Taylor C. Noakes makes a reasoned case for free public transit in Montreal.
Updates from May, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A plane carrying 306 Ukrainian refugees landed at Trudeau late Sunday morning. This is a second flight, and apparently a third is expected, bringing to around 900 the Ukrainians welcomed here due to the war.
Even so, and without wanting to indulge in whataboutism, I can’t help wondering – what about the Afghans? Their fate under the second Taliban regime has dropped off the radar since Ukraine has topped the news.
Daniel
A CAQ politician should be there handing out complimentary six-month countdown calendars! /s
Kate
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Kate
La Presse has a headline about weeds at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges but this is no‑mow May, and the wild plants will be great for bees and other insects. And I’m sure the dead do not mind.
Ian
Yesterday at dusk I was walking through Mont-Royal Cemetery, it was kind of magical with all the dandelions gone to seed in the fading sunset. Lots of raccoons and groundhogs out, too.
I don’t know if the Catholic cemetery has the same issue but there are a lot of low spots on Mont Royal so the ground is still a bit mushy in parts, probs not ideal for tractor mowing just yet.
MarcG
Is it normal that the city doesn’t mow in May? Summer came early this year and the plant life is loving it.
Kate
MarcG, I was just throwing that out, and the cemetery doesn’t belong to the city anyway. The thing seems to be a shortage of staff: it’s come up before, since the pandemic, that the Sulpicians, who own the place, are too cheap to hire enough workers.
I went up there Sunday afternoon after reading that article. La Presse’s photo overstates the general condition of the place. Grass is long, but I saw few flowering weeds. I remember how the place looked some years ago during a lengthy strike, and that really was gothic. Today it was just a bit shaggy.
MarcG
Gotcha. I just noticed that places the city normally keeps tidy are shaggy right now and am curious if it’s on purpose or because of the weird weather.
JaneyB
No-mow May? Is that a thing because over here in Verdun (but not Lasalle), the grass everywhere is higher than I can recall. Maybe it’s something else though – none of the flower beds have been planted yet. Could be all the rain of course.
Meezly
Mowing is overrated.
Kate
JaneyB, No-mow May is a thing that started in the UK but is becoming popular here.
I could rant about lawns. Basically, they’re a class thing: in England, the wealthy have lawns because they have expansive land, and sheep to crop it, or else a servant class to keep it tidy. Lawns are of zero utility, they’re simply a way of saying “I have this land but I am wealthy enough not to have to cultivate it, so I’m just growing short grass, and if you don’t also grow short grass on your smaller piece of land, I will prosecute.”
Lawn maintenance wastes a huge amount of water and poisons the runoff with pesticides. They’re a relic of the past we should leave behind.
Richard
That was something special, when Notre Dame des Neiges ran wild back in 2007.
I imagine the relatives of the deceased, sitting in reefer trucks for weeks on end, were not too thrilled with the situation.
Kate
Nice photos, Richard!
R.Thibault
>>Summer came early this year and the plant life is loving it.
Plant pollination comes earlier but are the pollinators also arriving on the scene earlier?
This is not the reality my botanist friends are describing to me about spring arriving weeks ahead of the traditional pollination schedule, and sounds a lot more like a dire warning.
Btw, the cemetery ground was mushy primarily because of Friday’s torrential rains.
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Kate
A sauna in Montreal is suspected of being the point of origin of the local monkeypox outbreak.
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Kate
Labour action updates: IKEA workers picketed Saturday after a strike vote. Croupiers at the Casino are still on strike and so are workers at the SQDC meaning that ethical cannabis consumers should find other sources than the government store.
Ephraim
How’s the traffic in OKA? 🙂
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Kate
People living in Dorval are subject not only to noise from the airport, but also a lot of air pollution.
Daniel D
If only they could build an airport further away from the city instead. Say, at a distance as far away as somewhere like, I dunno, Mirabel
Richard
I used to do residential window cleaning between “real” jobs. Emission standards have improved since I’m sure, but doing those little detached post-war houses between the 20 and the runways was the absolute worst. Incompletely burned jet fuel would form a greasy film on the glass so thick you’d have to change out your water halfway through each job.
To this day YUL is a base of operations for a handful of companies that service mines and communities in the north. They use 40+ year-old 737-200 combi jets because of the gravel airstrips up there. Their museum-piece engines spew pollution like mad and they can’t be upgraded because the newer, bigger, high-bypass engines would suck gravel in. If you notice an unusually loud 737 flying overhead, look for the narrow low-bypass engines and the gravel-deflector hanging off the nose wheel. Air Inuit flies most of them.
And don’t get me started about the air pollution coming off highway 20. We had a couple of customers in one highway-side condo building that we would service four times per year. It was pure hopelessness trying to keep their windows clean.
