of the suggestions was to leave the excavated rock exposed. There was some romantic notion used to justify this idea, which is really just a cost-saving measure. On this escalator bank heading down to the yellow line at the Berri-UQÀM station, the ceiling is finished with a nice, clean geometric pattern.
Benches are another element that can define the style of a station. Montréal's métro platforms have many benches, and each station has a unique design of bench to match the station's style. By contrast, I was in Toronto last week, and the subway platforms have very few benches and they are an afterthought to the station design. Many waiting passengers squatted on the ground, even just for a couple of minutes.
The walls of Place-des-Arts platforms are angled, again allowing lots of room for others to walk past:
The benches are made of sturdy blue materials:
One of the items brought up at a meeting on the design of stations was the relationship between benches and terrorism. One participant suggested that benches should be designed so that bags can't be left underneath them, lest they contain suspicious materials (this after concerns about homeless people leading bench design to prevent people use the tops of them either). So these little square marble ones at Charlevoix would be okay (though maybe not--there's a gap behind them)...
...but these stone benches at Outremont would be out.
There were a few stations with rather peculiar designs. These yellow bucket seats at Côte-Sainte-Catherine meet the can't-leave-anything-underneath-them requirement, but look very uncomfortable.
These seats at Plamondon remind me of Playskool toys, but otherwise look utterly uncomfortable. Points for creativity, I guess.
While a discussion on bench design may not be to everybody's fancy, well-designed benches contribute to each station's unique look and identity, which in turn can help passengers navigate the system. In the next post in the Montréal series, I'll talk about bicycles and the Métro. In the meantime, why not catch the game on the big screen on the platform at Lionel-Groulx?
Two other surface access points are connected by an underground walkway.
Côte-Vertu connects with a lot of bus routes, as shown in this map. What's interesting is that each queueing area ("Quai") only serves one or two routes, as opposed to Ottawa's method of having many or all buses stop at the same place. This can help organize passengers, but it also disperses people. 
The bus canopies at the Metro station were sizeable and look relatively new. But because the routes are dispersed around the station, the canopies are too. If you want to provide a heated waiting area, you have to do it for each canopy. Ottawa's system of having one large canopy area means that a large number of people waiting for one route still have a place to wait indoors, and you only have to heat one or two areas per station.
Like the metro stations, the buses allow you to use the Opus smart card for your fare. We found that it took 1-2 seconds for each passenger's card to register with the system. This slowed loading considerably--for the ten or so people getting on the bus at this top, I had enough time while waiting in line to get my camera out, move to the front, and take a photo of the people getting on board.
As we travelled the route, we passed few notable things (I'd compare it to taking the 85 down Carling Avenue from the Queensway to Lincoln Fields). The standard bus stops were not unlike those in Ottawa.
The only other thing to say about our short look at the bus system in Montreal--and only because I like to end my posts with something a bit more interesting than the above photo--was this long bus. We don't have articulated Novabuses in Ottawa-Gatineau, just the 40-foot model. Montreal does.
Stay tuned for the next Montréal post, where we'll head back down into the Métro and look at some more aesthetic aspects of the stations.
