Travellers passing through the Montreal Airport (ADM) in the coming months and years will need to be patient or plan their trips carefully if they want to ensure they arrive at the terminal on time. “The airport site was not designed to accommodate so many cars. Drop-off areas are overused, parking spaces are insufficient, congestion is frequent and it even backs up onto the highway,” explained Jérôme Conraud, one of the airport planning managers at ADM. “Last year, we had 22.5 million passengers, and traffic continues to grow,” he said during a meeting with the media on Tuesday morning. In recent years, several news reports have shown passengers stuck in traffic jams on the highway, forced to continue on foot so as not to miss their flights. The airport has launched several projects that will take place over several years to improve traffic flow, but this work will inevitably have an impact on traffic. “We are really getting down to business, starting major investment projects aimed at improving the airport, enhancing the user experience, and making the airport more connected and accessible,” said Conraud. “If people don’t follow our advice, it may be a headache to get to YUL,” said Anne Marcotte, YUL’s director of public relations, during a technical briefing for the media. In the coming months and years, ADM will reconfigure certain road accesses, build new drop-off areas, demolish the current large multi-storey car park to build a new one further away, add parking spaces, add a satellite pier and expand the baggage hall, build a rainwater retention basin south of the airport and welcome the REM. Mitigation measures Mitigation measures will be put in place starting in the summer of 2025. “This summer, we will begin closing certain access ramps. At the end of the year, we will demolish and close the multi-storey car park and put in place a number of mitigation measures to help users get through this period,” said Conraud. Two alternative drop-off points, called “express,” served by a shuttle service that runs on a dedicated road to access the terminal, have been set up. Visitors dropping off or picking up travellers are therefore asked to use these drop-off points. “Try them, it will save you from getting stuck in traffic,” said Conraud. The first 40 minutes are now free in most car parks to prevent visitors from adding to congestion by waiting in their cars in front of the terminal. “One habit we would like to avoid and correct is when people come to pick someone up at the terminal and drive around in circles on the network. Twenty-five per cent of motorists drive around the network more than once, which contributes to congestion. So you have to go to the express drop-off points or the free parking lots,” added Cornaud. A virtual waiting area for taxis and Uber has also been designed to prevent multiple vehicles from blocking traffic in front of the terminal. This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 17, 2025.
