Montreal Public Transport

"Montreal Transportation

Montreal is a transportation hub for eastern Canada, with well-developed air, road, rail, and maritime links to the rest of Canada, as well as the United States and Europe.
Rail

VIA Rail, which is headquartered in Montreal, provides rail service to other cities in Canada, particularly to Quebec City and Toronto with several trains daily on its Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. Amtrak, the U.S. national passenger rail system, also provides service to Montreal, operating its Adirondack daily between Montreal and New York City. All intercity trains and most commuter trains operate out of Central Station. The rest of the commuter trains operate out of the Lucien-L'Allier Station or at Parc metro station. Some of the trains ending their route at Parc metro station have a Trainbus which is an express bus that links downtown Montreal to the station. The bus's schedule is synchronized to the train's departures.

Public local transport is served by a network of buses, subways, and commuter trains that extend across and off the island. The subway and bus system is operated by the Société de transport de Montréal. The commuter rail system is managed and operated by the Agence métropolitaine de transport, and extends across several municipalities.

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which is now headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, was founded here in 1881. Its corporate headquarters occupied Windsor Station at 910 Peel Street until 1995. With the Port of Montreal kept open year round by icebreakers, lines to Eastern Canada became surplus, and now Montreal is the railway's eastern and intermodal freight terminus. CPR connects at Montreal with the Port of Montreal, the Delaware & Hudson Railway to New York, the Quebec-Gatineau Railway to Quebec City and Buckingham, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic to Halifax, and CN Rail. The CPR's flagship train, The Canadian, once ran daily from Windsor Station to Vancouver, all passenger services have since been transferred to VIA Rail Canada, although CPR operates certain AMT trains under contract to the Quebec government.

Montreal-based Canadian National Railways (CN) was formed during in 1919 by the Canadian Government following a series of country-wide rail bankruptcies. CN was formed from the lines of the Grand Trunk, Midland and Canadian Northern Railways, and has risen to become CPR's chief rival in freight carriage in Canada.[96] Like the CPR, CN has divested itself of passenger services in favour of VIA Rail Canada. CN operates the electric Mont Royal AMT line under contract to the Government of Quebec.

Mass transit

The STM bus network consists of 165 daytime and 20 night-time service routes, and provides adapted transport and limited wheelchair-accessible buses.

Montreal's Metro was inaugurated in 1966 and today has 68 stations spread out along its four lines. Each station was designed by different architects with individual themes and features original artwork, and the trains themselves run on rubber tires, making the system quieter than most.The project was initiated by Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau, who would later bring the Summer Olympic Games to Montreal in 1976. The metro system has long had a station on the South Shore in Longueuil, and has only recently been extended to the city of Laval, north of Montreal with 3 new stations.

Road

Like many major cities, Montreal has a problem with vehicular traffic congestion, especially from off-island suburbs such as Laval on Île Jésus, and Longueuil on the south shore. The width of the Saint Lawrence River has made the construction of fixed links to the south shore expensive and difficult. There are only four road bridges along with one road tunnel, two railway bridges, and a metro line. The far narrower Rivière des Prairies, separating Montreal from Laval, is spanned by eight road bridges (six to Laval and two directly to the north shore).

The island of Montreal is a hub for the Québec Autoroute system, and is served by Québec Autoroutes A-10 (known as the Bonaventure Expressway on the island of Montreal), A-15 (aka the Decarie Expressway south of the A-40 and the Laurentian Autoroute to the north of it), A-13 (aka Autoroute Chomedey), A-20, A-25, A-40 (part of the Trans-Canada Highway system, and known as "The Metropolitan" or simply "The Met" in its elevated mid-town section), A-520, and A-720 (aka the Ville-Marie Autoroute). Many of these Autoroutes are frequently congested at rush hour.[citation needed] However, in recent years, the government has acknowledged this problem and is working on long-term solutions to alleviate the congestion. One such example is the extension of Quebec Autoroute 30 on Montreal's south shore, which will serve as a bypass.

Saint Lawrence Boulevard, also known as "The Main," divides Montreal into east and west sectors. Streets that cut across Saint Laurent Boulevard undergo a name change, in that Est or Ouest are appended to their names. Streets that do not cross the Main do not generally contain a cardinal direction at the end of their names.

Since Montreal is on an island, the directions used in the city plan do not precisely correspond with compass directions, as they are oriented to the geography of the island. North and south are defined on an axis roughly perpendicular to the St. Lawrence River and the Rivière des Prairies: North is towards the Rivière des Prairies, and south is towards the St. Lawrence. East (downstream) and west (upstream) directions are defined as roughly parallel to the St. Lawrence River and the Rivière des Prairies, despite the fact that both rivers flow from the southwest to the northeast.

The City of Montreal will begin a city-wide rollout of rental bicycles in 2008, in an effort to encourage locals and tourists to make use of the city's already well-established network of bike paths. The rental bicycles will be available from depots located throughout the city, where bikes can be rented from automated stations using a credit card.The Public Bike System - as the official municipal entity will be known - estimates that by 2009, 2,400 bicycles will be deployed at 300 depots throughout the metro area. Bike rentals are also available at the Old Port of Montreal, as well as quadricycles, inline skates, children trailers, and segways. On October 31, 2008, Time Magazine named it #19 in Time's Top 50 Inventions of 2008."