IMPROVED TRANSIT, NOT TOLLS

It’s an attractive idea: charge drivers more money and they will change their behaviour. That’s the idea behind a new report by Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, which recommends tolls on every bridge and tunnel leading to the island of Montreal. The tolls would be a form of congestion tax, charged during the busiest times of the day, to motivate people to drive in before or after rush hour, or to take public transit. There would be no charge to get to the city on evenings and weekends.

Congestion undoubtedly is a serious problem. It is estimated to cost the local economy nearly $2 billion. It is associated with an increase in traffic accidents. Harder to measure, but also significant, is the cost of higher stress levels experienced by drivers ensnared in traffic.

However, applying the Ecofiscal Commission’s model seems impractical, at least for now. First off, most people can’t set their own work hours, so the nine-to-five reality is unlikely to change for most. Second, convenient public transit alternatives are severely lacking in the suburbs, so driving can be hard to avoid.

Reacting to the report this week, Transport Minister Robert Poëti said he believed tolls would not be effective in getting people out of their cars if suitable public transit options are not available to them.

This amounts to an implicit acknowledgement by Poëti that most trains and buses transporting suburbanites to the downtown core are already at or near capacity, and there has been little progress on projects to add more service. A plan to have the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec build and operate new trains to the

In the meantime, the Couillard government is not planning to spend enough money from the provincial treasury to improve the transit system as a whole.

West Island and South Shore shows promise, but any concrete results are at least five years away. In the meantime, the Couillard government is not planning to spend enough money from the provincial treasury to improve the transit system as a whole.

It has made no commitment to extend the métro’s Blue Line extension in the East End and has twice delayed the Bus-Rapid-Transit system promised for Pie IX Blvd., which would also serve Laval. Promises to extend the métro’s Orange Line farther into St-Laurent and Laval, and the Yellow Line into Longueuil are so far in the future they have no planned delivery dates.

Instead of making progress on much-delayed projects, the province has decided to split the region’s Agence métropolitaine de transport into two: with one agency in charge of delivering the service, and another in charge of regional planning. But although a better organization of transit is welcome, the effectiveness of the new agencies will be limited, because the government has not yet come up with any new money.

The Quebec government should work out a comprehensive plan to significantly improve transit in the region, and back it up with the necessary long-term funding.

Quebec would do well to follow the model of Ontario’s The Big Move, a $50 billion project over 25 years to more than triple the length of the rapid transit system.

With a new Liberal government in Ottawa having promised to invest in public transit, Quebec should consider matching some of that new money and investing in a long-term plan for public transit. Only after such a plan is implemented might it be worth re-examining the possibility of a congestion tax.