A review of the financing model for interurban transport in Quebec is necessary, note researchers from the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS) after having documented the continued drop in recent decades in departures offered by private coaches for ensure connections between the different regions of Quebec.
In a research note published Monday, that The duty was able to consult under embargo, two IRIS researchers compiled the results of three studies carried out between 1981 and 2016 to detail the decrease in the number of weekly departures offered by intercity carriers in Quebec. They then updated this information by aggregating “handily” public data from the Commission des transports du Québec, explains co-author Colin Pratte.
Result: the number of weekly private intercity coach departures today stands at 882, almost seven times fewer than in 1981, when 6,000 departures were offered per week. Many bus routes that once served regions lacking sustainable alternatives to the car have been abolished or have seen their frequency greatly limited over the years. The IRIS analysis also shows that, in the last six years alone, the departures offered in Quebec have decreased by 33%.
“This decline shows that we cannot continue with the status quo. Otherwise we condemn ourselves to having less and less good services. It is certain that we must move on to something else” and review the supervision of interurban transport, notes the president of the Association of Rural Collective Transport of Quebec, André Lavoie.
Financial challenges
In recent decades, the Quebec government has refused to subsidize interurban transport, provided mainly by private companies, contenting itself with regulating the granting of permits to limit competition in this market. Transporters who provide journeys between the different towns in the province therefore essentially depend on revenues from ticket sales to ensure their profitability.
However, faced with financial challenges, intercity carriers have over the years reduced their service offering on many less profitable routes in addition to increasing their fares, which has only reduced ridership and therefore increased the deficits of these companies. The pandemic then prompted the government to release exceptional aid of $24 million between 2020 and 2022 to support intercity carriers in the context of the health crisis. This aid was, however, non-recurring. Thus, on March 31, a connection which had existed for more than 30 years between Saint-Georges, in Beauce, and the city of Quebec, was abolished by the loss-making company Autobus Breton.
The popularity of the automobile has continued to grow to the detriment of interurban transport, whose ecological footprint is significantly smaller, note the two researchers behind this IRIS research note. “The popularity of the automobile translates into a reduction in the use of intercity coach transport, which reduces its supply, which further increases dependence on the car to meet mobility needs. It’s a vicious circle,” summarizes Colin Pratte.
A public service
The Quebec model in terms of interurban transportation also represents the “exception” rather than the norm compared to other Canadian provinces as well as most American states, where the companies that provide these trips benefit from recurring funding. to ensure the maintenance of their activities, notes the IRIS analysis. Thus, in several American states, routes to sparsely populated areas that private carriers struggle to make profitable are maintained year after year through recurring public funding, the researchers explain.
The latter thus deduce that the Legault government must review its way of regulating interurban transport in Quebec in order to consider it as an essential service whose offer it plans on a provincial scale and into which it injects public funds on a recurring basis. André Lavoie believes in this sense that the government of Quebec should create a provincial authority responsible for planning and supervising the financing of interurban transport in Quebec, as is already the case for public transport in the greater Montreal region.
“The State’s disengagement in funding the coach is no longer viable,” concludes Mr. Pratte.