(Montreal) Around a hundred demonstrators gathered on Sunday to denounce the underfunding of public transport in Quebec, which could lead to a reduction in services.
“Everyone knows that there is a crisis in transport companies. But when we see that such disastrous scenarios are being considered, we must act,” he told The Press Mathieu Murphy-Perron, founding member of the activist collective Vélorution, which organized the demonstration.
At the end of October, several mayors of Greater Montreal expressed concern that the public transportation sector would suffer heavy losses without increased government assistance. According to their assumptions, the metro should close after 11 p.m. each day and only open from 9 a.m. on weekends. This would also have the effect of reducing the number of trains on the yellow, green and orange lines.
“For a decongested and safe city, we need public transportation. Such measures would lead so many more people to travel by car alone and it would be a disaster,” says Mathieu Murphy-Perron.
“It’s completely absurd”
The demonstrators gathered at 11 a.m. at the Square-Victoria–OACI metro station. “Considering everything we know about climate change and the environmental impact of human habits, it is completely absurd to want to cut public transportation,” exclaimed one of the demonstrators, Magalie Simard. We must instead increase funding for public transport, added Simon Paquette and Kathleen Gudmundsson alongside him.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Protesters are demanding more funding for public transport, as cuts are considered to absorb financial losses.
“It’s totally irresponsible, what Mr. Legault and the Minister of Finance did,” declared solidarity MP Manon Massé, who was present at the event. She deplores that the Coalition Avenir Québec government has not funded transport companies to meet their needs. “That potentially means service cuts and price increases, and that is not acceptable in 2023.”
“We have to think about families. I meet people who say that if the metro does not run at a regular frequency, they cannot go to work, go to study or pick up the children from the swimming pool on Sunday,” added solidarity MP Alejandra Zaga Mendez.
An expected reduction in service
A Radio-Canada report published Thursday cited an internal document according to which a service drop of 3.7% for buses and 4.8% for the metro is planned to absorb the financial losses of the Société de transport de Montréal ( STM).
The Press was able to confirm that this hypothesis is being studied, but that it is not formally a budgetary orientation. The goal would be in particular to offset the decline in ridership, while barely 75% of users are back on public transport in Greater Montreal.
This measure, which would be one possibility among several others, could make it possible to balance the budget of the STM, which must be presented next week at the same time as that of the administration of Valérie Plante, with a saving of approximately 18 million .
With Henri Ouellette-Vézina, The Press