The pandemic has been brutal for transport companies. Public transit ridership has plummeted and while car use has returned to pre-pandemic levels, public transit is still lagging behind. It would be 75% of what it was before the Great Containment, which deprives transport companies of a considerable part of their income.
Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault is starting consultations this month to find lasting solutions to public transit funding difficulties. I hope that these consultations will be brief, because their usefulness is not self-evident.
In 2019, the Government of Quebec carried out a major project on the financing of sustainable mobility. Funding solutions and issues can be found in the consultation report1. Rather, it is time to act.
Indeed, the rapid implementation of these solutions is essential and urgent. Urgent because transport companies are all in trouble. Essential because in Quebec, transportation produces 43.3% of GHGs and public transit is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to tackle it.
Furthermore, the solution to financing transport companies does not lie within the companies themselves, for three reasons: they provide services to the whole community, in public transport it is the supply drives demand, and companies are already struggling.
According to the Association du transport urbain du Québec, this year alone, transport companies in Quebec have an operating deficit of 563 million. In this context, we have to worry about the minister’s desire to “rationalize” public transit spending2an exercise that will necessarily lead to service cuts, which would be a major setback.
Small calculation. At home, at the Société de transport de l’Outaouais (STO), if we cut all administrative salaries (all that is not directly related to the service offer), we would save 8.1 millions of dollars. This year, the deficit associated with the drop in ridership is $9.7 million.
My little finger tells me it’s the same with most transport companies. So as not to cut too much into the current offer, they will therefore postpone projects. Make no mistake about it, this will amount just as much to a compression in the service offer. Projects are tomorrow’s offer.
In public transit, when you want to increase ridership, there is no secret: you have to improve the offer. It is the frequency and amplitude of the service that determines the utilization rates. Supply determines demand, pretty much nothing else.
We could have luxury buses, free, where we are served a drink during the transport, people would only use it if there is a high frequency, if they can do like with the metro, if show up there without even looking at the schedule, because they know what service is available.
The offer can be redesigned to adapt to people’s new habits, but it should not be reduced. Decreasing supply would be the equivalent of sawing off the branch we are sitting on.
“But the buses are empty! “, often argue the citizens. Yes, sometimes they are. But if there are only eight passengers in a hybrid bus, its environmental balance is the same as that of a vehicle with an average consumption of 8 liters per 100 km and carrying 1.2 passengers.
Bus routes, even minimally used, remain chargeable for society. (For data lovers like this, run buy The State of Quebec 2023the article written by Catherine Morency of Polytechnique Montréal alone is worth the cost of the book.)
Anyway, when a street is not very busy, we don’t stop clearing it and we don’t tear up the asphalt. You don’t sell your car either when you understand that it spends, as research says, 95% of its life parked!
In public transit, the real expense occurs when you don’t invest in it.
According to a study done in Quebec City two years ago, transportation by car costs society five times more than public transportation. Five times3 !
Indeed, the motorist pays for the car and its maintenance, insurance, gasoline, etc. But we must add the costs borne by society: lost productivity time due to congestion, construction and maintenance of roads, accidents, pollution, etc. Public transit reduces all of these costs.
Another study, this time from Montreal, determined that the low cost of public transit allows Montreal households to devote 800 million more to their personal expenses. Quite a gain for the local economy.
The solution to public transit funding issues is not in transit companies. The solution lies in the assumed choice to invest collective financial resources so that the branch on which we sit remains vigorous.