Mayor Valerie Plante says she's moving forward with the idea of running a metro line from Lachine, though downtown and Rosemont, and up to Montreal North.
On Monday, she announced her administration would set aside $1 million for the creating of a planning office for the project, featuing a panel of six — including urban planners and academics.
Feasibility studies on a pink line are already underway on the federal level, but in Quebec City, premier François Legault is on record as saying he's cool to the idea.
"They're moving forward with establishing their government with their priorities, and I'm moving forward with my priorities as well." the mayor said. "It is a project of economic, social, and territory development."
Plante also says the pink line is critical to the environmental mandate of her administration.
Opposition leader Lionel Perez dismissed the planning office as a waste of money, and a "public-relations exercise."
The idea was first floated by Plante in the fall of 2016, when she was a candidate for the Projet Montreal leadership. In the 2017 election campaign, it became her signature campaign pledge — despite the fact the city would need money from the federal and provincial governments to actually carry it off.
During the campaign, she suggested the whole line would cost $5.9 billion.
-CJAD 800's Matt Gilmour contributed to this report.