Autoroute 640-Montreal

[Chrysler375Freeway]

Does anyone know why Montreal has an incomplete beltway, and why Autoroutes 30 and 640 do not connect to one another?

[Alps]

Best resource: http://www.montrealroads.com/roads/A-640/

[webfil]

Steve Anderson has most of the story right, but I have yet to see an recent official document regarding the Oka-Hudson routing. While the idea pops once in a while here and there (from this engineeing bulletin in 1974 to some chamber of commerce in 2012), the only official allusion I can find is a 1966 press release regarding the inception of the primitive autoroute numbering system ― and it's still very vague about the schedule and the routing, citing only two towns as terminuses.

Beyond 1970, official maps call for a western terminus of A-640 at Saint-Placide. The choice of Mirabel as a site for the new airport called for a revision of the highway planification northwest of Montreal; if a new east-west expressway was to serve Mirabel, it would run farther north than A-640 and double as a Montréal bypass towards Ontario and western Québec, with A-13 connecting both at the western tip of the metropolitan area (interview with De Belleval, Transport minister in 1981). 1981 is before the standoff between aboriginal peoples and the army at Oka, and right after a national park was created at the very terminus of autoroute 640.

The most recent (2003) proposal about A-640 completion is the ¾-loop (A-640 and A-30, with a bridge in Repentigny), that motivated the completion of A-30. I give more details about A-640 in a two-post series in another topic.

tl;dr
A full loop looks good on a map, but a bridge over Outaouais river would be as useless as socially explosive.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

I will also add that Montreal was planned to have an inner loop component inside 640/30 called A-415. The plug was also pulled on that. What was the reason behind the plug being pulled on it?

[LilianaUwU]

I will also add that Montreal was planned to have an inner loop component inside 640/30 called A-415. The plug was also pulled on that. What was the reason behind the plug being pulled on it?

If I'm not mistaken, it would be the same as most cancelled freeway plans inside cities: the planned right-of-way was too developed to be used. Don't quote me on that, though.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

About the land being too developed for 415, they could have put it underground to protect developed areas. Isn't this what QC did with A-10 in Montreal when they removed the elevated part of the Autoroute in the harborfront region?

[vdeane]

About the land being too developed for 415, they could have put it underground to protect developed areas. Isn't this what QC did with A-10 in Montreal when they removed the elevated part of the Autoroute in the harborfront region?

Nope.  Anyone traveling from A-10 to former A-720 must travel through traffic lights on surface streets.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

About the land being too developed for 415, they could have put it underground to protect developed areas. Isn't this what QC did with A-10 in Montreal when they removed the elevated part of the Autoroute in the harborfront region?

Nope.  Anyone traveling from A-10 to former A-720 must travel through traffic lights on surface streets.

How was that ever allowed to be a part of any A-road in Quebec?

[froggie]

^ Though discouraged, I don't think there's a hard and fast requirement that Quebec Autoroutes are fully controlled access.  Besides A-10 near downtown, there's also A-19 elsewhere in Montreal and A-573 near Quebec (City) that both have at-grade traffic signals.

[vdeane]

A-10 was truncated and no longer exists west of Rue Wellington.  And prior to that it ended at Rue Notre-Dame, not A-720.

And yes, there are numerous sections of Autoroute with at-grades (A-30, A-55, and A-955 are other notable examples, but there are still more).  Meanwhile, A-720 was downgraded to QC 136 simply because a section narrowed the lanes by 1'.

[LilianaUwU]

And yes, there are numerous sections of Autoroute with at-grades (A-30, A-55, and A-955 are other notable examples, but there are still more).

Don't forget A-20 in L'ÃŽle-Perrot and Vaudreuil, arguably the most notable example of an at-grade Autoroute.

[Alps]

A-10 was truncated and no longer exists west of Rue Wellington.  And prior to that it ended at Rue Notre-Dame, not A-720.

That's semantics. The A-720 ramps were right there.

[andrepoiy]

Also I believe somewhere along A-20 there's an at-grade railway crossing, I was very surprised to see that

[ghYHZ]

Also I believe somewhere along A-20 there's an at-grade railway crossing, I was very surprised to see that

Yes...at St-Hyacinthe.....

https://goo.gl/maps/Ri77eeJe2XJKBKzJ6

A spur track that only sees sporadic use and not worth cost to construct an overpass. Similar to those crossings on NB2 (Trans Canada) in Moncton. The only time I was ever stopped there was by locomotive and a single railcar being switched in the wee hours of the morning.

[vdeane]

A-10 was truncated and no longer exists west of Rue Wellington.  And prior to that it ended at Rue Notre-Dame, not A-720.

