The scenario of a closure of the Montreal metro at 11 p.m., feared due to provincial funding deemed insufficient, is beginning to sow concern among some citizens.
Anne-Marie Paquette is a medical imaging technologist at CHU Sainte-Justine. The Verdun resident takes the metro to go to and from work. Currently, she works day shifts and evening shifts, alternating, and the latter end around midnight.
With the metro closing at 11 p.m., which could be caused by the deficits of public transport companies in the greater Montreal region, it would be impossible for her to return home by public transport. “It’s definitely a source of concern. I honestly hope we don’t go there. I’m going to have to question myself,” she confides to Duty.
Without a metro, its options are limited. In addition to her monthly pass from the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority, which gives her access to the Montreal metro, she pays a subscription to Communauto in order to compensate for service interruptions that could extend her transit time. On the other hand, she sees this subscription as an “exceptional measure” and claims to take the metro “99% of the time”. “Sometimes I used it to get home,” she says. But I tell myself that if the metro closes [à 23 h], I probably won’t be the only one to fall back on Communauto. And it could happen, several evenings, that there are no cars left and I have to take a taxi. »
Such a taxi ride would cost too much in the long run, she adds. And even using the car-sharing service repeatedly could prove expensive. “If I take the Communauto, it costs me around ten dollars. So every day I work evenings, I would have to pay $10 to get home, $10 more than if I could just take the subway. »
In the long term, if the metro were to close its doors earlier, Mme Paquette would also question the future of his environment: in Montreal, in the public health network, where hours are very often atypical and where there is a significant labor shortage, a large part of the staff uses the public transportation to get to work. “I could make the decision to go work in a private clinic to have more advantageous hours,” she says on the line, not without a touch of resignation.
In response to the Legault government’s refusal to assume 75% of the costs requested by municipalities to remedy the deficits of transport companies, a demonstration in support of collective transport is to be held on November 19.
“If we want fewer cars in our cities, we must offer alternatives. And when there is none, people will feel obliged to take their car,” explains Mathieu Murphy-Perron, co-founder of the Vélorution Montréal collective, which campaigns for cars to take up less space on Montreal roads. “Public transportation is necessary for a viable city […], less congested, less polluting. »