At the beginning of the 1940s Montreal is still without a metro. Hard-hit by the economic crisis of the 1930s, the city is so debt-ridden that it can’t meet anymore its financial obligations and must therefore be put under trusteeship for the second time in 20 years, this time for a four-year period.

Already subdued by the crisis of the 1930s the idea of a metro is nearly all but forgotten at the onset of World War II. But things are already changing fast, and a number of war-related factors drives a phenomenal growth in ridership. Following a gloomy decade, businesses are firing on all cylinders. Montreal industries are fully engaged in the war effort, to such a point that the employment which plagued the preceding decade vanishes much to the advantage of the workers. Furthermore, war measures such as tire and gasoline rationing put a damper on the use of automobiles and benefits public transportation. Ridership is booming. After taking a plunge from a recorded 250 millions trips in 1929 to less than 209 millions ten years later, it skyrocketed from 1940 onwards, to reach 398,3 millions trips in 1947 – a record still standing to this day. An increase of over 90 % in seven years. It is a new golden era for tramways. To be able to meet demand the Montreal Tramways Company must haul back into service vehicles build in 1907 and left to rust for a long time.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to conclude that road congestion reappears again in the city. Not missing a beat, the Tramways Company jumps at the chance and proposes its plan for a metro to the Economic Council for the Greater Region of Montreal. The 47-page document – a full year in the making – receives the caution of the Planning Division Consultative Committee for the City of Montreal. Largely inspired by its 1929 predecessor, this project proposes the construction of a three-line system, almost eight miles long, with a building cost of 61 million dollars. The east-west line even features a section between Atwater and Amherst where metro cars would run underground, only to reemerge outside to continue running on the surface ground.

A committee is set up in 1949 to study traffic and transportation problems in Montreal and come up with solutions. The twenty-one-member task force, to which Mayor Camillien Houde is part, hands out in December an exhaustive one hundred-page report. Many solutions are put forward again. Among them, the Committee recommends the construction of Metropolitan Boulevard, which should have started 20 years ago yet was put aside on account of the Great Depression. The Committee also proposes building a 15-mile long metro and getting rid of half of the tramway lines. The report shows that over 1,000 plans related to the metro system have already been done, on issues such as sewage, water, gas, layouts, profiles, and electrical conduits. Underground drillings have already been carried out and sampling analysis is underway. Lastly, the Committee recommends that the City of Montreal ask the Government of Québec the authority required to set up a public transit commission invested with the mission of building and running the metro. This new entity would take over from the Montreal Tramways Company and would assume the responsibility to build and manage all major road projects, like Metropolitan Boulevard. This is an original idea : putting forward a global transportation plan, while providing funds to the metro project.

In a nutshell 1949 marks the beginning of the end for the Montreal Tramways Company, as finally Montreal seems to be about to get its metro after 40 years of road congestion.

• A few dates
• History of the Bus in Montreal
• The origins of the STM