Closures of three stations | QS wants to take electrification money to repair the metro

(Quebec) Québec solidaire proposes to urgently take 1.4 billion from the transport electrification budget to repair infrastructure such as the Montreal metro.

“We have a very big challenge with maintaining assets […] if we do not properly maintain what we already have, we will lose service,” warns MP Étienne Grandmont in an interview with The Press.

Earlier in the day, Québec solidaire was accused by Prime Minister François Legault of believing that “money grows on trees”, because the party’s parliamentary leader, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, believed that the CAQ did not was not doing enough to maintain public transportation networks in Quebec.

Mr. Grandmont therefore wants to explain where the money should be taken: from the envelope of 5 billion budgeted by the government of Quebec to electrify buses in municipal transport networks. “It’s not the priority. GHG emissions from public transportation represent 0.4% of Quebec’s emissions. It’s tiny. The roof of the house is leaking, and the CAQ wants to redo a bathroom,” said Mr. Grandmont.

The urgency is rather to maintain the service offering by avoiding cutbacks, and to keep assets, such as the Montreal metro, in good condition. “It’s not sexy, but the emergency closure of three metro stations is a very concrete example of what happens when we cut maintenance,” he lamented.

Québec solidaire points out that the Quebec government has planned less than 2.5 billion dollars in its Quebec infrastructure plan for maintaining public transport assets in 2024. In 2013, the province put in closer to 3.5 billion. In constant dollars, that is to say taking into account inflation, “the sums available in 2024 only represent 41% of the sums available in 2013”, notes the party.

This is also a criticism shared by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), which recently indicated in a memorandum that “the sums made available by the government [du Québec] for maintaining public transport assets have declined every year since 2019.”

Its president, Éric-Aldan Caldwell, also hoped that the CAQ would become aware of this subject. “We had a wake-up call when the Memorial Viaduct collapsed in the 2000s for the road network. There, the wake-up call must come for the metro, that’s for sure,” he said in an interview with The Press mardi.

The federal role

Earlier in the day, the Legault government responded to these criticisms by affirming that the City of Montreal and the federal government must do more to maintain the metro.

“There are indeed responsibilities that fall to the government of Quebec, but above all there are responsibilities that fall to large cities, including the city of Montreal,” said Prime Minister François Legault.

He was questioned by the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who accuses him of being partly responsible for the closure for an indefinite period of three stations on the blue line of the Montreal metro to carry out repair work. emergency.

“Tens of thousands of people who are deprived of their daily means of transport. […] It’s serious,” lamented Mr. Nadeau-Dubois.

Despite everything, Prime Minister Legault affirmed that if his government had “responsibilities”, it has “invested record sums”, and intends to extend the blue line of the Montreal metro and set in motion a public transport line to the east of the metropolis.

Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault said the Quebec government is “playing more than its role,” and instead blames the federal government. “The federal government, precisely, in maintaining assets, puts very, very little money,” said Mr.^me Guilbault.