DRIVERS BRACE TO PAY MORE AT PUMP
Increases would raise $200 million
Montreal, Laval and Longueuil are targeting motorists to finance public transit. Mayors for the three municipalities want Quebec to increase the gas tax in the region over the next 10 years.
An organization responsible for regional planning has unveiled its recommendations for improving public transit in the Montreal area. And its proposals target motorists as a main source of revenue for footing the bill.
Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay and his Laval and Longueuil counterparts — Gilles Vaillancourt and Caroline St. Hilaire, respectively— announced the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal’s recommendations to the Quebec government on Thursday.
The organization is made up of Montreal and 81 municipalities in the region.
It wants the provincial government to increase the gas tax by half a cent a year over a period of 10 years. The increase would only apply on the territory of the Agence métropolitaine de Transport, and would raise $170 million.
When asked why a gas tax is their main recommenda- tion, Tremblay replied it is the easiest measure to implement quickly.
Vaillancourt added a gas tax is a good option because motorists with smaller or more energy-efficient vehicles would pay less than those with bigger vehicles.
“It would be extremely difficult to achieve the same equality with other modes of transport,” Vaillancourt said.
The regional group is also asking the provincial government to index vehicle registration fees in the territory of the AMT, commercial vehicles included. That measure would raise $31 million.
Montrealers already pay an extra $45 tax on top of vehicle registration fees. There are no immediate plans to charge a similar tax off-island.
The group is also suggesting the provincial government charge all Quebecers the equivalent of two cents per litre of gas, and put that money into a fund.
That would end up raising $260 million per year, 70 per cent of which would go toward improving the roads, and the other 30 per cent would go to public transit, according to the group’s proposal.
The group also wants the federal government to hand over all proceeds from its 10 cents-per-litre gas tax to the provinces. Ottawa only forks over half of that money to Quebec.
“We’re not collecting money for the sake of collecting money. We have to convince our citizens we’re doing it in their best interests,” Tremblay said.
Decisions still need to be made about which projects would benefit from the funds gleaned through the new measures, he said.
However, Tremblay named several possible beneficiaries: the Train de l’est and Train de l’ouest projects, extension of the orange, blue and yellow lines of the métro system, the installation of a bus rapid-transit system on Pie IX Blvd. and possibly also on the Champlain Bridge.
The recommendations are the result of public consultations that were held this spring in the Montreal metropolitan area.
The Plan métropolitain d’aménagement et de développement, adopted last December, aims to mitigate the effects of an expected population growth and the road congestion that will come with it by increasing public transit use.
Tolls were the most suggested financing option during the consultations, according to the report. However, they do not appear in its list of recommendations.
Vaillancourt explained that at the moment tolls are not the answer to reach the regional group’s goals, which include reducing traffic and greenhouse-gas emissions.
St. Hilaire said she believes tolls would work only if they were implemented everywhere and not just on one bridge, such as the Champlain.
The city’s two opposition parties aren’t at all thrilled with the proposal.
Vision Montreal councillor Caroline Bourgeois said the official opposition is disappointed with the plan as a whole, but particularly because tolls were completely left out of the plan. It also objects to what it believes is a rehashing of the same gas-tax increase that Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand rejected last year.
Bourgeois also said the cost of implementing the plans isn’t being spread out equally among the municipalities.
“Once again, it’s Montrealers that will receive a good part of the bill and who must contribute (the most) towards public transit,” she said.
Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron said the mayor should be focusing his attention on extending the métro lines to Anjou and St. Laurent and getting the TRAM system up and running, not placating commuters coming from off-island.
“The job of the mayor of Montreal is to defend the interests of the people living and paying taxes on the island of Montreal,” he said.