Transit advocates accuse Quebec of chronic underinvestment in transport networks

Quebec’s road and public transit systems face dramatic deterioration, an alliance of transit advocates warned Thursday, releasing a report accusing the province of chronic underinvestment in its transport networks.

“We’re reaping the fruit of decades of negligence, of non-decisions and short-term decisions,” said UQAM urban planning professor Florence Junca-Adenot, one of the contributors to the Alliance Transit report.

At the root of the shortfall, the report said, was a 2013 Quebec government decision to stop indexing the gas tax to inflation, freezing it for more than a decade at 19 cents per litre.

By keeping the gas tax low, revenue earmarked for road and transit repairs for the 2025-2026 fiscal year is projected at just $4.6 billion compared with an expected expenditure of $8.3 billion.

The government makes up the gap, forking over billions in tax dollars per year. Before Quebec froze the gas tax in 2013, no tax dollars were required to top up the repair fund.

“We’re neglecting our fundamental missions of the state in health and education” to pay for roadwork and transit maintenance, said Université de Montréal urban planning professor Jean-Philippe Meloche.

And despite massive subsidies, funding levels don’t come close to the level required to maintain the transit and road networks.

In Montreal, it would cost $15.3 billion to make necessary repairs to the STM transit network, the report said. Over the next decade, Quebec has only committed $2.8 billion — less than a fifth of the funding required — to repairs. 

Across the province, Quebec expects to spent $3.5 billion maintaining public transit networks over the next decade, a hair under the $3.6 billion it committed between 2013 and 2023.

Adjusted for inflation, “we have an envelope that’s been essentially cut in half,” said Alliance Transit analyst and coordinator Francis Garnier.

While better funded than transit, investments in the road network also fall well short of the amounts required to keep them in shape, the report said.

At $8.4 billion between now and 2036, Quebec has committed to fund just a third of the $24.5 billion the report found the road network requires.

And as roads fall into disrepair faster than the province is fixing them, the gap is expected to grow.

“For every dollar we spend on repairs every year, we find two dollars in problems,” Garnier said.

“Degrading infrastructure weakens the services offered to citizens,” Junca-Adenot said. “The more that infrastructures deteriorate — we see it with the métro — the more services to citizens deteriorate.”

The group is calling for Quebec to increase revenue to its transit and road maintenance funds by imposing road tolls and raising the gas tax.

In recent weeks, Premier Christine Fréchette signalled she may do the opposite, asking Finance Minister Eric Girard to find ways to offer relief for higher gas prices amid the war in Iran.

The federal fuel excise tax has already been suspended until Sept. 8, with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s measure taking 10 cents off the price of gas in late April.

With those measures, “the government will say, we’ll help you and we’ll lower the cost” of driving, Meloche said. But the government isn’t really offering a saving, he said, and will have to make up the revenue elsewhere in the budget.

Government doesn’t benefit from a higher price at the pump, Junca-Adenot added, since the provincial gas tax remains at 19 cents per litre even when gas prices surge past the $2 mark.

Unlike the gas tax, the group pointed out that transit fares have long been tied to inflation.

This year, the cost of a Montreal monthly transit pass will increase by more than five per cent.

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