Montreal · Getting around

Montreal’s 60-Year Airport Problem Is Finally Ending: Test Trains Are Now Running to YUL

The REM line to Montréal-Trudeau opens by the end of 2027. Until then, here is how to get from the airport to downtown, including a new REM-linked bus almost nobody knows about, and how not to pay $70 for a 10-minute taxi.

Travel ABC Editors · Published August 18, 2026

For the first time ever, trains are running on the rail line to Montreal’s airport. Driverless REM cars began moving automatically at low speed on the YUL–Aéroport-Montréal-Trudeau branch over the weekend of August 8–9, and the operator confirmed the milestone on August 12. The Montreal Gazette and Time Out followed within days.

This is not a ribbon-cutting. Nobody can board these trains, and both stations on the branch are scheduled to open together by the end of 2027. But it is the first time in roughly six decades of proposals, feuds, and one famously empty $25 million station shell that a train has actually moved toward the terminal.

The timing matters for anyone flying into YUL soon. “How do I get from the airport to downtown?” is the most-asked Montreal visitor question, and the honest answer for decades has been a slow bus or a pricey taxi. That pain is very much alive right now: a post on r/montreal today about a taxi driver demanding “$70 cash” for a 10-minute ride (and refusing to use the meter) drew more than 220 upvotes, with the top comment noting that fake cabs “have been relatively common lately.”

So here is the full picture: what the tests mean, when you can actually ride, and exactly how to get between YUL and downtown in the 16 months before the train opens.

What is actually being tested

Trains are currently running as far as the future Marie-Curie station, in the Technoparc area of the Saint-Laurent borough. That is a short spur of what will be the full route: the testing zone expands once Aéroports de Montréal finishes the airport station itself. According to the REM’s announcement, speed and frequency of the test trains will increase over the coming weeks, with checks on every system the branch depends on: the cars, the platform screen doors, and communications.

One detail worth knowing: the two stations open at the same time, not one after the other. Fire protection and ventilation systems across the branch are designed to work together, so there is no partial service.

How it took 60 years to get here

Montreal’s airport opened in Dorval in 1941, and plans for a rail connection have surfaced in nearly every decade since. The short version: the city repeatedly planned a train, changed its mind about which airport to serve, and let rival agencies fight over who would build it.

Two episodes explain why the number is sixty and not ten.

In 2009, the airport authority spent $25 million building an underground station shell beneath the new Marriott and Pier C, with no commitment that tracks would ever reach it. It sat empty for more than a decade, a concrete IOU to future travelers. And here is the twist: the REM will not even use it. CDPQ Infra concluded that reaching the old box from the north would require risky drilling under the foundation of the airport’s air traffic control tower, so the new station is being dug fresh, 35 metres down (the depth of a six-storey building) beneath the parking garage.

Then in 2010, Québec put $200 million on the table for a rail link, and the two agencies that should have built it could not agree on a route. The public AMT wanted the “Train de l’Ouest” ($789 million, using existing commuter tracks); the private airport authority wanted an express to Gare Centrale ($1.1 billion). They went their separate ways, and roughly $136 million of Turcot interchange rebuild work set aside for the airport train was left stranded when the REM eventually chose a northern alignment.

The REM picked up the mandate in 2015, construction of the airport station began in March 2022, and the project has stayed on its $600 million budget, with 312,000 tonnes of excavated rock repurposed on other regional projects, per reporting in La Presse.

What the ride looks like in late 2027

The airport branch is short (3 km of alignment, 2.5 km of tunnel, mostly under the Éco-Campus Hubert Reeves wetlands and runway 6L/24R), but it plugs YUL into the entire REM network, which already connects downtown to Brossard, the West Island, and the North Shore.

Service is projected every 6–10 minutes, with trains carrying 500+ passengers each and added frequency during the afternoon peak. The station itself gets a signature skylight structure engineers call “the Iceberg,” and planners expect one in five airport passengers to use the train, roughly 4 million riders a year on the airport’s current traffic of about 22 million.

The fare is the one number that does not exist yet. Pricing is set by the regional transit authority (ARTM), and the airport operator has only said it expects “advantageous” rates. Existing REM lines use standard ARTM zoned fares, but whether the airport trip will carry a surcharge has not been announced. Treat any figure you see quoted elsewhere as speculation until ARTM publishes one.

The meanwhile playbook: getting from YUL to downtown today

For the next 16 months, your options are unchanged, plus one most visitors do not know about: a shuttle bus launched in June that links the airport to the REM that is already running.

The 815 deserves a closer look. It runs between the airport and Des Sources REM station (on the Deux-Montagnes branch, which is already in service), so you can chain bus + train into downtown on one transit fare instead of sitting in Autoroute 20 traffic on the 747. Two caveats: it is a summer seasonal route that ends October 19, and if your flight lands late, the last YUL departure is 10:29 p.m., after which you are back on the 747, a taxi, or a rideshare.

How not to pay $70 for a 10-minute ride

The taxi flat rate above is real and regulated, but it only protects you if you get into a real taxi. The viral story making the rounds in Montreal this week is a visitor leaving a concert, being quoted “$70 cash” for a 10-minute ride by a driver who refused to run the meter (“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do”), and then paying $12 for the same trip via Uber a block away. The top reply, from a local with nearly 300 upvotes: “Yeah that’s not a real taxi, apparently they’ve been relatively common lately.” Commenters also recall the same pattern around the F1 Grand Prix, with quotes over $100 for the short run downtown.

Four rules keep you safe:

1. Use the official stand. Legitimate airport taxis queue at the arrivals-level stand with a dispatcher, and the downtown fare is the flat $49.45 (day) or $56.70 (night), no negotiation. A driver soliciting inside the terminal or in the roadway is not part of it.

2. Know the number before you get in. Any “flat rate” that is not the official one, demanded in cash, is a scam price. Metered rides outside the downtown zone should start with the meter running; a meter that “doesn’t work” is your cue to step out.

3. Prefer apps when queues are long. Uber’s airport pickup is at a designated zone, and locals also recommend the Teo taxi app, which shows the expected fare and takes payment in-app, removing the cash-quote game entirely.

4. Price it before you land. With the 747 at $11.25 (including a full day of transit) and the 815+REM combo at a regular fare, a predatory quote only works on travelers who never checked. Now you have.

Why the train is arriving at the busiest moment

Montreal is having a record tourism year, with 12.5 million visitors expected against 11.9 million in 2025 and hotel occupancy averaging 82% from May through July. The airport is rebuilding around that demand: a $10 billion modernization program is tripling curbside capacity from six to eighteen lanes and adding gates and a satellite pier, which is exactly why getting to and from the terminal by anything but car matters more every month.

The route map is shifting too. Air Canada inaugurated the first-ever nonstop between Canada and Mallorca on June 17, 2026 (Montréal–Palma, seasonal through October), Air Transat added Reykjavík and made Dakar year-round, and US routes are thinning fast: Air Transat cancelled all US service in February, and Air Canada has cut or suspended transborder routes including Seattle, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Detroit, and New York JFK as Canadian demand for US travel collapses. Separately, Porter launched 12 new routes in June, though from Montréal Metropolitan Airport (YHU) in Saint-Hubert, not YUL. The net effect: more international arrivals landing at Trudeau, all needing the same ground options the REM branch exists to fix.