Targeting transit fares

>> Coalition hopes the province will create a special fare for people on the poverty line

HIGH PRICES CUT OPTIONS: Project Genesis’s Daren Laine

by JESSE ROSENFELD

Money is tight and labour strife has once again hobbled the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM), the city’s transit authority, but a coalition of social justice and community groups, students’ associations and women’s centres are nevertheless pursuing their demands for reduced rates for people on or below the poverty line.

Montreal’s Table régionale des organismes volontaires d’éducation populaire (TROVEP) is calling on the Quebec Ministry of Transport to provide the funding for a “social fare” to make Montreal public transport more accessible to poor people.

“Public transport is a public service that everyone should be able to take,” says Rosa Turgeon, a community organizer with TROVEP and a member of the Centre des Femmes d ici et d’ailleurs. “[Many people on or below the poverty line] don’t even buy bus passes, they buy tickets because they don’t have the money at the beginning of the month.”

Basing its demands on a similar campaign to get a special fare for people taking adult literacy classes by the Comité urbain de lutte, TROVEP argues the cost of the social fare should be $1 for one ticket, $5 for five and $22.25 for a monthly pass.

Turgeon contends that the high cost of metro tickets and passes is contributing to increased ghettoization in the city. She says that unaffordable transport costs are leaving people isolated.

Daren Laine, a member of the Côte-des-Neiges social justice community organization Project Genesis, argues that an affordable public transport system is essential for people to be able to get to their jobs, receive health care and function in their daily lives.

“I have friends living in Laval and it’s very difficult to visit them,” she says. “I’m very restricted. On months where I can’t afford a [metro] pass, I have to budget on where I can go.”

While assuring that the STM is sympathetic to these problems, STM spokesperson Isabelle Tremblay says that the transport society has a shortfall of $22-million and it is up to the Quebec government to regulate the price of fares.

Although fare reduction is the current priority to immediately increase accessibility of pubic transport, TROVEP is also demanding the creation of a free metro system in the long run to make it fully accessible.

“People have the right to a better transit system, one they can afford,” says Laine. “If the government can afford Medicare, they can afford a transit system on the same basis.”

Pointing to large government investments in highway reconstruction, the radical student association and TROVEP coalition member L’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) argues that the government has the resources to deal with the problem, but there just needs to be a social will to pursue it. Hubert Gendron-Blais, a coordinator with ASSÉ, connects the current metro costs with the current strike by maintenance workers.

“Public transport has faced multiple attacks over the past few years and it is both workers and users who have faced this assault,” says Gendron-Blais. “The solution is a big public investment because the problem is a lack of funding and commitment of resources.”