Without fanfare, the company responsible for public transportation in Lévis recently announced that it was abolishing three express trips to Parliament Hill. The ESQ, ECQ, ELQ, and EOQ courses will be eliminated as of July 2.
The Société de transport de Lévis (StLévis) suggests that users of the abolished lines fall back on routes 800 and 801 of the Capital Transport Network.
The Lehouillier administration judges that since the entry into force of the reduced-price metropolitan pass, it is well justified to cut the STLévis routes on the North Shore. For $8 more per month than a regular pass, the metropolitan fare gives access to buses on both sides of the river.
The STLévis express routes to downtown Quebec only have a few passages during weekday mornings and evenings. (Frédéric Matte/Le Soleil)
Lévis now prefers to drop off its passengers in certain “hubs”, such as at Laval University or Laurier Québec, and transfer them to the RTC routes. We promise that this will offer more flexibility and frequency to users. “Strategic” choices
A “strategic choice”
STLévis and its administrators explain this “strategic choice” by an “80%” drop in the number of passengers on express routes since the pandemic, while the rest of the network has seen an increase in ridership.
Teleworking would explain why far fewer civil servants take the bus to downtown Quebec.
The abolished express lines have gone from 650 to 175 users since 2019, estimates Lévis
The president of STLévis, Steve Dorval, assures that Lévisiens will emerge winners at the end of the routes linking the South Shore to Parliament Hill.
The president of the Société de transport de Lévis (StLévis), Steve Dorval. (Patrice Laroche/Archives Le Soleil)
On almost half of the route, the buses were “running empty,” explained Mr. Dorval, recalling that the STLévis cannot drop off passengers in Quebec on the return to Lévis. “We were making a duplicate.”
The hours recovered by redistribution will be deployed in new routes, in particular to more efficiently connect Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Rédempteur to Laval University.
An already overloaded route
The STLévis decision, ratified by a unanimous board of directors, angers subscribers of the routes to Parliamentary Hill. Many have been using them for several years, and they do not share the conclusions of decision-makers.
The buses are “around 80% full”, estimate subscribers met by The sun on the sidelines of the last municipal council. The reduction to the 801 and 800 will also make their journey “much longer”, they agree.
And above all, they fear having to transfer to buses that are already overcapacity during rush hours.
“If I don’t want to be in an ultra-crowded 800, I’m going to have to leave much earlier,” laments Mélanie Cloutier, a provincial civil servant who lives in Saint-Romuald. “We are sent on an already full route where we stop at every stop.”
The decision displeases many subscribers. (Erick Labbé/Archives Le Soleil)
“Whether I take the car or the bus, it’s the same time. But it’s more comfortable on the express bus,” says another civil servant, who lives near the Desjardins center. He fears returning to solo driving once his route is abolished. “It goes against the grain of what we should be doing.”
“It’s going to make the trip unpleasant, so I might get back in my car.”
— A user
The Lehouillier administration affirms that the abolished courses are the only ones which have not observed an increase compared to 2019. (Frédéric Matte/Le Soleil)
Access to viable transport, which defends the rights of public transport users, shares the concerns of express line passengers.
“We are in favor of reducing and optimizing lines, but in this case, we are sending users to lines that are already overflowing, particularly during peak hours,” underlines the general director, Marie-Soleil Gagné.
She largely blames the “chronic underfunding” of public transportation in Lévis to explain the abolition of express lines. “If they had sufficient funding, they probably wouldn’t make these choices.”
Access to viable transport is also concerned about the comfort of already regular passengers on the routes where the STLévis will fall.
“Comfort is already very, very minimal. It’s extremely congested as a bus section, so I can’t imagine what it’s going to look like,” insists Ms. Gagné.
During the consultation sessions, STLévis allegedly promised that line service would be improved by the RTC to meet additional demand. Public transport managers in Quebec were not able to confirm this at the time of Sun.
A question of manner
Several users of the express lines to Parliament Hill also object to the way in which they were told that their routes would be withdrawn. They accuse Lévis of having communicated poorly and of playing with words rather than taking responsibility for his decisions.
STLévis announced this in April, in a brief press release that was difficult to access on its website. We talk about “conversion” and “enhancement” of courses. We also put some leaflets on the buses concerned, then carried out an email campaign.
Users of the affected lines believe that Lévis and its transport company communicated poorly, which made the abolition of services even more difficult to accept.
The Company finally made a publication on Facebook, before restricting comments following numerous complaints.
“We were told this just like that, on a Friday afternoon. And then we are offered information sessions, and no consultation,” angered Mélanie Cloutier. Like many other users who contacted The sun, she criticizes the “lack of listening” from decision-makers.
“We never had our say. Everything was decided when we announced it.”
— Melanie Cloutier
Users also blame Lévis elected officials, who reassured them when rumors of the abolition of the routes began to circulate in recent months. Questioned during a municipal council meeting last winter, Mayor Lehouillier promised that the lines would not be cut “until there is an effective and efficient alternative”.
His team says today that at that time, they did not know that the metropolitan tariff would come into effect, even if they were in the process of negotiating it with Quebec.
It was not possible to obtain an interview with a member of the Lehouillier or StLévis administration during the writing of this article.
