The auto costs$ 51 billion per year in Quebec

Photo Stevens LeBlanc
The government revenues are not growing quickly enough to meet the sharp increase in automobile travel, concludes a study. On the photo, the traffic at the entrance to the Pierre Laporte bridge, as of late Tuesday afternoon.

Stephanie Martin

Wednesday, 31 January 2018 00:00

UPDATE
Wednesday, 31 January 2018 00:00

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Car transport costs $ 51 billion per year in Quebec, of which $ 20,000 per family. Spending still growing, at a pace that leads the Quebec right into the wall.

It is the finding of Trajectory Québec and the David Suzuki Foundation, which have conducted the first exhaustive study of the costs of the system of automotive transportation in Quebec for the past 20 years, excluding the transit and transport of goods.

Bring together key data on the expenditures of households and governments, the study, which will be unveiled Wednesday afternoon concluded that the Quebec spends every year $ 43 billion for automobiles and roads, the equivalent of 11 % of GDP.

This figure is ” conservative “, stresses the head of the Trajectory Québec, Philippe Cousineau Morin. If there are other external factors such as accidents, pollution, congestion and parking, which they also create costs estimated at $ 7.6 billion, the bill rises to $51 billion.

While governments have 6.6 billion of the bill $ 43 billion per year, it is the families who are paying the most, $ 37 billion $, with their private expenditures for their vehicles. For a family of two adults and two children, this represents the sum of $ 20,000 per year.

An amount that weighs heavy on the family budget. In fact, 20 % of household expenditure after tax are devoted to road transport. This is the second item of expenditure after housing and before food.

The two agencies have wanted to “put the record straight” on the cost of road transport, ” says Mr. Cousineau Morin. “We do not realize that you are paying for it. “

The costs have increased by 69 % for the government and 28 % for families for the past 20 years, “a pace that surpasses that of the population and there is no indication that this trend will be reversed in the foreseeable future,” write the authors.

Third link

This is unsustainable in the long term, they argue. The goal is to bring awareness to policy makers of the cost of road investments, so that they take into account before embarking in projects such as the third link, for example, cites Philippe Cousineau Morin.

The solutions require the imposition of tolls on the major networks, and the funding of public transport. “It costs less in road infrastructure and urban when a city has more transit. “