Living without a car in Montreal, or elsewhere in Quebec, is doable. The problem is the two children.
It was the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, who assessed the state of transportation in Montreal. A family of two children who wants to live without a car, “yes, it can be done,” she said when announcing an expansion of the Communauto car-sharing service.
For her to say otherwise would have been surprising. Mme Plante was elected mayor of Montreal in 2017 by declaring this: “I am going to be the mayor of mobility! » At the time, she promised to buy 300 brand new hybrid buses to increase the service of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM).
Ephemeral projects
Mme Plante, later, pulled a pink line project out of his hat to illustrate his ambition to make things happen, and not just in cars. Then, more recently, she reiterated her intention to provide Montreal with a large tram network… by 2050 at the latest.
For one summer, in 2019, Montreal pushed the boldness of mobility by testing a self-service electric scooter service. You don’t find just one, but often two, if not even four or five, in competition, in most large cities in the United States and in several European countries.
This project did not last. Too dangerous. As with the turn to the right: Quebec is portrayed as being incapable of the same discipline in its transportation as the rest of the planet.
The first and last kilometers are, however, in urban transport and even in the suburbs, the key to the success of all public transport: if they could go from the house or the office to the bus station, from metro or train without taking their car, a significant portion of urban travelers would prefer to travel this way.
We have somewhat forgotten it, but this theory of the last mile (the “last mile”, to be exact) mobilized the technological giants, and not just Uber, before the pandemic hit. For them, it was the first domino to improve urban mobility.
Poor roads
Between 2017 and 2024, Montreal above all implored Quebec, on several occasions, to fill the chronic and recurring deficit of the STM. At the same time, the Legault government piloted a reform of public transport in the greater Montreal region which resulted in the transfer to municipalities of most of the deficit of the region’s transport companies, which amounts to billions of dollars. .
If we hadn’t understood it before, the message was simplified to its simplest expression last week, by the Deputy Prime Minister of Quebec, Geneviève Guilbault, also Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility. “Managing public transport and transport companies is not a mission of the State,” she declared. In contrast, she added, roads do not generate a deficit.
However, it exists in the Quebec infrastructure plan of his government, an entire chapter called “Asset Maintenance Deficit”, which figures exactly that: the road infrastructure deficit. This is the amount that would have to be paid to restore all of the province’s road infrastructure to good condition.
This deficit is currently estimated at $37.1 billion. It amounted to 16.5 billion in 2019.
Quebec roads are expensive, and it’s not over yet. The Legault government plans to allocate $31.5 billion to the maintenance of the road network over the next ten years. Quebec and its 8.4 million inhabitants share 61,468 kilometers of roads, or 20,000 kilometers more than Ontario, where 14.7 million people live.
Meanwhile, public transit will receive $15.4 billion. And what we are doing to improve our network is not lacking in absurdity: we are paving more roads. A third lane, reserved for buses, recently appeared on Highway 20, on the South Shore in the Montreal region.
We see more solitary drivers at the wheel of their vans than buses…
Economic challenge
Living in the city — living anywhere in Quebec — without a car is not impossible. It’s only getting harder and harder. The time and average distance separating the workplace from workers’ homes are constantly increasing across Canada. Statistics Canada has observed this since at least 1996.
The issue is economic. Quebec, like Canada, is receiving a record number of newcomers these days, who must be accommodated and find work. If their only option for going to work is to buy a car, their integration will become even more complicated.
These people, like all Quebecers who enter the job market, must find housing based on their income. This accommodation, inevitably, will be smaller and further from their place of work if they also have to pay for a car.
In addition to the financial cost, there is also a productivity cost: more hours driving, fewer hours working. And social: no more road accidents. And public health: more air pollution.
Lark ! So, yes, living with children without a car is an excellent reference point for determining the health of a metropolis like Montreal.
But for it to be more realistic, it is high time to make adult decisions.