At a time when the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, is carrying out an extensive round of consultations in order to find solutions to the problems of financing public transport, the TRANSIT Alliance is proposing a series of measures to elected officials, including the indexation of the fuel tax and the pricing of the mileage traveled by motorists.
The expenses of transport companies are on the rise, while revenues have fallen sharply in recent years. And the drop in traffic caused by the pandemic has only accentuated this shortfall.
The budget hole for transport companies would have reached $900 million in 2027, according to the Association du transport urbain du Québec.
One of the sources of funding for public transit projects comes from the Land Transportation Network Fund, which is mainly funded by the fuel tax. “But this fuel tax has not been indexed since 2013,” noted transport expert Florence Junca-Adenot, at a press conference Thursday morning in Montreal. “During that time, there was a 28% increase in inflation”, and “revenues were frozen”.
If we add to this the fact that fuel tax revenues will eventually decrease due to the increasing importance of electric cars in the car fleet, we find ourselves at a “pivotal moment”, illustrated the professor of urban studies at UQAM.
Florence Junca-Adenot is part of the TRANSIT Alliance, a group of around sixty organizations which has just published the report New impetuswhich proposes a series of measures to ensure the sustainability of public transit in Québec.
Fuel tax indexation
In the short term, the alliance therefore proposes to index the fuel tax. “It’s not a new tax, it’s simply to update what exists,” said Samuel Pagé-Plouffe, of the organization Vivre en Ville.
The report New impetus emphasizes that “if the fuel tax had followed inflation from 2013-2014, revenues would be $273 million higher for the Land Transportation Network Fund in 2021-2022” .
Mileage pricing
Because the fuel tax is destined to disappear due to the electrification of transport, the TRANSIT Alliance proposes to eventually replace it with a kilometer tariff to finance public transport. This measure, of the user-pay type, would impose a rate on the use of a vehicle according to the number of kilometers travelled.
“The contribution based on the number of kilometers traveled can be adjusted according to the time of day, the place of travel, the type of vehicle used and even the distance threshold reached. It may thus be more economical to travel with a compact vehicle, outside of peak hours, and as long as you have not reached 15,000 kilometers in the year, for example”, underline the authors of the report.
According to the TRANSIT Alliance, such a measure would reduce congestion, greenhouse gases and air pollution, by encouraging more people to turn to other modes of travel, such as active transport. “The science of climate mitigation dictates greater moderation in transportation,” the report reads.
Registration payment
Since 1992, motorists have contributed to the financing of public transit through a payment of $30 on the registration of their vehicle, but here again, this contribution has not kept up with inflation.
“The $30 contribution for public transit via registration payments has not been indexed since 1992. That was the year when Marie Carmen released her greatest hits, such as The black Eagle, and that Kris Kross made us dance with his great classic Jump », Humorously remarked Marc-André Viau, from Équiterre, also a member of the TRANSIT Alliance.
Among the other measures that the TRANSIT Alliance suggests to the government to finance public transit, there is in particular taxation on non-residential parking, road tolls and the establishment of a fee-rebate system. Also known as a “bonus-malus”, such a system would grant a bonus to the buyer of a new vehicle that consumes less than the one he owned before. Conversely, an additional amount, a tax, would be imposed on the purchase of a large gas-guzzling vehicle.
Make drivers pay
The majority of the proposed measures would therefore affect the wallets of motorists. And for the TRANSIT Alliance, it would only be a fair return. “Currently, the situation is unfair. Motorists are not paying their fair share of the road network. The costs must truly reflect the travel,” said Sarah Doyon, General Manager at Trajectoire Québec.
She referred in particular to a recent study carried out by researchers at Laval University which indicates that for each dollar spent individually, Quebec society pays $5.77 for transportation by car, and $1.21 for collective transport.
The TRANSIT Alliance has long been asking the government to rebalance investments between the road network and the public transit network. The road network receives $31.5 billion in investments planned for the next decade, more than double the amount of $13.8 billion provided for public transit according to the Quebec Infrastructure Plan.
The Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, has begun a consultation tour across the province “in order to find a lasting and thoughtful solution to the issues surrounding the structural funding of public transit”. She must meet elected officials and representatives of public transport companies.