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The Question of the Metro in the 1920s

Despite the need expressed during the 1910s, the Roaring Twenties still was not to see the construction of a metro in Montreal. The First World War (1914-1918), followed by the financial crisis that hit the city which was later on put under state supervision (1918-1921), constituted some of the elements that lead all metro projects to be shelved.

But nevertheless, the question of the metro started seeping out from City offices to become hot news for the papers—leaving us, readers from generations later, with a fully documented trail on requests made by public figures (municipal councillors, company chairmen, etc.) or special interest groups such as the Motorists League, the Royal Automobile Club of Canada, the Ligue du progr�s civique, and others.

Bad driving habits as depicted by a paper cartoonist

On March 1, 1924, The Standard (a newspaper) published a detailed plan for a metro network drawn by a transit specialist named F.S. Williamson. This project, possibly the first to be published, was composed of three metro lines that could very well fool more than a few people in mistaking it with the initial network that would be constructed 42 years later.

Studies on urban traffic problems were becoming now more numerous and better documented. Paul Seurot, an engineer working for the Tramways Commission, released on May 8, 1925 a comprehensive and technical 19-page study through which he suggests single-track tunnels. In 1929, now employed by the Montreal Tramways Co. (MTC), Seurot published a 32-page paper entitled Transit Problems in Modern Cities. For its part, the MTC mentioned in its 1929 annual report a study about the construction of a metro which was drawn up and given to city representatives.
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