MONTRÉAL — Montreal’s outgoing mayor says she hopes a major project to extend the subway system into the city’s east end will chart a path forward for other public transit developments.

On Tuesday, Valérie Plante said she had wanted to see more transit projects get off the ground during her nearly eight years in office. But she said the eastward extension of the Montreal subway is at least “actually happening.”

“It’s been more than 20 years since we’ve had stations built on the Island of Montreal, which is not acceptable for a big city like Montreal,” she said during a press conference held to unveil the names of the five new subway stations currently under construction.

“Montrealers are craving public transit options. So I’m hoping that this one shows the potential for other projects, and ultimately we cannot wait another 20 years.”

Various governments over the last several decades have proposed extending the blue line of Montreal’s subway to the eastern borough of Anjou. In 2018, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau and then-Quebec premier Philippe Couillard announced the current project, which was supposed to be completed by 2026 at a cost of about $4 billion.

The timeline has since been pushed back to 2031, and the price tag has swelled to $7.6 billion. But on Tuesday, officials said the project is progressing on time and on budget.

Construction work has begun at each of the five stations. Patrick Chandonia, construction manager for the consortium building the project, told reporters they are expecting to receive a tunnel-boring machine from Germany at the end of October, and the boring of the six-kilometre tunnel will begin in the spring.

The project will also include two bus terminals and pedestrian passageways.

Plante revealed the names of the five new stations on Tuesday, which were chosen in part to celebrate women and communities that have made important contributions to Montreal’s history. The first station, called Vertières, is a nod to Montreal’s Haitian community, named for the 1803 battle that led to Haiti’s independence.

The second, Mary-Two-Axe-Earley station, bears the name of an Indigenous women’s rights activist from the Montreal-area Mohawk community of Kahnawake. Earley led a years-long campaign that culminated in 1985 amendments to the Indian Act, which formerly stripped Indian status from Indigenous women who married non-Indigenous men.

A third station will be named after Césira Parisotto, a nun from Montreal’s Italian community who founded schools and a hospital, and a fourth will be named for Madeleine Parent, a trade unionist and feminist activist.

The final station, which will be the new eastern terminal of the blue line, is to be named for the borough of Anjou.

Plante was elected mayor in 2017 on a promise to build a new “pink line,” designed to run from Montréal-Nord in the city’s northeast to Lachine in the southwest. But the project never got off the ground.

However, the first section of a light-rail network did open in 2023, connecting downtown Montreal with the South Shore suburb of Brossard. Two further sections of the project are expected to open in October.

Plante announced last year that she would not seek a third term in this November’s municipal election.

“I’ve been very candid and honest about this,” she said Tuesday. “I wish there would have been more public transit projects moving forward. I’m not going to lie.”

But she said she’s “extremely proud” that the blue line extension is moving ahead. “It’s true, it’s alive, it’s happening,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2025.