More than ever, the Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM) wants to implement a kilometer tax, a project that has been debated for ten years. The organization will announce this Thursday the launch of a feasibility study to be published next summer, based on the example of Brussels to develop a management platform.
Posted at 6:47 a.m.
“We are no longer at the stage of thinking about the advisability of doing things. We have to move now. There is an urgent need to act,” says the CMM’s metropolitan transport team leader, Michel Auclair, in an interview with The Press. He was thus referring to the increases in congestion expected in Greater Montreal, in connection with the major closures expected in the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel.
His group recalls that 43% of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted in Quebec come from transportation, mostly passenger transportation.
It is absolutely necessary to promote the transfer to public transit, but for that, we need services and adequate funding, and therefore new funding. The kilometer tax is one of the tools to achieve this.
Michel Auclair, CMM metropolitan transport team leader
“With the growth in the electrification of the vehicle fleet, municipalities must prepare for a reduction in gas tax revenues in the coming years,” argued Mayor Valérie Plante, also President of the Metropolitan Community.
Since 2017, revenue from gasoline taxes has been falling by approximately 0.6% per year.
A call for tenders within two weeks
As of November 4, the CMM will launch a call for tenders to find a “consultant” responsible for carrying out a feasibility study for the implementation of a kilometer tax system. The study will then be launched in January, to end in August 2023, with a proposal for a technological model, a management structure, but also a calculation of the economic impacts.
“What we want is to have a system that we could implement in two weeks, even if we know very well that we won’t be able to implement it tomorrow morning. The ball will mainly be in the government’s court for the future. This study, we hope, will promote the emergence of a consensus”, further illustrates the manager.
In mid-October, the Montreal Journal revealed that the Ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ) was also studying various scenarios for new taxes that would target motorists.
The idea of a kilometer tax has also been raised with the government, but is still at a very preliminary stage. The outgoing Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, promised that these taxes would not see the light of day during the mandate which begins.
In Mr. Bonnardel’s office, we remain very cautious about the question of whether a kilometer tax could be in the plans. “The Minister was clear last week: there is no question of increasing the tax burden of Quebecers,” simply replies his press attaché, Claudia Loupret.
Get inspired by Brussels
The mandate that will be entrusted by the CMM is based in particular on SmartMove, an intelligent application that calculates the time and duration of each motorist’s journey in Brussels, Belgium, and then rates it. The organization, set up in recent months, hopes to “solve the problems of traffic jams in Brussels” and promote the use of public transport.
Concretely, the user launches the application by starting a car journey. He is immediately suggested to use other means of transport, but if he still wishes to drive a vehicle, then the counter starts. A camera system allows the authorities to carry out random checks by license plates, in order to determine if a user has triggered the application. Fines may apply otherwise.
You can learn a lot from Brussels. Ten years ago, when we started talking about kilometer tax, the technology was not up to date. Technology costs were high. It’s no longer the case now.
Richard Bérubé, CMM Social Development Advisor
The latter maintains that “the big question today is not so much technology as social acceptability”. “But to discuss acceptability, you have to dissect the problem of behavior. People don’t really know what it costs society to travel by car, unlike public transit,” maintains Mr. Bérubé.
“If we had the same visibility for the road network as public transport on costs, in short if we knew how much motorists are subsidized to complete their journey, perhaps the discourse would change”, also evokes in this sense Michel Clear.
To date, the CMM refuses to say how much its future mileage tax could cost each motorist, but Michel Auclair assures us that the objective is not “to strangle motorists”, only to encourage them to change their habits. Two geographic scenarios are nevertheless retained: the first would include its entire territory, in addition to Saint-Jérôme, and the second would also apply the tax to “perimetropolitan” municipalities, located near Greater Montreal.