COMMUTING BY TRAIN

For the third year in a row, ridership has dipped on Montreal’s two busiest commuter rail lines. It’s a troubling trend, given the many good reasons to take public transit, starting with the environmental benefits.

So how to persuade more people to leave their cars at home?

One proposal, advanced by the Transport 2000 lobby group, is to impose a congestion tax on those who drive downtown. It’s the wrong way to go. Bringing a car downtown already is expensive. A congestion tax would address none of the issues that would seem to explain declining ridership, and would hurt those who have no choice but to drive to work, like parents with children to pick up.

Rather, the way to attract more riders seems simple enough: Make the service more attractive. The complaints against the AMT are longstanding, including too few trains outside of rush hour, lack of parking at stations, frequent breakdowns and delays, especially in the winter, and difficulty in finding available seats.

These issues might help explain the latest numbers from the Agence métropolitaine de transport, which show overall ridership dropped by one per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year, excluding the Mascouche Line, which did not begin operations until Dec. 1, 2014. The busiest lines — Deux-Montagnes and Vaudreuil-Hudson — continued their slide, while St-Hilaire showed a slight decline for the first time. Only Candiac and St-Jérôme registered an increase.

Last fall, legislation to reform how public transit is run in and around Montreal was tabled in the National Assembly. Bill 76 aims to streamline planning and services, cutting the number of transit agencies to five from 16. The AMT is to split into two bodies, one for planning and the other for overseeing operations. Proponents of the plan are confident the new structure will lead to improvements for commuters. One priority will be to simplify fares — a welcome measure given the complexity of the current rates, with hundreds of different options on offer.

Notably absent from Bill 76, however, are provisions for additional funds to address the wider problems on the ground. As well, critics fear plans to reform the fare structure will lead to higher rates for some commuters. Certainly that would give them one more reason not to take the train.

Environmental benefits aside, there are plenty of good reasons for leaving your car at home, like the cost of downtown parking and the gas to get there, and the headaches of traffic congestion and road construction. The fact that so many people drive downtown shows how much still needs to be done to make the train an attractive option.