River ferries may lose funding
The river ferries, which had been getting gradually more popular over recent years, have not received any funding from Quebec as the deadline grows closer for the ARTM to work out a budget.
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Kate
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Nicholas 12:15 on 2026-03-30 Permalink
Half a million passengers for $12 million is about $20 a passenger. Buses are usually in the range of a dollar or two, a bit more in more suburban or rural regions. It’s a nice trip, but for the same price we could run somewhere like 100,000 extra hours of buses, nearly 7,000 hours a day during the same summer season. Maybe it’s worth it for the tunnel replacement route, but this just seems difficult to justify, as ferries often are, being slow and expensive.
Kate 12:21 on 2026-03-30 Permalink
Any idea whether there’s tourism value?
Nicholas 13:11 on 2026-03-30 Permalink
They were fairly empty when I took them (twice), and most trips seem to replace other trips by transit, that are just nicer but slower. They do go to some of the islands, so there is some tourism value, but I don’t feel that’s worth it, to me. I was actually planning a trip around using the Contrecœur to Lavaltrie one to do a loop, as well as the Ile Perot to Châteauguay one, but both were not running last year.
Another annoying thing is it’s not integrated into the transit fares unless you have a longer duration pass, so the friction reduces the incentive to use it unless you really value being on a boat, or you commute. So just overall it’s not going to serve too many trips.