{"id":503065,"date":"2026-02-27T13:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/503065\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T13:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:01:11","slug":"montreals-trudeau-airport-braces-for-more-traffic-chaos-ahead-of-spring-break-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/503065\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal\u2019s Trudeau airport braces for more traffic chaos ahead of spring break – Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vehicle traffic around Montr\u00e9al Trudeau International Airport has been a source of frustration in recent years, prompting passengers at times to haul their suitcases on foot along the roadway to avoid missing flights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now, Montreal\u2019s airport authority is urging travellers to prepare for further traffic headaches as the busy spring break season lands amid a major airport revamp and the demolition of a parking garage.<\/p>\n

Airport spokesperson Anne-Sophie Hamel says some 58,000 passengers are expected to travel through the airport each day over the next 10 days or so. And while that number is a little less than last year \u2014 due to the cancellation of flights to Cuba over fuel shortages \u2014 she said travellers will need to be patient.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are fully aware that it\u2019s more difficult coming to the airport, so that\u2019s why we\u2019re \u2026 asking people really to prepare their trip,\u201d she said in an interview Thursday.<\/p>\n

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The surge in traffic comes as the airport is demolishing a parking garage, resulting in thousands fewer parking spots and more cars in main drop-off zones.<\/p>\n

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Hamel says the airport has added two alternative pickup and drop-off areas with shuttle service to the terminal, and is urging travellers to reserve parking spots in advance and arrive at least three hours early for their flights.<\/p>\n

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While the airport has installed the extra drop-off zones as a mitigation measure, Hamel says the fundamental problem is that the airport\u2019s infrastructure is at capacity. \u201cOur main drop off was built for a number way less than the number of passengers that we receive every day and every year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The airport will open new permanent drop-off zones by 2028 as part of a 10-year, $10-billion plan to increase passenger capacity and reconfigure the access points to the airport, she said.<\/p>\n

Work includes a complete reconfiguration of the road network leading to the terminal and the demolition of the multi-level parking garage for a new, larger parking facility. The airport authority also plans to build a new building that will connect the terminal to the future light rail station, expected to be operational by 2027. It announced last June that it had negotiated a $1-billion loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank to help finance construction.<\/p>\n

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Hamel said the authority has wanted to renovate since before the COVID-19 pandemic, but, inconveniently, had to wait until passenger traffic picked up again to pay for it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt would have been ideal to have started to do this construction when we had nearly no passengers coming into Montreal-Trudeau, but we didn\u2019t have the means to do that because we didn\u2019t have passengers,\u201d she explained. \u201cThat\u2019s the way the Canadian airport model is built.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, the airport has to manage the major construction effort while operating a busy flight hub with people coming and going 24 hours a day. The saying \u201crebuilding the plane while flying\u201d comes to mind, though Hamel prefers a different metaphor.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing construction on an airport site is like welcoming 30 of your closest friends home while you\u2019re in the midst of rebuilding your kitchen, your bathroom and you have a pipe that just leaked in your living room,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

However, she said the future drop-off zones will have triple the capacity of the current ones, while the light-rail station and reconfigured road network should eventually put an end to the biggest traffic woes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vehicle traffic around Montr\u00e9al Trudeau International Airport has been a source of frustration in recent years, prompting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,178340,178341],"class_list":["post-503065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-airport","tag-montreal-trudeau-international-airport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}