Allison Hanes: Public transit in Quebec is at a crossroads

It’s not a matter of mismanagement — it’s a political choice to invest in public transit to tame congestion, improve mobility and fight climate change.

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Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault made good on her threat to conduct performance audits of the province’s major public transit agencies, including the Société de transport de Montréal.

The firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton was chosen to look under the hoods of 10 organizations in charge of operating the buses, trains and métro in the province in search of ways to optimize funding and services. The mandate began Monday.

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The audits were Guilbault’s all too clever response last fall to a public pressure campaign by the mayors of Montreal, Quebec City, Laval and Longueuil, as well as transit operators, to secure desperately needed funding to cover major budget shortfalls. After tsk-tsking that taxpayers in the regions of Quebec are tired of underwriting services in Greater Montreal that they don’t use, Guilbault only agreed to absorb 70 per cent of the worsening structural deficits the agencies are facing in 2024 — while lording the spectre of audits over their heads.

Her suggestion was that there’s waste to be eliminated, fat to trim — and that outside experts are the ones who will be able to find it.

But as the evaluations get underway, it’s unclear what the auditors will uncover that we don’t already know about the grim state of public transit financing in Quebec. The books have long been open on the structural issues plaguing this critical public service.

The STM is already in the process of slashing $86 million in recurrent costs, or about five per cent of its operating budget, by eliminating 230 jobs (most of them already vacant) and postponing important plans, like servicing the 10-year-old Azur métro cars and work on apps that communicate bus schedules in real time. In squeezing blood from a stone, the STM has managed not to cut services. This time.

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However, nearly 85 per cent of the STM’s budget is related to operations (maybe more now), including 70 per cent for the salaries of drivers, mechanics and ticket collectors, 90 per cent of that governed by collective agreements.

In an open letter published last week, STM chair Éric Alan Caldwell and director general Marie-Claude Léonard warned the agency is at a crossroads.

“Do we want to continue reducing expenses without regard to the consequences? Do we want service to stagnate?” they asked, recalling cuts in the 1990s that caused a downward spiral in ridership that took 15 years to reverse. “Or do we want to put in the necessary efforts to improve services while attacking the matter of insufficient revenues head on? For us, the choice is simple: It is time to identify stable sources of financing that meet the ambitions of society for the future of sustainable transportation.”

In a pre-budget brief to Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard, an association representing the province’s nine largest transit agencies, including Montreal’s, cautioned that after strained negotiations last fall resulted in $265 million to absorb deficits at the 11th hour, next year’s hole is projected to be even greater. The Association du transport urbain du Québec is calling for a $622-million backstop for 2025 to plug projected deficits, as well as an agreement to provide “recurrent and predictable funding” for the next five years.

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Of this sum, about $500 million would go to cover the gap at the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain, which co-ordinates transit projects and funding in Greater Montreal. The ARTM also needed $500 million in 2023. And director general Benoît Gendron told La Presse the deficit could balloon to $700 million by 2029.

If the pandemic had never happened, the ARTM estimates it would have collected about $1.2 billion in revenues by next year, he explained. But because ridership has only rebounded to about 77 per cent of pre-COVID levels due to a variety of factors, including remote or hybrid work arrangements, those sums have been compressed to about $890 million. Ticket sales accounted for about 30 per cent of revenues in 2019; now it’s just 21 per cent.

Yet the same levels of service must be maintained, because commuters still need and use public transit — even if they only take it once or twice a week instead of five days. If cuts compromise the offering, it will only drive passengers back to their cars, further hurting ridership and revenues, and precipitating an endless, self-defeating death spiral.

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So it’s not a matter of mismanagement — it’s a political choice to invest in public transit to tame congestion, improve mobility, boost productivity and fight climate change. After all, the lion’s share of emissions in Quebec come from transportation.

It’s also a political choice to expand public transit — something the CAQ government, to its credit, seems willing to do, even if it has so far failed to see a single project get past the study stage during its six years in power. Guilbault plans to create a new agency to manage the building of new transportation infrastructure, be it tramways in Quebec City or east-end Montreal, but it won’t change the fact the government is under-financing the public transit networks we already have.

So let the auditors kick the tires and bring a fresh set of eyes to the well-known conundrum. Only political will and stable funding that recognizes the importance of public transit to our collective goals will put an end to the deficits.

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