That's semantics. The A-720 ramps were right there.

Given that A-720 always was a partial interchange, I would say that if it really did end at A-720, the mainline would have been the ramps and ended here, which clearly wasn't the case.  It was specifically signed as a ramp (granted, in Québec that isn't exactly definitive, but combined with the end sign...).

[plain]

Also I believe somewhere along A-20 there's an at-grade railway crossing, I was very surprised to see that

Yes...at St-Hyacinthe.....

https://goo.gl/maps/Ri77eeJe2XJKBKzJ6

A spur track that only sees sporadic use and not worth cost to construct an overpass. Similar to those crossings on NB2 (Trans Canada) in Moncton. The only time I was ever stopped there was by locomotive and a single railcar being switched in the wee hours of the morning.

Even if it's not used very often, I feel that there should be gates there just to be on the safe side. But I guess there's never been any incidents.

[Stephane Dumas]

Also I believe somewhere along A-20 there's an at-grade railway crossing, I was very surprised to see that

Yes...at St-Hyacinthe.....

https://goo.gl/maps/Ri77eeJe2XJKBKzJ6

A spur track that only sees sporadic use and not worth cost to construct an overpass. Similar to those crossings on NB2 (Trans Canada) in Moncton. The only time I was ever stopped there was by locomotive and a single railcar being switched in the wee hours of the morning.

They used to be more, one on A-55 at Drummondville until the late 1980s when CP Rail abandonned a line going from Foster near Waterloo to Drummondville. There's a photo showing the then railroad crossong on page A-6.
https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3722835?docsearchtext=canadien%20pacifique%20drummondville%20autoroute%2051%2055

There was another one on A-20 near Lévis who was removed in the mid-1990s and the railroad was recycled into a bike path.
https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3722835?docsearchtext=canadien%20pacifique%20drummondville%20autoroute%2051%2055

There's still 2 railroad crossings on A-50 between Lachute and Mirabel airport. https://goo.gl/maps/UnwXYWHwFZmZzqiF8

The one at St-Hyacinthe used to have some incident like this one in 2013.
https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3722835?docsearchtext=canadien%20pacifique%20drummondville%20autoroute%2051%2055

[Chrysler375Freeway]

Also I believe somewhere along A-20 there's an at-grade railway crossing, I was very surprised to see that

Yes...at St-Hyacinthe.....

https://goo.gl/maps/Ri77eeJe2XJKBKzJ6

A spur track that only sees sporadic use and not worth cost to construct an overpass. Similar to those crossings on NB2 (Trans Canada) in Moncton. The only time I was ever stopped there was by locomotive and a single railcar being switched in the wee hours of the morning.

There was an at-grade railroad crossing on Interstate 35 in Texas until the 1970s, when it was removed. It was one of the few on the Interstate system, another being Interstate 94 in Albion, Michigan, when it was also removed due to the line being abandoned.

[Richard3]

About the land being too developed for 415, they could have put it underground to protect developed areas. Isn't this what QC did with A-10 in Montreal when they removed the elevated part of the Autoroute in the harborfront region?

Nope.  Anyone traveling from A-10 to former A-720 must travel through traffic lights on surface streets.

How was that ever allowed to be a part of any A-road in Quebec?

In province of Quebec, autoroute numbers are given on a base of future completions.  And as of the projects are not coming to any kind of completion, the MTQ sometimes removes, or modifies, autoroute numbering from some segments of roads.  For example, the actual A-955, in Centre-du-Quebec region, was supposed to be a part of A-55, from A-20 to Richmond, and the actual A-55, from Richmond north to Drummondville to be A-51.  Then they decided not to complete the initial A-55 project, so the actual situation.  But some years ago, I don't know why, the MTQ decommissionned the last southern kilometer of the A-955, so instead of terminating at main street of St-Albert, it now ends at QC-122, the last km becoming a rural road.

About the A-720, things are a bit different.  As a part of the Turcot Interchange rebuilding, the MTQ made a deal with environmentalists by downsizing the A-720 to a "provincial road" (QC-136) by making the lanes about one foot narrower.

It's the same about exit numbering. For example, the A-50, in Gatineau, starts with exit 134 because the original A-50 project was supposed to begin near Pembroke, ON, and follow grossly the QC-148.  It looks like this part of the highway will not be built in a foreseeable future, so maybe, one day or another, the MTQ will change all the exit numbers, with a starting point in the city of Gatineau.

All of this to say that the highway numbering system, here in province of Quebec, may be one of the most structured systems, but it shows lots and lots of exceptions.