When it comes to public transportation in Montreal, things haven’t been easy since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to findings from a McGill University study.
The case study analyzed ridership and operation data for 169 bus lines submitted by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) in 2018 and 2022 to compare the changes before and after the pandemic.
The study was published by McGill University School of Urban Planning professor Ahmed El-Geneidy, and research assistant Paul Redelmeier in a journal called “Transportation Research Record.”
The first observation is that STM bus service ridership is not the same as it was before COVID-19. The STM’s most recent data for 2023 reveals that ridership for its entire system is close to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Telecommuting and the use of individual modes of transportation, such as cars or bicycles, alerted researchers who decided to investigate the subject, said Meredith Alousi-Jones, who is part of the research team.
“We knew it was going to have an impact on the way people use public transportation, especially to get to work,” she said.
The study showed that elasticity, or the way riders respond to bus service, has changed since the pandemic.
“The same level of service, with the same budget, will not attract the same number of users,” explained Alousi-Jones. “You will have to increase the budget and improve the service to attract the same number of users.”
According to the researcher, the impact that COVID-19 had on daily transport in major cities should not be underestimated since it led to a cultural change among users. The latter are also more sensitive to service cuts than they were before the pandemic.
“People are asking for better service,” said Alousi-Jones.
Do more… with less
The researchers conclude that more investment is necessary to ensure that people make the bus their preferred means of transportation on the island of Montreal.
More funds are needed if they want to escape the vicious circle, since researchers believe that cutbacks “could trigger an infernal spiral and ultimately lead to a collapse of the transport system,” while those cuts, caused by budget deficits, generate a drop in ridership, which then leads to future cutbacks.
Alousi-Jones believes that the collapse will not happen immediately, but that it is important to keep it in mind in order to find other sources of funding that can lead to an increase in service, rather than a decrease.
The STM has been in financial crisis for several years.
Last March, it announced an $85.6 million reduction in its spending, claiming that this would have no impact on its service offering.
In a press release published after the announcement of the 2024-2025 provincial budget, the public corporation criticized the government’s lack of commitment to the public transportation funding crisis and warned the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) that “it will not be possible to repeat this exercise of budget cuts on such a large scale in 2025.”
In this sense, the researchers claim that their study constitutes a kind of call to action for political decision-makers with regard to public transport, so that they invest more to ensure its sustainability, in addition to promote long-term equity.
They also suggest that the STM not cut back on frequent routes.
“Positioning certain routes as offering frequent service is a good way for transportation companies to make their system more user-friendly. Users know that these routes are reliable and that they won’t have to consult the schedules,” said Ahmed El-Geneidy, on the McGill University website.
In its 2023 report, the STM said that the 31 frequent lines alone account for more than 50 per cent of total current ridership.
The researchers sent the results of their analysis to the STM but claim to have received no response.
The transit company was unavailable this weekend to respond to a request for comment from The Canadian Press.
The McGill University research team is now working on a long-term study on the impacts of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) on the health and well-being of Montrealers.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews