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A group representing Quebec municipalities is calling on the next provincial government to boost funding for public transit agencies, which say they will need $20 billion by 2035 just to maintain their assets.
The chair of the Union des municipalités du Québec’s large cities caucus says investments in public transit are also investments in the population’s quality of life.
Maude Marquis-Bissonnette says the public needs transportation that’s faster, easier and more accessible, and that good public transit helps combat cost of living concerns.
The Association du transport urbain du Québec says the $20 billion is needed just to maintain existing public transit infrastructure.
Edmond Leclerc, the chair of the association’s board of directors, says the cities are also facing a $550 million shortfall in funding for transit operations in the coming years.
The municipalities group says it wants stable, predictable, and sustainable funding, as well as a reduction in bureaucracy, provincial micromanagement and administrative delays.
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“We believe the Quebec government is capable of making an effort toward efficiency, that it’s capable of optimizing how it handles current investments,” said Marquis-Bissonnette, who is also the mayor of Gatineau.
She said the province also wastes money, citing the example of the construction of a garage to charge electric buses in Quebec City. She said the Quebec government withdrew funding partway through the project, after $94 million had already been spent.
“Currently, there’s a tarp covering the construction site,” she said.
Laval Mayor Stéphane Boyer, for his part, criticized what he called the government’s “stop-and-go” approach.
“In 2021, the Quebec government had granted a $2.2 million subsidy to conduct a study on implementing a high service level bus system with dedicated lanes on Concorde Boulevard,” he said. The next year, Quebec halted the project even though “the studies were 90 per cent complete,” he said.
As a result, the city lost $65 million in federal grants and “wasted $2 million on incomplete studies,” he said.
Marquis-Bissonnette said the underfunding threatens transit systems that are in desperate need of maintenance. That includes Montreal’s aging metro system, which dates to the 1960s and 1970s, and a lift in Sherbrooke, Que. that is needed to hoist buses in need of repairs.
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