English
A new study from the Metropolitan Community of Montreal has found that investing in public transit delivers significantly stronger economic returns than spending on personal automobiles — a finding that challenges the long-held assumption that environmental priorities conflict with economic ones.
Transit Outperforms Cars on Economic Returns
The research, produced in partnership with Montreal’s Board of Trade, reveals that public transit generates more than triple the GDP contribution compared to single-vehicle use. It also supports 2.5 times more jobs in Quebec than equivalent spending on automobiles.
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Marie-Michèle Cauchy, director of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal, said the study deliberately examined transit through an economic lens rather than an environmental one. “It improves productivity, it supports businesses, it increases household purchasing power, and it generates stronger economic returns for Quebec,” she told Global News.
Cauchy said the motivation behind the research was practical. “There’s an issue with public finances. We want to get the most returns on our public investment. And there’s also an issue with the cost of living for households,” she said. “So we wanted to do the study looking at public transit through this lens to see if it was a good investment.”
The Cost of Car Dependency in Montreal
The study highlights the scale of Montreal’s reliance on private vehicles. In 2024, more than two million automobiles operated on the city’s roads. Households spent $24 billion annually on car-related costs — the second largest household expenditure after housing.
That level of car ownership carries a steep economic penalty. Traffic congestion alone caused $6 billion in economic losses in 2023, equivalent to 2.1 per cent of the region’s GDP.
Cauchy also pointed to the broader national significance of shifting investment toward transit. Given current trade tensions between Canada and the United States, she argued that transit spending keeps more economic benefits within the country. “If we want to depend less on other economic regions right now, we need to invest in public transit,” she said.
A Funding Crisis Looms
Despite the economic case for transit, Montreal faces a serious funding gap. In August, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada warned that the city is heading toward a $7 billion budget deficit by 2030 just to maintain its existing transit services. Municipal leaders have urged provincial officials to make public transit funding a priority in the upcoming election.
Transit experts say the entire funding model needs structural reform. Evan Roncace, a project coordinator with the Transportation Research Lab at McGill University, said the city lacks a stable, dedicated budget for public transit decisions. “Montreal is lacking in a budget that is permanent and completely dedicated and up to our discretion here on what we’re going to do with public transit,” he said.
Roncace pointed to examples in the United States where congestion pricing and payroll taxes fund more robust transit systems. He argued, however, that expanding transit use requires more than financial investment alone.
Changing Attitudes as Well as Infrastructure
The City of Montreal has set a goal of achieving a 75 per cent active mode share — covering public transit, cycling and walking — by 2050. Roncace said reaching that target demands a broader cultural shift alongside infrastructure improvements.
“In order to achieve that level of public transportation use, we need a lot more than just densifying around public transportation,” he said. “We also need to discourage car use. And we need to change people’s attitudes around using public transportation in general.”
Current transit uptake still has room to grow. According to Statistics Canada, 29.1 per cent of Montreal residents used public transit as their primary mode of transportation in May 2025. The Montreal transit investment study suggests that closing the gap between current usage and the 2050 target could deliver substantial economic dividends for the entire region.
