I am writing this letter live from a bus taking me from Montreal to Chibougamau. In fact from Montreal to Quebec, before another took me from Quebec to Alma, then another from Alma to Saint-Félicien then to Chibougamau. With the return, there are almost 1500 kilometers of public transport which will be added to the 6800 km already traveled this year.
On the bus to Quebec, there are around fifty of us. We pass hundreds of people alone in their cars on the highway. How many are like us in Montreal-Quebec?
Public transportation is part of my DNA. Entrepreneur, eager to go out and a great sleeper, my time is limited, and public transportation is my best friend. When I go to teach in Rouyn-Noranda, I take the night bus and don’t lose a single hour of work (but a few hours of sleep, I admit). The rest of the time, when I travel during the day, I work so that once I arrive at my destination, I can enjoy the place, the people, my bed. The prospect of carpooling and using my precious time doing small talk gives me hives.
In Quebec, I go out to stretch in the sun, grab a bite to eat and join a Zoom meeting. Forty-five minutes later, we leave again towards Alma.
When you spend your life on public transport, you quickly realize their limits. To go to Charlevoix from Montreal last summer (4 and a half hours by car), I had to sleep in Quebec, because there was a “transfer” with a 13-hour wait… at night! To go to Matagami from Chibougamau by public transport — in the same administrative region! —, I would have to go back down to Montreal to go back to Matagami via Val-d’Or. Something like 18 hours on the bus.
However, every time I take the bus, even at night between Rouyn and Montreal, or one of the 13 daily departures between Quebec and the metropolis, the bus is always packed. If we nationalized the service, the profit from buses serving Montreal would make it possible to serve less profitable lines like Quebec-La Malbaie or Matagami-Chibougamau. It would also prevent citizens of one place from paying more per kilometer for their transportation than citizens of another place, for the sole reason that it is not the same company that serves them.
In Alma, I exchange a few words with a man who is visiting his cousin. He is saddened by the fact that he will have to leave again on Sunday, because from Monday to Wednesday, there is no more service.
I am lucky to be an owner. I pay school taxes, even though I will never have children. When I hear motorists outraged about paying for public transport that they don’t take, I struggle to understand their reasoning.
Another aspect that mystifies me about our relationship with the car is that by registering their car, drivers also pay for the right to clutter public space with their private property. It’s hard to imagine a pedestrian setting up a picnic table, a container or a garden next to the road. This doesn’t happen, the edges of the streets are parking lots, and they belong to cars. The logic escapes me.
In addition to my property taxes, I pay every time I use public transportation. These help reduce traffic on the roads, which means that they wear out less quickly and collectively cost us less to repair. I pay and I don’t have the right to store my things in the street, but am I exaggerating if I think that everyone should help finance transport that benefits everyone?
Saint-Félicien, it’s now dark, I watch a film of a little over two hours, downloaded on my computer, and sit back in my seat. When it is finished, I will arrive at my destination.
Beyond the environment – which is an obvious argument in favor of public transport – there is also safety. Reducing traffic on our roads, our snowy, icy roads, where 18-wheelers and moose coexist, and not taking the car when you are sick or worried should be obvious. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office carried out the exercise of calculating the average number of injuries or deaths per billion passenger-kilometres between 2005 and 2009. “The most dangerous means of transport was undoubtedly the car (276 injuries and 2.9 killed per billion passenger-kilometer), followed by the bus (74 injured and 0.17 killed), the tram (42 injured and 0.16 killed) and the train (2.7 injured and 0.04 killed) “.
On the roads of Quebec, approximately 18 large animals are struck every day, sometimes causing fatal accidents. As we speed along the 167, the driver tells me that he has already hit a moose with his bus and has not even deviated from his route. I am safe on the bus.
In Chibougamau, it’s a bit stupid: the terminus is outside the city. As there are no more taxis at 10 p.m., we are a bit busy. That’s also what it’s like to travel on public transport designed by people who don’t take it.
I’m not anti-tank. It’s practical for going camping, transporting animals or equipment. I’m not anti-tank, I just love public transportation with a deep love. Logic, the desire to optimize my time and make healthy choices makes me persist in this dysfunctional love. But if I lived in La Sarre and had to rent a hotel room every time I had an appointment in Rouyn (an hour’s drive!), because there is only one bus per day and it is evening, I would get tired and drive too.
We must stop seeing public transport as an expensive and impractical stopgap (which is only half wrong currently) and see it as a service from which the population has the right to have high expectations. quality, efficiency, quantity. I urge us not to give up and demand more, better-funded public transportation services. We have the right to travel freely and safely when we do not have a car, are tired, worried, sick, elderly or disabled. This is not a favor we are asking, it is a service we are providing to the community. In addition, it will give you more parking.