The automobile visitors round Montreal Trudeau Worldwide Airport has been a supply of frustration in recent times, prompting passengers at occasions to haul their suitcases on foot alongside the roadway to keep away from lacking flights.
Now, Montreal’s airport authority is urging travellers to arrange for additional visitors complications because the busy spring break season lands amid a significant airport revamp and the demolition of a parking storage.
Airport spokesperson Anne-Sophie Hamel says some 58,000 passengers are anticipated to journey via the airport every day over the following 10 days or so. And whereas that quantity is rather less than final yr — because of the cancellation of flights to Cuba over gas shortages — she mentioned travellers will must be affected person.
“We’re absolutely conscious that it is harder coming to the airport, in order that’s why we’re … asking individuals actually to arrange their journey,” she mentioned in an interview Thursday.
The surge in visitors comes because the airport is demolishing a parking storage, leading to hundreds fewer parking spots and extra automobiles in essential drop-off zones.
Hamel says the airport has added two different pickup and drop-off areas with shuttle service to the terminal, and is urging travellers to order parking spots upfront and arrive at the least three hours early for his or her flights.
Whereas the airport has put in the additional drop-off zones as a mitigation measure, Hamel says the basic drawback is that the airport’s infrastructure is at capability. “Our essential drop off was constructed for a quantity manner lower than the variety of passengers that we obtain each day and yearly,” she mentioned.
The airport will open new everlasting drop-off zones by 2028 as a part of a 10-year, $10-billion plan to extend passenger capability and reconfigure the entry factors to the airport, she mentioned.
Work features a full reconfiguration of the street community resulting in the terminal and the demolition of the multi-level parking storage for a brand new, bigger parking facility.
The airport authority additionally plans to construct a brand new constructing that can join the terminal to the longer term mild rail station, anticipated to be operational by 2027. It introduced final June that it had negotiated a $1-billion mortgage from the Canada Infrastructure Financial institution to assist finance building.
Hamel mentioned the authority has wished to renovate since earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, however, inconveniently, needed to wait till passenger visitors picked up once more to pay for it.
“It will have been preferrred to have began to do that building after we had almost no passengers coming into Montreal-Trudeau, however we did not have the means to do this as a result of we did not have passengers,” she defined. “That is the way in which the Canadian airport mannequin is constructed.”
Because of this, the airport has to handle the main building effort whereas working a busy flight hub with individuals coming and going 24 hours a day. The saying “rebuilding the aircraft whereas flying” involves thoughts, although Hamel prefers a distinct metaphor.
“Doing building on an airport web site is like welcoming 30 of your closest associates house whilst you’re within the midst of rebuilding your kitchen, your lavatory and you’ve got a pipe that simply leaked in your lounge,” she mentioned.
Nevertheless, she mentioned the longer term drop-off zones can have triple the capability of the present ones, whereas the light-rail station and reconfigured street community ought to finally put an finish to the most important visitors woes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Feb. 27, 2026.
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