Streetcars in Montreal
Even private automobile owners were taking streetcars as rationing made gasoline and tires difficult to get.
Most manufacturing of private automobiles was halted about halfway through the war years so assembly plants could concentrate on military vehicles.
Manufacturing of automobiles for the civilian market started up again and after the deprivations of the war, many people began to buy one, including former streetcar passengers.
Traffic congestion was becoming a bigger problem, especially in the narrower streets of the older parts of downtown Montreal.
To relieve traffic congestion, the newly established Montreal Transportation Commission decided to convert the inner city routes first.
Many of Montreal's streetcar routes included running on a portion of Sainte Catherine Street (Rue Sainte-Catherine) downtown.
The city's last streetcars operated on August 30, 1959, after which Montreal was served solely by buses until the Metro opened in October 1966.
In 1905, the Montreal Street Railway constructed two open-topped sightseeing streetcars locally known as Golden Chariots.
The cars operated on a 10-mile (16 km) counter-clockwise circuit around the three peaks of Mount Royal via Bleury, Park, Laurier, Côte Ste.
Catherine, Bellingham, Maplewood, Decelles, Queen Mary, Côte des Neiges, and back to Ste.
This second route lasted only a few years being discontinued when streetcar service ended on Côte des Neiges in 1955.
Contrary to popular belief, the Golden Chariots never operated in regular service over Mount Royal, the small 764-foot-high (233 m) mountain that is the city's namesake.
It was found that if passengers stood in some areas of the upper tiers of the Golden Chariots, there was not enough of a safety clearance in the tunnel on that line.
Both routes met at Summit Loop near today's Beaver Lake (Lac des Castors) Pavilion where Remembrance Road and the Camillien Houde Parkway meet.
The 93-Remembrance route was one of the shortest in the city, being only about three-quarters-mile (1.2 km) long from its western terminus at Remembrance and Côte des Neiges Roads.
The route up the east side of the mountain featured sharp curves, grades as steep as 10 percent and a 337-foot (103 m) tunnel.
The streetcar fleet also included two funeral cars, the second and larger of which saw heavy use during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
City traffic engineers came up with a plan to turn many major streets into one-way thoroughfares, which would affect several trolley bus routes.
Trolley buses by this time had fallen out of favour with transit companies, and new North American equipment was harder to get.
In the early days, the Montreal City Passenger Railway used horse-drawn sleighs in the winter and horsecars in the summer.
[4] On March 31, 2014, the STM began testing a Chinese BYD prototype all-electric bus on several routes with a plan to have Novabus of St. Eustache, Quebec begin to trial its own version later the same year.
