The province’s public transport companies should, among other things, resort to subcontracting and put buses back on the road to save nearly $350 million per year, recommends an expert report commissioned by Quebec.
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“346 million, we can hardly do without it. We need it,” emphasized the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault at a press briefing Thursday afternoon.
She presented the performance audits of transport companies that she commissioned last year from the firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
The report of more than 500 pages presented Thursday recommends, among other things, “to [sous-traiter] a share of the service to private providers who operate at lower cost.”
Fitness experts Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton also suggest reducing the reserve rate of buses available in garages to put them back on the road.
To arrive at these recommendations, they analyzed the performance of 10 transport companies in Quebec and the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM).
They examined collective agreements and concluded that certain “clauses limit operational flexibility and influence management decisions.”
The minister said she was satisfied with this portrait of the situation and indicated that she wanted to use it as a “road map”.
“We are still struggling with significant deficits and it is becoming an unsustainable situation,” she said, calling for collaboration from transport companies.
More details will follow…
