MONTREAL –
These days, the only place you’ll find a working Montreal streetcar is at the Canadian Railway Museum south of the city. But each year, the spring thaw that cracks up the asphalt on city streets unearths pieces of a public transit past that disappeared more than 65 years ago.
Near St-Laurent Boulevard, a metal rail shines dully from a pothole, a reminder of a long-gone streetcar network that once totalled hundreds of kilometres and ferried millions of passengers a year to their destinations.
The last batch of Montreal’s tramways were retired in 1959. City officials, however, quickly discovered that removing the tracks was costly and time-consuming, and decided to pave over them instead, according to Benoît Clairoux, a historian and communications adviser with Montreal’s public transit agency, Société de Transport de Montréal.
The fact that they emerge through cracks in the pavement serve as a reminder of the important role they played, he said.
“We might forget it today, but Montreal was a tramway city, like many other North American cities,” he said in a recent phone interview. “At the height of the network, at the start of the ‘30s, we’re talking about 500 kilometres of track … and we had nearly 1,000 vehicles circulating.”
According to the history page on the transit agency’s website, the first tramways in Montreal were inaugurated in 1861 and were pulled by horses. Electric trams made their debut in 1892, allowing the network to expand all over Montreal.
While buses had started to gain traction in the 1930s, the Second World War put limits on the use of tires and gasoline, pushing some retired streetcars back to service. Public transit ridership soared, reaching almost 400 million rides in 1947, a record that would not be surpassed until 2011, Clairoux said.
“That gives you an idea of how the tramway network was a very good network,” he said.
Clairoux says there are many reasons for the end of the tramway, and many of them came down to money. Tramways, unlike buses, require expensive infrastructure, including rails and cables that have to be kept clear of snow in winter.
Streetcars also annoyed drivers because they stopped in the middle of the street, unlike the more agile buses, which can manoeuvre to the side, he said.
When the city created a new transit agency that took over the private tramway system in the early 1950s, the network was old and outdated, he said, leading to the decision to retire the fleet and replace it with buses and, later, the Montreal metro.
While streetcars have drawbacks, some Montrealers wish they would make a comeback. Pierre Barrieau, a transportation historian, says streetcars still serve a purpose: they travel faster than buses, are more comfortable and better-liked by the population.
Equally importantly, streetcars create a more permanent infrastructure that allows dense neighbourhoods to develop around them, he said.
Both buses and streetcars move people around, he said, “but we don’t transform cities around bus networks.”
While many cities have built tram lines in recent years to encourage dense, urban development close to transit options, there have been some negative stories, too. A Toronto man, Mac Bauer, drew headlines for being able to outrun his city’s sluggish streetcars, partly to send a message that the country’s most populated city needs better transit infrastructure.
Barrieau says that streetcars “aren’t magical” and work best if they have their own lanes and priority at traffic lights. They also work better for quick trips within neighbourhoods rather than long suburban commutes, he said.
In recent years, some groups have pushed to bring tramways back to Montreal. Most recently the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain, a transit authority serving the greater Montreal area, is calling for a 38-kilometre, 31-station tramway to serve the eastern part of Montreal in a project dubbed the Projet structurant de l’Est.
In an email, the agency said, “professionals are continuing all the necessary analyses and studies to advance the (project) according to the route, method and schedule agreed upon with our public partners and civil society.”
In the meantime, the old tracks under the city streets don’t seem to be going away any time soon. Clairoux doubts anyone knows how many kilometres remain buried.
While the city did not respond to a request for comment, the historian said officials seem to be removing the rails only when a street is completely re-done — possibly the strategy taken by the city in the 1950s.
“Maybe at the time they didn’t think it would take so long to redo all the streets,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 13, 2026.
