Where is this?

UPDATE: Yes, it’s the Des Seigneurs bridge over the Lachine Canal. The photo is taken from the little island in the middle of the canal.

Design a trip, using only public transit, from the eastern tip of the island of Montreal to the southern tip of the island, that has the least possible number of transfer points. Assume you can leave at any time during the week, and use any combination of STM buses, metro lines and AMT commuter train lines.

For bonus points, calculate the time between departure and arrival.

UPDATE: Nice to see almost everyone saw through the southernmost-tip trap. It is, in fact, way out west in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and not in Verdun or LaSalle.

Tim gets the correct answer below, with two transfers:

1. 410 Express Notre-Dame (AM rush hour only) from 100e/Bureau to Lucien L’Allier train station
2. Dorion/Rigaud train to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue station (select times only)
3. 251 Sainte-Anne to Ste-Anne and Kent

The disadvantage to this route is that it only works on weekday mornings, and it has to be carefully synchronized to the train. The only route that doesn’t involve more than 30 minutes of wait time at any stop departs at 5:55am and arrives at 7:53am, for a total of 118 minutes (1:58).

Not including the train, the trip would involve three transfers: (184), green line, 211, 251

Outside of rush hour, it adds another: 86, 186, green line, 211, 251

At night: 362, 364, 358, 356 (the fastest travel time: 160 minutes or 2:40)

In other words, not a trip I’d recommend taking daily.

In 1966, after the metro was first constructed, four streets were merged into one to form de Maisonneuve Blvd., which sits on top of the green line downtown.

What were the names of these original streets, and do any of them still exist anywhere?

UPDATE: I never doubted my intrepid readers. from West to East:

• Western, from Decarie to Atwater
• St. Luc, from Atwater to Guy
• Burnside, from Stanley to Union
• Ontario (barely), from Union to Jeanne-Mance (this is also why de Maisonneuve and Ontario/President Kennedy run next to each other for no apparent reason near Place des Arts)
• De Montigny, from St. Laurent to du Havre, where de Maisonneuve currently ends. There is a tiny part of de Montigny still left, from St. Laurent to St. Urbain, on the old street’s axis as de Maisonneuve turns up to get around Place des Arts. You’ll note, of course, that this street gave its name to the Berri-de-Montigny metro station, which was at the intersection of these two streets, until the station was renamed Berri-UQAM to appease the university, jealous that Université de Montréal had a new station named after it.

OK, time for the tough ones again:

Where are King George Blvd. and King George Ave.?

UPDATE: Kate nails this one: King George Blvd. is the former name of Grenet St. in Ville-Saint-Laurent. King George Ave. is the former name of Cavendish Blvd. in Côte-Saint-Luc. Both names were changed in the mid-1960s.

After last week’s quiz astonishingly failed to produce a winner, I’ll try to go for an easier one this week:

What is this the shape of?

UPDATE: I knew this one wouldn’t take long. It is, indeed, Beaver Lake on Mount Royal.

6, 10, 24, 28: What do these numbers indicate?

(Hey, it rhymes!)

OK, OK, a small hint: You have to look left and right for the answer.

Still nothing? Hint #2: Look at a map of Montreal. You can’t miss it.

No? Another hint: It’s among the most visible of Montreal’s landmarks. (Or perhaps it’s “land”marks?)

UPDATE (March 3): Time’s up.

6, 10, 24 and 28 are the numbers that indicate runways at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Runways at airports are numbered based on the direction a plane must be pointed in to take off or land on it, rounded to the nearest 10 degrees. So Runway 28 would be a takeoff or landing at 280 degrees, or almost due west. If the plane was using the same runway in the opposite direction, the runway would be designated Runway 10. Each runway’s two numbers therefore have a difference of 18, or 180 degrees.

Because its two longer runways are parallel, they are designated “left” and “right” depending on the pilot’s point of view (so 6L is 24R and 6R is 24L).

It’s the most visible landmark (airmark?) in the city. How could you have missed it?

Montreal has a lot of north-south axis streets that run the width of the island. Unfortunately, because of obstructions like railways, highways and large properties, many of them are interrupted. Combined with one-way streets, name changes and traffic deviations for the sake of the children, it’s actually difficult to find a street on the east side of the island that you can drive from one side to the other on.

So here’s the question: What is the westernmost street (i.e. closest to the mountain) on the east side of the island (i.e. east of the mountain) that runs uninterrupted in both directions and intersects both Notre-Dame St. and Gouin Blvd.?

UPDATE: Kate and Chris independently come up with the answer: St. Jean Baptiste Blvd. in Montreal-East. Crazy, huh?

There are streets, such as St. Laurent, St. Hubert, Papineau and Viau that go at least one way between Gouin and Notre-Dame. There are others, such as St. Denis and Berri that are split up into different parts (some of them one-way), and there’s Lacordaire/Dickson which changes names.

Give yourself half a point if you guessed Pie-IX, which is two-way its entire length, but doesn’t actually intersect Gouin Blvd. vertically.

The only other street to meet these criteria*: Sherbrooke St., in Pointe-aux-Trembles.

(*This post originally read “this criteria,” a horrible breach of the rules of grammar, especially for a copy editor. My shame will never be overcame.)

What’s at 1200 Atwater Ave., Montreal, QC?

UPDATE: OK, time to let y’all off the hook. A couple of you clued in on it a bit. The answer is not the Atwater Library, which is at 1200 Atwater Ave. in Westmount. It’s a small two-storey semi-detached home near the roundabout at the southern end of the Atwater Tunnel.

It’s a pretty horrible location, with the train tracks and the highway within spitting distance, high-voltage transmission wires overhead and lots of traffic going through the Atwater Tunnel or down Centre St.

And I totally didn’t put this question up here because I got the two confused and ended up spending 20 minutes more than I wanted to walking in the freezing cold…

You wanted hard. You got it.

Name these 5-way and 6-way intersections on the island:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

UPDATE: Answers below:

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Where is this?

UPDATE: That was fast. It’s François Perrault Park in St. Michel, just near the St. Michel metro station.

Life-long Montrealers would probably say something about how the places in Column A relate to their counterparts in Column B.

And they would be wrong.

Why?

UPDATE: The answer, as slowly zeroed in on by the group below, is that the places in column A are south (actually west-southwest) of the respective places in column B, while they fit the definition of “Montreal north,” a seeming contradiction.

The disparity comes because the island is crooked. Its major east-west streets turn toward the northeast as they pass through downtown, and the “South Shore” is more accurately the East Shore, surrounding the island on the south and east but also continuing northeast.

It may be simpler to think of every street as having only four directions (and the streets and highways are named as if this is the case), but don’t think you’re going to get to the Eastern Townships by taking the 40 Est.