Public transportation fares in the cities of Montreal and Quebec have raised several criticisms in recent years. However, these have increased at a rate generally lower than that of inflation, while costs related to car use have jumped since the start of the pandemic, without arousing the same popular indignation. For what ? Experts take stock.
Fares for the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) increased by an average of 2.63% between 2018 and 2023, according to calculations by the Duty, or at a rate lower than that of the consumer price index (CPI), which grew on average by 3.43% in Quebec during this period. The monthly rate of the Réseau de transport de la Capitale, in Quebec, increased by 0.68% on average between 2019 and 2022.
Conversely, during this period, the costs associated with car use, whether the purchase price of vehicles, automobile insurance premiums and the price of a liter of gasoline, experienced a significant jump. . The Quebec Statistics Institute estimated that in 2019, each household spent an average of $9,500 on private transportation. Public transportation, meanwhile, demanded an annual cost 10 times lower from its users – or $982, on average, per year.
However, this hefty bill has not prevented the automobile fleet from continuing to grow in Quebec, in favor of increasingly expensive light trucks.
“The costs associated with the car represent, each month, the second largest item of household expenditure,” explains Owen Waygood, full professor at Polytechnique Montréal. Only housing represents a greater cost in the wallets of Quebecers. Conclusion: the average family spends more money on traveling by car than on food.
Owning a car often escapes any economic rationality, believes the specialist with a doctorate in transport behavior obtained at Kyoto University in 2009. “In public transport, it is possible to know the exact price of his travels: the subscription costs a fixed amount, the passage generally costs around $3, adds Owen Waygood. This makes it easier to criticize him. »
“With automobiles, it’s more complicated and people often reduce the costs associated with their car by the price of their full tank of gas. However, the average annual price associated with the automobile reaches $9,500 and a household normally makes between two and three trips per day. If we do a little calculation, that means that each trip by car costs approximately $9. »
Garage, tire changes, parking stickers, gasoline, registration, driving license, fines: the car imposes expenses which quickly become a financial burden for motorists. Why, then, persist in obtaining it?
“We forget the costs that are not recurring,” underlines Professor Waygood. This is why the only reaction we see from motorists to the general rise in prices is when it concerns the liter of gasoline. »
“Political” prices
Meanwhile, the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority had to justify its decision to increase this summer by 3% on average the fares in force in the Montreal region, even if this is significantly lower than the level of inflation in Province. One example among others which shows that Quebecers are more inclined to criticize the costs linked to the use of public transport than to that of the car, note the experts joined by The duty.
“There are important issues here which can be explained by the fact that public transport fares are political while those linked to the car are linked to private market conditions,” underlines the professor at the School of Transportation. urban planning and landscape architecture at the University of Montreal Jean-Philippe Meloche. He notes that citizens cannot influence the selling price of vehicles, for example. They can nevertheless put pressure on the political community to demand lower fare increases for public transport, which encourages them to criticize them more.
In this context, “the first thing we should do in my opinion is to automate the increase in prices [du transport en commun] depending on the increase in the inflation rate,” estimates Pierre Barrieau, lecturer at the University of Montreal and expert in transport planning. “In several countries, if the costs of public transport increase, pricing increases to the same extent”, without giving the impression, as here, of a “political position”, also notes Mr. Meloche.
The latter also notes that currently, no regulation obliges public transport companies to obtain a precise percentage of their income through the fares imposed on users. However, if the share of funding for public transport to come from cities, Quebec and users had been clearly defined before the pandemic, in the form of a “social pact”, it would have been simpler to limit the damage that has caused the pandemic on the financial situation and the service offering of transport companies, believes the professor.
We could thus have avoided the decisions taken by several transport companies which have notably reduced the frequency of some of their bus lines since the start of the pandemic. However, “one of the criticisms that we also hear from citizens is that transport companies increase prices and reduce services. And that’s not false,” says Mr. Barrieau. According to him, “if the service was not reduced, perhaps there would be no criticism” related to the growth in public transport fares.
Bitumen which is expensive
Critics have also been rife in recent years regarding the increase in costs of several public transport projects, such as the extension of the blue metro line, the Réseau express métropolitain as well as the Quebec tramway project, dear to Mayor Bruno Marchand.
All these cost overruns have been widely publicized, while the bill for several road projects has exploded without making much noise in recent years. For example, the Quebec government plans to spend more than $899 million to complete the extension of Highway 19 between Laval and Bois-des-Filion. This is a sum 50% higher than that which was mentioned in 2014 for this road project, which has suffered numerous delays over the years.
In Lévis, the widening of a boulevard over three kilometers to facilitate the movement of buses and automobiles also shows a significant cost overrun. First estimated at $88 million in 2019, the project saw its bill jump to $112.4 million in 2022. This first increase, largely attributable to the addition of cycle paths and the burying of wires , followed a second: last May, the bill reached 149 million dollars, an increase of 69% – and two years late in the delivery of the widened boulevard.
“The cost of transport infrastructure is significant. But why are we not impressed when it hits the roads? », Questions the general director of Trajectoire Québec, Sarah V. Doyon.
For Owen Waygood, of Polytechnique Montréal, semantics also influence our perception of cost overruns. “When we widen a highway, no one associates it with a subsidy granted to the automobile: it is an investment. When it comes to financing public transportation, on the other hand, it is always presented in terms of subsidies. »
A perception that does not take into account all of the indirect benefits of public transport on reducing road congestion and greenhouse gases, believes Ms.me Doyon. “Every time a person chooses not to take their car and take public transit, that means less traffic,” she recalls. We are not in traffic, we are traffic. »