Public transport beggars

There were checks for everyone and his sister in the most recent economic update from Finance Minister Eric Girard.

But one group didn’t get a lifeline: the transit companies. Still, it’s pressing. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is heading for a hole of 78 million next year. On a budget of 1.7 billion, it is not huge. But it’s enough to raise the specter of a reduction in services.

The same situation is repeated throughout the province. In all, the shortfall is estimated at 560 million. Again, the number may seem large. But remember that Quebec has just rained down 3.5 billion in checks on Quebecers, many of whom have no need of it. And that it should grant tax cuts totaling 7.4 billion over four years from 2023.

To govern is to make choices. These are highly questionable.

The current deficits affecting public transit companies have two causes. The first is structural. Spending increases with inflation, network expansion and aging infrastructure. But incomes are stagnating. Sources like the gasoline tax, for example, are not indexed.

Since 2016, experts have been warning that we are going into the wall with the financing of public transport. Then the pandemic arrived, bringing down traffic and therefore revenues. The wall, we ran into it.

Since then, car traffic has returned to its pre-pandemic levels, but not the use of public transport (proof, moreover, that teleworking has not improved our environmental balance sheet).

With fewer users to serve, it is normal for transport companies to review their service offer. But the exercise is terribly risky. A reduced service risks attracting fewer users, reducing revenues and leading to further cuts. It is this downward spiral that must absolutely be avoided.

Beyond increasingly urgent emergency aid, it is therefore the entire financing strategy of transport companies that must be reviewed.

Where to get the money? The possibilities are many.

First, there are funds for public transport. The catch: they are often intended for infrastructure development and not for day-to-day operations.

For higher-order governments, it is obviously sexier to inaugurate new trains by cutting ribbons than to pay for gas for buses. But without undermining the necessary expansion of the networks, a rebalancing is desirable.

The other pocket in which we should draw is that of motorists, at least where there is public transport. First, because public transport directly serves the cause of motorists by reducing congestion. Then because the ultimate objective is to reduce car use. For that, we need deterrents.

The Metropolitan Community of Montreal (CMM), for example, calculates that the share of motorists in the financing of public transport has fallen from 8% to 5% between 2001 and today. In December 2019, it proposed an increase in registrations to compensate. He was told that the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec could not apply it because of the overhaul of its computer system. Three years later, she is still waiting. It’s ridiculous.

Eventually cities will have to stop shooting for their own purposes. In the current context, the decision of the City of Montreal to offer free public transit to people aged 65 and over starting next July is ill-advised. This will deprive the STM of 40 million a year, while many seniors can very well pay for their metro ticket.

At a time when we are trying to fight climate change and densify our cities, we cannot let public transit companies play beggars to make ends meet.