More about the weird antiques flying in and out of Trudeau here:
Tim S. 22:00 on 2022-05-29 Permalink
Interesting. Rather than make public transit free, however, I would suggest doing something like the Upass program in BC, where students pay a mandatory transit fee as part of their student fees (currently 43.35$ a month) and get a transit pass, whether they use it or not. People still grumbled about it, but it’s hard to complain too much when you’re given something tangible in return. So in this case, charge each household the 750$ a year and then send each household say, 3 free transit passes. Plus some more for homeless shelters and so on.
mare 23:52 on 2022-05-29 Permalink
Things that are free become worthless. There should still be a low fee, say 2 bucks for a day ticket or, for people who want it, $30 for a month pass. That way the ‘loss’ in revenue is lower and the number of mall cops (sorry, STM police officers) doesn’t have to be tripled to keep all the homeless out of the metro, especially in the winter.
Also, the unions of ticket booth attendants won’t get too angry when there aren’t massive layoffs.
I see a few other problems: there’s a hard limit to the capacity of the metro. I believe it’s 2 minutes between trains, and in pre-pandemic rush hour we reached that already. The STM probably doesn’t have enough rolling stock to run that many trains per hour during the whole day, so more trains need to be bought, costing billions. That investment can be written off over many years, but someone (the province) has to bankroll it.
Also, the STM already has a problem finding enough bus drivers, and the upfront costs of more busses we need when more people take the bus is also huge.
And then there is the REM. It’s a private company and it wants to get paid, and has the contracts to prove that.
Chris 09:36 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
The editorial makes some good points, but it seems to me to assume that cost is what’s keeping people from choosing public transit. I’m not sure if surveys have been done in Montreal, but elsewhere it’s just not one of the major reasons. The major reasons are more like: comfort, reliability, frequency, consistency, delays. Loosing the revenue from fares (42% for STM, as he says) won’t help any of those.
Kevin 09:53 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
It’s not that free transit is too expensive, it’s that anything that is free gets abused by the small number of absolute assholes among the general public.
Every system needs some sort of constraining factor in order to maintain control, and in this society that means cash.
If anything, we have too many things that are free that should have upfront costs — doctor’s visits should have a co-pay, more roads should have tolls — and if the costs are too much to bear for certain people, they can be waived below a certain income level.
There’s a reason that the synonyms for “free-for-all” all involve fighting.
Ian 10:10 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
While I agree with your points, free-for-all means “free of rules”, not “free of cost”.
https://grammarist.com/idiom/free-for-all/#:~:text=The%20expression%20free%2Dfor%2Dall,unregulated%20situation%20that%20lacks%20control.
Taylor C. Noakes 10:22 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
@mare
No I disagree entirely. Our health and education systems are proof your premise is incorrect. Also, while the pigs might not be transferable, the ticket takers, I believe, also pull duty driving buses and the Metro. If not, they can be retrained.
Re Metro capacity: yes and no. Both the Blue and Yellow Lines operate 6-car rather than 9-car trains, so the trains can be lengthened in addition to being run more often. Let’s get the whole system up to trains every two minutes before we say it can’t be done. Also, we can buy new trains and not retire the older trains, many of which I believe are still in storage awaiting disposal. Yes it costs money, climate change will cost more.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, always.
@Tim – I’d like to pair free transit with free network-wide WiFi, which might be worth it as a promo for a major TelCo (i.e. “our 5G network is so good it can run underground!”). That would definitely put asses in seats. And before we start up about what it would cost, Pittsburgh, a poor city of 300K people, already has free WiFi on all its buses, trams etc.
I often think our biggest problem is that the powers that be think most of us never travel and have no idea how people live in other cities.
Blork 10:27 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
Hmmm. Tim S.’s proposal promises a logistical and policy nightmare (not to be confused with a traffic nightmare!).
Mare’s comments make a lot of sense, I think. It’s better to make it cheap than to make it free. But there are those problems of capacity, and I doubt they will ever be resolved.
Chris also raises a good point (that it’s not just cost keeping many people from using public transit), but I would counter that much (not all) of that would be reversed if transit were free or very cheap. As in, people might be willing to bear a small amount of discomfort and the occasional used condom on the floor if it were cheap enough and — this is crucial — easy to pay.
To that last point: it has to be easy. Like stupid easy. Easier than paying for your Starbucks coffee. If you want some office schmuck to hop on the Metro occasionally instead of taking a taxi or his car, it won’t happen if he has to negotiate some Byzantine matrix of fees and cards and plans, etc. No. Approach the turnstile, tap with your credit card or phone (Apple Pay) and it costs a buck for the ride. Done.
Blork 10:42 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
@Taylor, I disagree with your disagreement.
Free stuff: You can’t compare education and healthcare with transit. The first two are not really optional, and they don’t really have alternatives. “Getting around” has many options and alternatives at many different price points. Completely different things, and different rules and premises apply.
Metro capacity: increasing capacity on the Blue and Yellow lines will lead to unbearable overcrowding on the Orange and Green lines (Blue and Yellow function almost entirely as feeders into the other lines; especially true of Yellow.)
Joey 11:53 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
While there’s nothing wrong with the arguments in Taylor’s piece, there’s a huge blind spot around allocation priorities and opportunity costs (count me among those who consider the ‘if there are no fares, the metro will become a day shelter’ argument a total red herring).
