How Remap ranks Montréal's routes

What constitutes a good route

We judge route quality based on these factors:

• the breadth the route encapsulates from the starting point
• how sinuous the roads are
• how many intersections and traffic lights there are
• how much natural scenery is visible
• how much noise and traffic is exposed to the rider or runner

Overall a good route brings you back to your start location without repeating roads twice to get there.

How routes are ranked

Firstly, a route's shape determines if it gets ranked at all. Once that gate has been satisfied, we look to the amount of natural scenery the roads and trails travel through.

A route is ranked at a distance only when it is within 10% of it: a 5 km run is between 4.5 and 5.5 km.

Scenery carries the most weight in the routes we rank. Specifically we look at how long is the longest uninterrupted stretch of nature, and how much of it passes a beautiful viewpoint.

Only scenery earns points. Traffic and stops take points  from the final score away.

Traffic and stops

Remap has unique traffic and noise insights into your outdoor network and as such is able to shape routes intelligently based on this data. Our experience shows that for all of the outdoor activities our community participates in, the less traffic, noise and intersections the better.

Where concrete data is lacking, Remap estimates how busy every road is with a machine learning model trained on traffic counts.

Traffic stress

We follow the traffic stress levels study developed by transport researchers Mekuria, Furth and Nixon, using each road's type, speed limit and cycling infrastructure.

A road is stressful at level 3 or above. This generally means main roads, unless they are signed at 40 km/h or less, and side streets signed above 50 km/h.

For runs, we avoid routing alongside adjacent stressful roads.

For rides, a separated cycleway is never considered stressful. Painted cycle lanes on smaller main roads are also considered low stress up to 50 km/h.

Stops

These constitute:

• traffic lights
• busy roads that must be crossed or joined
• stop signs
• give way signs
• road barriers

If there are multiple stopping signals in close vicinity, they are collapsed into a single signal. For instance, crossing both sides of a divided road counts as a single stop.

How the penalties work

Traffic stress is deducted in proportion to the distance travelled: every 10% of route length in stressful traffic removes 10% of the scenery score.

Each stop also carries an expected time penalty, based on the time normally taken to cover a kilometre. The two penalties are added together, with a floor of zero, which means a route can lose all of its scenery score, but never more than that.

• For runs, each stop costs 16 seconds of the 360 seconds a kilometre takes.
• For rides, each stop costs 12 seconds of the 138 seconds a kilometre takes.

Example: how traffic and stops affect a route

How the best compare

To show how much better Remap's routes are, we compare them with typical routes generated from residential streets across the city.

Typical routes vs. Remap's best

Each row in the comparison tables shows one part of the route score, expressed as a percentage.

Typical is the median score across all routes generated from residential streets across the city.

Remap's best is the median score of the routes featured in our rankings: the best run in each district, and the best ride from each starting point at each distance.

Scenery lost to traffic and stops shows how much of a route's scenery score is lost due to traffic and stops. Lower is better.

Comparing like with like

Route scores vary with distance, so we compare routes of the same length wherever possible.

For runs, the summary rows above the distance breakdown compare the 5 km routes featured on these pages with typical 5 km runs. The individual rows compare routes of the same distance: 5, 10, 15 and 21 km. Typical is the median score of all runs we generated at that distance from our test starting points, including those not featured on these pages.

For rides, the summary rows compare the 20 km routes featured on these pages with typical rides. We use 20 km because it's closest to the median length of a typical ride (22 km). The individual rows compare routes of the same distance: 20, 60 and 100 km. Typical is the median score of all rides we generated at that distance from our test starting points, including those not featured on these pages.

A consistent sample across the city

Montréal is divided into 1,987 squares, each 500 m across, and 1,273 of them contain a residential street. In each of those, the starting point is on the residential street closest to the square's centre.

Up to 200 of these starting points are then chosen, spread evenly across the city.

Every city is sampled the same way, however many stations it has.

From each starting point, Remap generated one 5 km run and one ride, and every route it generated was kept: 1,713 runs and 2,233 rides in Montréal.

A representative range of ride distances

People don't ride the same distance every time, so these sample rides vary in length.

Every city uses the same spread of distances:

• half are shorter than 22 km
• none are shorter than 8 km or longer than 120 km
• neighbouring starting points receive different distances to ensure short and long rides are spread across the city

In Montréal, these rides range from 8 to 120 km. Half of these rides fall between 14 and 34 km, with a median of 22 km.

The rides featured on these pages are 20, 60 and 100 km. Each distance is ranked separately.

Where the routes start

Runs

We found that public transport stops give the best spread of starting points: rail, metro and tram stations, bus and ferry stations, and bus stops in districts with few rail, metro or tram stops.

Starting points cover every district, with up to 10 in each.

Each candidate stop gets a short test run, and the stops with the highest scoring test runs become the starting points for the routes on these pages.

Districts follow the areas Montréal is divided into, as mapped in OpenStreetMap.

Rides

The city is divided into 3 km squares and we select one candidate starting point in each. Rail and metro stations are prioritised, followed by tram stops, other stations and finally bus stops. When several qualify, we choose the one closest to the centre of the square.

Each of these 61 candidates gets a 20 km test ride. The highest scoring candidates are kept at least 6 km apart. 13 in Montréal, are ridden at 20, 60 and 100 km.

At each distance we show the best rides from up to 5 of them. They are also kept at least 6 km apart. We have a total of 9 starting points.

After dark runs

We consider a run well lit if street lighting is recorded in OpenStreetMap along at least 60% of its length. Sections without recorded lighting count as unlit. We only report a route's lighting when lighting information is available for at least 75% of its length.

In Montréal, OpenStreetMap has lighting information, lit or unlit, along 26% of the combined length of the runs we ranked; the rest has none. We show after dark runs only where that covers at least 50%. There are none this month.

How long a route takes

Estimated times assume a steady pace of 6 minutes per km running and 26 km/h cycling. Your actual time will depend on your pace.

We run this report every month

Every month, we regenerate the routes using the latest available map data and recalculate the rankings. As the map changes, so can the best routes in each district.

9 of 19 districts kept the best run they had on 6 November 2026.

This edition