While we are in the midst of the municipal election campaign in Quebec and cities are preparing their annual budgets at the same time, the future of public transit services must be at the heart of our concerns. Threatened in the short term by service cuts and in the medium term by an outdated funding model, public transport is at a crossroads and deserves close attention.
Even before the pandemic, municipalities struggled to finance public transit services. The loss of income caused by the drop in ridership since the health crisis has only exacerbated the funding problem. Fortunately, in 2020-2021, emergency assistance from the provincial and federal governments helped maintain a high level of service that has proven to be essential. However, this assistance will expire next year and, to date, nothing is planned to make up for the shortfall. The candidates in the municipal elections must therefore commit to asking for help from Ottawa and Quebec to compensate for shortages of tens of millions of dollars in their public transport systems so as not to slow down the country’s economic recovery. , as have the mayors of Canada’s largest cities.
Without financial assistance from other levels of government, the new elected municipal officials will be forced, from the first days of their mandate, to make difficult decisions about the future of public transport. While service cuts have already been made by certain carriers, major cuts are being considered in the metropolitan region and elsewhere in Quebec. These cuts would inevitably result in a reduction in public transport users in favor of the car. This could initiate a cycle of decline in public transit, which would lead to growth in greenhouse gas emissions, increased household transportation spending and a significant drop in business productivity due to congestion.
It never occurred to governments and municipalities to cut snow removal services when road traffic declined during the pandemic. The same should apply to the quality of public transport, which is no more compressible expense than road maintenance.
Service cuts must be avoided in order to allow the supply to grow again, as provided for in Quebec’s Sustainable Mobility Policy. To achieve this, the multi-year maintenance of the emergency aid granted by Quebec and Ottawa until the return of pre-pandemic goodwill is absolutely necessary.
Ensuring adequate funding for public transport services also means ensuring that transport companies are given the necessary means to adjust their service offer when ridership returns, so that it corresponds to new traffic habits. mobility of users, who will probably be more numerous outside peak hours and within neighborhoods.
In the medium term, new sources of funding for public transport will have to be proposed since the municipalities’ room for maneuver has been very limited for too long. The Government of Quebec must follow up on the consultations it conducted in 2019 as part of the project on funding mobility in order to accelerate the implementation of its sustainable mobility policy.
The government of François Legault has bet on the development of public transport, which is, with good reason, at the heart of the Plan for a Green Economy, in addition to having ratified the Sustainable Mobility Policy 2030. While Prime Minister Legault is preparing to go to COP26 in Glasgow, to drop this sector and allow major cuts in user services would represent a disavowal, not only of the Sustainable Mobility Policy, but also of the Plan for a Green Economy 2030, the new Quebec’s climate policy that he will present to the world.
* Co-signatories: members of the TRANSIT Alliance for the financing of public transport in Quebec; Sabaa Khan, Executive Director, Quebec and the Atlantic, David Suzuki Foundation; Emmanuel Rondia, Director General, Montreal Regional Environmental Council; Etienne Grandmont, Director General, Viable Transport Access; Martin Vaillancourt, Director General, National Regrouping of Regional Environmental Councils of Quebec; Colleen Thorpe, Executive Director, Équiterre; Florence Junca-Adenot, professor, UQAM; Samuel Pagé-Plouffe, coordinator, Alliance TRANSIT
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