You *could* finance making Montreal transit no-cost by raising taxes or car registration fees or whatever, but (a) how politically feasible is that and, more importantly, (b) is that the best use of those resources? I suspect if you surveyed existing and potential users you’d find the best way to have an impact on ridership would be, first, improving frequency and reliability, which is going to be very difficult without the kinds of capital-intensive projects Taylor derides (admittedly, none of them will do a fraction as good as the pink line would) and, second, increasing the cost of car-driving via tolls, congestion pricing, etc. If I ruled the world the increased cost of driving would far outweigh the increases in capital and operating budgets transit companies would need to become world-class, but I am as usual in the minority.
Then again, “free” has a certain allure and reducing the transit cost burden for some Montrealers will be increasingly critical if inflation persists. But it really seems like a solution (or, less charitably, a slogan) in search of a problem. Raising taxes (and, like SAAQ premiums or whatever) to make the STM faster, more reliable and more comprehensive + providing additional financial support to low-/lower-middle-income households to give them a break on their commuting costs seems like a much more effective and equitable use of funds but I guess YMMV.
Of course with our current political reality neither option is really on the table but it’s nice to have grad seminar level thought experiments on the Internet.
PS: One minor quibble, but @Taylor, you say “Let’s get the whole system up to trains every two minutes before we say it can’t be done. Also, we can buy new trains and not retire the older trains, many of which I believe are still in storage awaiting disposal. Yes it costs money, climate change will cost more.” – OK, fine, I agree, but doesn’t reducing the user fare just make these priorities that much harder? And certainly harder to justify when no one has a GP, there aren’t enough EMTs to cover the Island, etc.
Ephraim 12:51 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
Even with Healthcare, there is a cost to it being “free” in that some people clog the system with requests when they don’t get what they want and others with third, forth and even fifth opinions. A small gatekeeping fee wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if just as a gatekeeping system so that people show up for appointments. For example, a fee of $5 for doctor’s visit, refundable to those on low income via their taxes. And maybe a deposit for an appointment with a specialist fully refundable, so you keep your appointment and don’t waste the time of the specialist. Because let’s face it, the time of a Neurosurgeon is precious and they can only see x patients in their available time… if you don’t show up, someone else could have used the time.
But even a small fee of 25c to use public transit will make people appreciate it’s value, more than free. Look at how people treat anything that is free… like trash. Heck, even at 10c for a can, people drop them into the recycling rather than take them back. I think there was a study a few years ago that showed that with no charge, people were dropping trash in the buses and subway, but once they put in a small charge, people started to respect the property more and the buses and subway were cleaner.
R.Thibault 17:01 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
If we are going to close and rebuild the Metropolitain autoroute in the second half of this decade there’s going to have to be a big transfer over to public transport to compensate for loss of road capacity.
More people on transport means fewer people in cars.
And if road capacity is reached (hello Royalmount) Ville de Montreal, MTQ, and STM are going to have to find some way to get more people onto public transport.
Imo STM ticket prices have already become too costly.
Taylor C. Noakes 17:57 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
@Joey
Infrastructure expansion has to go hand in hand with fare elimination given the goal is, essentially, to get nearly everyone to stop driving their gas powered cars, as well as seriously reducing the number of cars on the road (because cars themselves are made with petrochemicals, even electric ones). Building new infrastructure isn’t enough in and of itself to get people to give up their cars, and once the situation becomes so dire govts begin placing major limitations on who can use cars, and when, free transit will be necessary anyways. That day is much closer than you think.
@Blork
Entirely my point: given the state of the climate emergency, terminal oil etc, there won’t be many alternatives moving forward. Again, think 5-10 years, not 20-50. Cars are barely ecnomically viable right now, a situation unlikely to change. Production of new electric cars cannot keep pace with replacement needs, and their chains of production are just as negatively impacted as traditional cars (a situation that has led to certain used cars *appreciating* in value). If we’re smart we’llhave many different public mass transit systems to choose from, but not many choices outside of that.
thomas 19:01 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
It is not like this hasn’t been tried. For example, Tallinn implemented no fee public transportation and found no decrease in car use. Paradoxically, they found that walking actually decreased — people would grab an approaching bus instead of walking a couple of blocks. There have been studies on this matter and the 2 majors drivers of convincing people to switch from car to public transport are: comfort and reliability/predictability of the commute (not so much speed). That is where we should prioritize our investment.
jeather 19:46 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
When I have had a bus pass, I take public transit for most of my trips — I don’t particularly enjoy driving, the metro is fast enough and convenient for most places I want to go — but when I *don’t* have a bus pass, the cost of a round trip ticket, plus the extra inconvenience, just makes it not worthwhile given that I do have a car. Is there some reason public transit couldn’t be free between 10-3, between 6-6, and on weekends and stats? If you need to travel during rush hour, you pay.
I know that the bus network particularly is a lot worse than it used to be — I remember a lot easier access to night buses when I was a teenager — but I still find it reasonably ok.