PQ says it would pay commuters to carpool
TROIS-RIVIÈRES A Parti Québécois government would pay commuters to carpool, leader Jean-François Lisée promised on Monday, in an effort to decrease the number of cars on Quebec roads and reduce congestion.
To do that, a PQ government would commission the development of a “Tinder for carpooling,” an application that would match people who are looking for a ride with people heading to a nearby location, in a manner similar to the popular location-based dating app.
Drivers — and each passenger — would receive $4 for every trip they take using the app. Both legs of a return trip would be paid. After a year, that would be reduced to $3 per trip.
Users of other carpooling applications approved by the province would also be able to receive the payments.
Only short trips during rush hour, with passengers and drivers who live at different addresses, would qualify for the payments, Lisée said.
The PQ estimates the plan would cost $29 million in the first year, which would rise to $141 million by 2022-2023.
Lisée said the payments would be funded by the province’s existing Fonds vert, and would require no new government spending.
The Fonds vert, a program funded through the gas tax and the sale of carbon credits, is being misused, Lisée said, having provided a $6-million subsidy to an oil pipeline and a $800,000 subsidy to Air Canada.
During rush hour, the average car has 1.2 people in it, he said. The PQ wants to increase that to 1.4 by the fourth year of the carpooling program.
“The number of cars with a single driver, zero passengers, is enormous,” Lisée said.
Lisée said the plan would have a bigger impact — at a lower cost — than the Réseau express métropolitain.
“The tipping point will be met with these measures,” said MarcAntoine Ducas, the founder and CEO of carpooling app Netlift.
The payments would be enough to change people’s habits, he said, noting he would like his app to be part of the system.
The carpooling payments would be part of the PQ’s Grand Déblocage, which also calls for investment in tramways, high speed buses and extensions and improvements to existing commuter rail networks.
If the PQ is elected, that plan would incorporate parts of the REM, but the rest of the highspeed train network would be cancelled.
“It’s like Mirabel,” Lisée said. “If you had stopped Mirabel when they were laying the foundation, it would have been a good thing.”
Lisée said he is favourable to the idea of the Pink Line and criticized CAQ leader François Legault for rejecting the idea completely.
He said that by electing Valérie Plante, Montrealers sent a message that they wanted the metro extension considered.
Legault “thinks he knows better than Montrealers,” Lisée said. “Well, I’m a Montrealer and I think we know better than the CAQ.”
While Lisée said on Sunday that his campaign was the “reverse” of the PQ’s 2014 campaign, he did defend one part of that campaign’s legacy.
The Charter of Quebec Values, he maintained, didn’t diminish Quebec’s brand with immigrants.
“All the numbers show that even when we were in power, the number of candidates for immigration in Quebec grew steadily, so it had no impact,” he told reporters at a campaign stop.
Still, Lisée’s focus was on things like the promise to reduce congestion and plans to improve daycare.
During a stump speech in TroisRivières on Monday evening, the first mention of sovereignty didn’t come until around 25 minutes into the half-hour speech.
Lisée said Quebecers wouldn’t vote for a party that promised a referendum in a first mandate now.
“Because, after 15 years of Liberal government, they’ve lost confidence in the health-care system; the education system; the justice system, where people accused of serious crimes go free without trial because the delays are too long, it’s unacceptable. They’ve lost confidence in our ability to defend French, they ’ve lost confidence in our capacity to defend our values and secularism,” he said.
Four years of PQ government would restore that national confidence and in the 2022 election, he promised, sovereignty would be the main issue.