Transportation in Thunder Bay, Ontario

Transport in Thunder Bay is essential to trade, which has always been the backbone of the economy, beginning with Fort Kaministiquia in 1717.

The Harbour Expressway is a four-lane highway bisecting the city laterally in the Intercity and Balmoral Park areas.

Formerly, the highway 11/17 used to follow the entirety of the Thunder Bay Expressway (built in the 1960s) and turn west on Arthur Street.

The most notable grids are the ones in older areas of Port Arthur and Fort William, as well as the majority or all of Current River and Westfort.

Due to the separate grid and address-numbering systems present throughout the city, major arterial roads are required to change names several times through their courses, in particular those passing through the Intercity area.

Both Port Arthur and Fort William operated streetcars until the late 1940s, when they were replaced by electric trolley buses.

There are two major terminals (in both downtown cores) and three minor hubs at key points in the city (Lakehead University, Confederation College, and Intercity Shopping Centre).

[11] The CPR Union Depot (1910) remains in Fort William, with the CNR station (1905) providing tourism related services in Marina Park.

[13] Thunder Bay Terminals Ltd. provides a rail and vessel link for the movement of low sulphur bituminous and lignite coal from western Canada, and is located on McKeller Island.

[15] Thunder Bay has been a port since the days of the North West Company which maintained a schooner on Lake Superior.

To facilitate navigation, the federal government dredged the Kaministiquia River from 1873 onwards and built a large breakwater in Thunder Bay beginning in 1884.

Thunder Bay Port Authority manages Keefer Terminal built on a 320,000 square metre site on Lake Superior.

The railway's Intermodal freight transport has done away with the costly transshipment of individual goods between boxcars and lake freighters.