Transport Committee on Nov. 21st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses.

I appreciate that my Liberal colleague earlier tried to explain the government's position. I would offer, in friendly reply, that he's welcome to cross the floor and actually speak on behalf of the government. It might be a shorter route for him than what his future path looks like. Having said that.... It's all in fun.

First of all, I want to start with the question of transit planning or the decision-making about.... Let's take Montreal, since you're here to speak on behalf of public transit in that region. You're asking for federal funding. That's one of your recommendations. There are several ways in which you are looking at that. Would you accept a greater role for federal transit planning or are you suggesting to us that regional or local decision-making should be the way to plan transit priorities for Montreal?

[Michel Labrecque]

No, I think there's already $73 million coming from Ottawa in our budget this year in the investment in the SOFIL program from Quebec, and I think that when you are involved with the money, you have a word to say. That means that if you have a plan, an overall plan of where you're heading, of what the importance is and the scope you want to give to what we call national mobility infrastructure for the Canada of the future, you have a word to say around the table on what is to be built and what is to be repaired. The Champlain Bridge, for sure, is more than a local bridge, so on that you have a word to say.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

When you're looking at project selection, you have a number of priorities over time. Some of them may be competing in terms of priority, or you're determining which ones are going to come first or which come later. What kind of project selection criteria do you apply in your regional transit planning?

Is there a question in any of your planning about the viability of a project, that is, the level at which you expect to recoup a certain amount of costs at the fare box? Do you have a target in terms of what you consider a viable project? Can you enlighten us briefly on some of that? What kind of criteria do you apply? Or is it based perhaps on a series of other factors? We accept that the economics maybe aren't there behind a particular transit project.

[Michel Labrecque]

Okay. If you look, you'll see that we've assumed all the projects on this page. On the first part of it, you have what we call active.... There is more than $40 billion in equipment, buses, and Métro stations, so asset maintenance is the top priority before developing any kind of new system.

Then, the second aspect is that when you buy equipment you try not to bring in a new back office, meaning a new system with new equipment, new tools, new products, and new projects. That costs a lot. As I often say, if you don't have a lot of money, paint, bus lanes, and buses do a great, great job.

Then, if you have a little more money, and you want to sustain and increase your ridership, you're looking more towards a system like BRT, which is cost efficient. For between $12 million and $15 million, you have a good increase in ridership. Then you look at what we call heavy public transit systems like trams or, more than that, suburban trains or metro. A metro costs a lot: between $175 million and $200 million per kilometre.

So in that list, our main objective is le service à la clientèle. Our objective is to improve the quality of the service to the clientele and the ability or capacity to have an increase in ridership with cost effectiveness. But asset maintenance is the top, top priority.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Currently, federal funding with respect to transit is typically delivered through omnibus infrastructure programs. I see that you have the additional gas tax stream. You're recommending that in addition to transit eligibility and omnibus programs there also be an additional dedicated federal fund of some sort that is specific for public transit.

[Michel Labrecque]

What we are saying is that there's already a fund, effectively, but knowing a little bit about what is happening around the world, mainly in the G-8 and the countries in the OECD, we're asking if there is what we can call an overall national policy, not only on public transport but on goods and services on the roads.

I gave the example of the Champlain Bridge. It's impossible to rebuild that bridge without including a strong public transit system. We have a public transit system now that has articulated buses, but it's full, full to capacity on that line, so we need to have a fund to.... What should we do with that bridge? We'll rebuild it and we'll include in it that bridge.

It's not only for public transit that you need to have a general policy on funds. It's what we call, in a country like Canada, an overview of where we're heading in the coming 10 to 20 years, in terms of public transport, for sure, but also for goods and services on the roads--

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I have to intervene there. I'm sorry.

Mr. Toet.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to start by going back a bit. Obviously you heard a little of the Swiss presentation we had. They talked—

[Michel Labrecque]

I know a lot about the Swiss.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Okay. That's good.

She was explaining that in the system the funds essentially come from what we would have at the provincial level, going to a federal level, and then at the federal level, a lot of the decision-making is done, which affects them across, on a national basis. How would you feel about having a system where funds are coming out provincially and then being designated across the country by a federal government?

[Michel Labrecque]

Switzerland is a small country, if you compare it to Canada, a small country in numbers and a small country in terms of distance, with a long history of democracy. I know Switzerland well in regard to how they work and how they manage to implement their programs. I'm not sure you could apply their model to Canada.

There are so many different models: the States, France, and the Scandinavian countries. I will tell you that in all of those countries there are implications at the federal or national level for how people move around, how we stay competitive, what we call national infrastructure, and how we deal with municipalities, counties, provinces—staat in Germany—and the national level to finance that.

The clientele, the users, are absolutely not able, with all the money they have, to pay 100% of the system in any country that we know of. It's absolutely impossible to maintain the equipment, buy new trams, a new metro, and new buses, and at the same time develop a system.

So in every country of the OECD or the G-8, there's an implication, meaning that if you say “implication”, you say, okay, what is the national infrastructure, what's the forecast in 10 to 20 years in terms of the population increase in cities and how they move around, and how will traffic jams or gridlock will have an implication on, for example, the competitiveness of those cities?

