expo 67 lounge

Mid-century fashion, vintage pop culture and retro cool... from Expo 67 and beyond.

18 October 2006

The Expo-Express

With a forecast of 30 million visits (which was to become a reality of over 50 million visits), Expo 67 needed efficient on-site transportation.

While the Minirail gave visitors a slower, panoramic view of Expo, the Expo-Express quickly moved large crowds to the different exhibition areas. There were 4 Expo-Express stations: Cité du Havre, Île Sainte-Hélène, Île Notre-Dame, and La Ronde.

Unlike the Metro which ran entirely underground using rubber-tire technology, the Expo-Express operated above ground and on steel wheels. The train's route was 5.7 kilometres long, and waiting time was 5 minutes on average. There were 48 cars in total, 8 sets of 6 cars each. Each train had a capacity of 1000 passengers.

The Expo-Express was the first fully automated transit system in North America. To ease the fears of certain passengers that would not want to embark on a driverless train, personnel was hired and outfitted in nice uniforms, to sit in the front cabin and do nothing at all...!

images: (1) alamedainfo.com
(2) emdx.org

(3-4) library and archives Canada

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3 Comments:

Blogger Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

How come Montreal was so efficient and good at planning back in 1967 and the city seems so hopeless today? What has been lost?

11:51 am  
Blogger Jason Stockl said...

I had to really think about this...

I think the 60's were a very special time. Call it innocence, call it naïvete, there was a certain faith in politicians and an optimism in what the future held.

Jean Drapeau was a very charismatic mayor, and a lot of big projects in Montreal got off the ground because of his perserverance.

Though Expo 67 was a great feat of organization, the 1976 Olympics were a total financial disaster, and by that time, people were becoming more cynical...

2:56 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh how many times my cousin and I after walking around expo would jump on the "Expo Express" just to rest.
It was FREE, can't beat that ehh...
We would just ride for a while and then we would start all over.

5:37 pm  

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