Let’s Talk Politics | Balancing the “Mobility Cocktail”

Transportation issues have once again marked the last few months. Whether in the capital, in the east end of Montreal or in Gatineau, the “word beginning with T” – the tramway – has been much talked about. At the same time, municipal elected officials are leading a battle with Quebec to resolve the impasse in funding public transit. And even though the government is investing massively in the road network, some believe that we are waging a war on the car.

Quebecers living far from major centres and suburbs are dependent on their cars to get around. In all the debates about funding public transit, do we talk enough about the needs of those who don’t have access to it?

Nicolas Ryan : At CAA-Québec, we represent 1.3 million members. When listening to the debates on transportation, some write to us because they feel like they’re being told that owning a car is a bad thing. Our position is that the automobile is part of a mobility cocktail. We also positioned ourselves in favor of a structuring public transportation network in Quebec City, which made members cry out. But when we surveyed them, 81% of them were also in favor. The polarization of the debates is increasingly broad, but the critical mass of people is rational and capable of sorting things out.

Jacques Demers : At the Fédération québécoise des municipalités, we represent all of the MRCs in Quebec. We support public transportation wherever it is possible to do so, but it is not always the solution. [Dans ma région à Magog]we did the test with [une ligne d’autobus]. For a year, the average number of people on board, over about 30 kilometers, was one person. The reality is that even if we had doubled or tripled the service, we were not solving a problem.

Marie-Soleil Gagné : This is a subject that fascinates me because I work for Accès transports viables, which defends the rights of active and public transportation users. I am not a city girl. I come from the Gaspé. But as a neo-urbanite, I see the territorial inequities in terms of transportation, despite the fact that it is written in government policies that we want to offer mobility options to all citizens, no matter where they live. However, this is not the case. [Où j’ai grandi]we are heavily dependent on cars to get around, without which we may be confined to our homes.

Regarding the example you gave, Mr. Demers, of a bus that was practically empty in your region, after noting that the project was not reaching its target, what were the next steps?

Jacques Demers : What we did was to concentrate on the places [où il y avait des besoins]. In this MRC, we realized that there was something to do with the city of Magog for young people who move towards [les établissements scolaires]. We need to get young people used to taking public transportation. Otherwise, as soon as they start going to college or university and buy a car, we’ll lose them.

Marie-Soleil Gagné : The elephant in the room is that we tend to want to apply the same solutions in terms of public transportation in rural or peri-urban areas as we do in cities. There are other options than a bus that remains empty, such as carpooling, on-demand transportation or the pooling of municipal service vehicle fleets. A car is in a parking lot 95% of the time. We have a good fleet of cars in Quebec. We are at more than one per person. Clearly, there is room to share.

In the municipal world, do you envisage this type of solution?

Jacques Demers : In terms of carpooling, almost all villages have installed designated parking lots for this purpose, but they are very rarely used. We believed in this model, we tried to set it up, but it is complicated to share. On our municipal vehicles, there are [des enjeux d’assurance]. It’s not true that you can just let someone use the vehicle without any fees. It’s very expensive and difficult to manage.

What would be important to provide better services is to analyze citizens’ movements. Where do they leave from, where do they go? We did this last winter with Mont Orford to realize that many users are young people from Sherbrooke. We established a link with the city’s bus service. On Saturdays and Sundays, overnight, we had more than twenty young people on the bus.

Nicolas Ryan : And they’re going to pass the word to their gang!

Marie-Soleil Gagné : Transportation and mobility are very complex and it is not easy to take into account everyone’s needs without having blind spots or biases. In transportation, we have a social norm that is very strong and that is focused on “automobility”. Even the superminister [Pierre Fitzgibbon] says that the number of cars should be cut in half, I imagine that the members of CAA-Quebec react with emotion!

Nicolas Ryan : There is emotion, indeed. [Selon un sondage qu’on a mené]62% of people say they own a car in Montreal. When we [élargit] in the metropolitan area, it’s 86%. We want to get these people to change their habits, but an overwhelming majority of them depend on their car on a daily basis. I recently heard a sports commentator explain that he lives in Repentigny and that the shortest trip to downtown Montreal by public transit would take him 2 hours and 13 minutes. So what do we do? Should we demonize him because he has to use his car for work?

Marie-Soleil Gagné : But who is demonizing him?

Nicolas Ryan : Go take a look at social media. What’s happening there right now is nasty. There’s a terrible polarization. Me, with my family, I drive my car 8,000 km a year. Is that a lot? I don’t think so. I have a small SUV, three children in the back, it doesn’t fit in a smaller vehicle. We very rarely talk about the use we make of the car, but rather about the fact of owning one. They’re going to tax the registration without thinking if you do 45,000 km in a large engine or 8,000 km in an energy-efficient car.

The remarks have been abbreviated and summarized for brevity.

Our guests

Marie-Soleil Gagné

Executive Director of Accès transports viables, an organization that defends the rights of public transportation users and promotes sustainable and active mobility in the Capitale-Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches regions.

Nicolas Ryan

Director of Public Affairs at CAA-Quebec, an organization that defends the interests of its members, particularly in matters of road safety and transportation infrastructure.

Jacques Demers

Mayor of Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley, prefect of the MRC of Memphrémagog and president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités, whose mission is to defend the political and economic interests of the regions.