November 12, 1998 

I have been a user of public transport ever since I climbed aboard my first bus - a red double-decker, one of those improbable beasts that lurch around London to this day. Grabbing the pole as if at a carrousel ride, I jumped up onto that rubber-floored open platform that glided along inches above the pavement. A conductor cranked out tickets from a metal roll, while putting my sixpence in one of a series of chrome cylinders attached to his belt. Meanwhile, the driver remained unapproachable in his glassed-in cabin up front, across from the chattering motor that excreted oily-blue fumes.

And then the Underground. A tubular train suddenly arrived like a piston at the tubular station with a heart-stopping whoosh. But the escalators worked, the trains had corrugated teak floors, there was fabric on the seats, the strap hangers were leather, and the windows actually opened.

I then went on to Toronto, only to get nauseated by streetcars that swayed from side to side while jerking backward whenever a car got in the way. Streetcars would noisily gnash the steel rails on changing direction.

With the typical Canadian cultural subservience of the day, the Toronto subway was patterned after the London Underground, and the metro in Montreal was patterned after the Paris metro - without the bathroom-tiled stations. For some inexplicable reason, Montreal decided to go with rubber wheels on concrete track, copying an abandoned Parisian experiment. This means our trains cannot run outside.

But had not the Montreal metro been built, our public transport would be even less used than it is. In 1952, Montreal could boast a ridership of 368 million with only 779 km of two-way bus routes. By the time the metro started operating in 1966, there were only 269 million riders on 1410 km of bus routes. Today, we have 339 million riders of both metro and busses, after a high-water mark of 364 million in 1986. Ridership has levelled off.

In February I became a member of the board of directors of the MUCTC. Over the next month, we shall be under massive pressure to cut costs and up fares. Why? In 1992, when Quebec wiped out $150 million of funding to the MUCTC (remember the Ryan Reform?), the Island cities stepped up to the plate and funded it all, mostly through the dreaded surtax. With this latest round of Quebec downloading (the Trudel Reform - oh, how I mistrust the word reform!), the cities are in no mood to shoulder all the cost themselves. They want the MUC and the MUCTC to chip in.

With monthly passes costing only 70% of the North American average - in Toronto, they're almost double - can we continue to charge only $45.00? As for cost control, the MUCTC has cut the number of employees from 8,000 in 1990 to an estimated 7116 by the end of this year.

What about privatization? That's what happened in London. Next thing you know, those red busses might go the way of red cast-iron phone boxes.

22 Oct page 26nov

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• Menu of Trent's Stories
• September 3, 1998 SOUND BEGETS FURY
  
• 2 Oct TAXATION BY MISREPRESENTATION
  
• 12 OCT on $500,000,000 TAX GRAB Tax grab turns into burlesque
  
• 16 OCT A MEETING WITH BOUCHARD