That said, Switzerland, is a nice country to visit. But their train system is close to 100% electric. They have, for a long, long time, developed a system that starts from the small town and goes to the village and then to the city. It's inspiring, but we are, in a way, a long way from there.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Okay.

I haven't been there myself, but I have good friends who also have attested to the timeliness of their system and how you can rely on it.

My question is, then, that while you don't see that as a model that Canada could really follow, where do you see the federal government's participation, and not just in a funding aspect? But if there is the funding aspect of it, then where is our participation in the planning on a federal basis? How do we get involved in that? What is our input into that?

You had expressed before, with Mr. Watson's question, that we had a place at the table, but what is that place? At what point do we say that funds are going to go to this city or to that city? It's nice to say that we have a place at the table, but really, what would the City of Montreal's reaction be if we were to say, okay, but all the funds are going to go to Quebec City?

[Michel Labrecque]

Mais, you're already.... It's not mandatory, but the Champlain Bridge is, while not a wreck, close to it. You have to rebuild it, and you are around the table—

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

But I'm talking about public transit. You have your priorities within Quebec. What is our role within that set of priorities? Can we overrule your priorities? Can we say no, the priority is going to be different?

[Michel Labrecque]

Yes, you could say that you won't finance those kinds of projects--for sure.

Let's say we forecast for the next 10 to 20 years how many people will live in the city, how many people will be in cars, and how many cars will be hybrids and electric cars. Do we need to build tens and tens of kilometres of highway--at the cost of those highways--to move all those people in single-occupancy cars? How will we manage that?

So what's the share...? I'm putting myself at the Canadian level. I'll take 15 big cities in Canada and ask what they are heading for. I'm looking at where the industries establish themselves. I'm looking at how the goods will move from those industries to the ships, to the trains, and to our neighbours in the south.

That said, I know--because I know some of the people working at the Ministère des Transports in Ottawa--that you have what we call an “intelligence-added” value to look at the overall picture in Canada and say that in those 15 cities, forecasting the next 20 years, there are strong implications if you do nothing. What will our involvement be? Which infrastructure is our own and how can we manage to finance a sum that we consider vital for the Canadian economy?

I'll give you the example of the Canada Line, which links the Vancouver airport to downtown. That's a plus. You need that. A big city in 2010 that does not have a link between the airport and the downtown is a city that will lose flights. People will complain that it's not good.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

It still comes back to the question, then, of who is deciding that priority. You've said that the federal government has the ability to say no, we will not fund that project. What I'm getting at is at what point are we at the table, not saying yes or no to decisions that have already been made, but in the decision-making process? At what point are we involved in that in your mind, in your vision?

[Michel Labrecque]

It's always a part of the contribution. That said, if you're there for 5%, you have less to say than if you are there.... Again, I'll give the example of the Champlain Bridge. The Champlain Bridge is owned by the Canadian government and you have to rebuild it.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

But my question is in regard to--

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I'm sorry. We're starting to run past--

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Ms. Morin.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Good afternoon, thank you for being here today.

How do you prioritize projects on the Island of Montreal? Do you give priority to projects that will help a larger proportion of the population, by creating new lines, for instance, or do you prefer to cover areas that do not yet have public transit service, which would help a greater number of people?

[Michel Labrecque]

As you can see from the list, we maintain our infrastructure first, and then we develop new services. When we develop new services, we have to have the same back office. The creation of a new system, like a subway, is expensive. We have to build a new transportation centre, add new tools, and so on.

When we develop services, we have to acknowledge that there are areas where we cannot provide public transit properly. For instance, it costs a fortune to go and get people in residential second-belt suburban areas and bring them downtown.

And so, we have to ask ourselves several questions. When it comes to urban planning, we wonder about where people have been allowed to settle. We wonder what strong axes we can develop so that people start with single occupancy driving: the person takes his or her car and goes to a nodal point, a multimodal station, a train station, a subway station. People who use bikes do the same thing. It is a little more complicated, however, for those who are on foot.

When we develop new services, there has to be a minimum cost-benefit ratio. In certain cases, that minimum can be quite high.

We are under scrutiny by citizens. A bus that is driving around empty is not a good advertisement for public transit. People sometimes say to us that our bus is full in the morning, but that between 10 o'clock and noon, it is empty. I could have it come back to the garage, but it still has to provide service on the route. Generally speaking, many analyses precede development.

There are two types of situations where we do a lot of development. First, we must provide service to new housing developments that do not have bus service. And then, when a business settles somewhere and does not want to build a large parking lot, and workers may not have the money to travel in single passenger vehicles—which is never a good idea—we will develop new services for them. And that is the picture, in general.

In other cases, we will develop services... I don't know if you know Montreal. At this time, there is a north-south subway line, the orange line, and it is used to full capacity. And so we are developing express bus networks that pick people up in the outlying neighbourhoods and bring them downtown. It is a new strategy.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Personally, I live in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine riding. And so I know Montreal quite well.

I would like to know what to say to my fellow citizens who tell me that they don't use public transit. We know that this is a part of the Island of Montreal that has the poorest service, at this time. I am told that the buses are infrequent or that they are full at certain stops. What can I say to my fellow citizens about the STM vision for west Montreal?