STM releases balanced 2025 budget with increased spending on security
Montreal transit agency cut $16M from earlier budget projection
The Société de transport de Montréal (STM), the city's transit authority, unveiled the details of its 2025 budget on Thursday, which includes increased spending on safety.
The total budget is estimated at $1.8 billion, a slight increase of 0.2 per cent compared to 2024.
The budget increase is mostly attributed to the hiring of security and maintenance staff.
"As our customers have told us, they are increasingly witnessing acts of incivility and behaviour that sometimes make them feel less safe in our network," said STM CEO Marie-Claude Léonard in a press conference on Thursday afternoon.
The STM cut $16 million in spending that it had originally projected this year, calling its 2025 budget balanced. It said Metro and bus service are not expected to be affected.
Its priority is maintaining service, Léonard said.
"For us, not cutting back on supply is always a victory in the current financial context we're in," said Léonard.
In 2024, the STM slashed its budget by $35 million in the hope of reducing its expenses by $100 million by 2028.
But major expenses are on the horizon. The network's equipment is in need of a makeover, with a 133 per cent increase in service interruptions due to fixed equipment breakdowns in the last 10 years.
Money will also go toward buying more of the new Azur Metro trains to replace older trains on the Green Line.
Éric Alan Caldwell, the chair of the board of directors of the STM, said more also needed to be done to renovate the Metro network.
"We need to rehabilitate it, give it a second life cycle. That's why we're making this urgent, insistent appeal for reinvestment in the Montreal Metro," he said.
In terms of accessibility, Mr. Caldwell mentioned that the STM wanted to increase the number of universally accessible Metro stations from 27 to 41.
Challenges ahead
But the Opposition at city hall, Ensemble Montréal, is skeptical about the budget.
"The STM boasts itself about having submitted a balanced budget. But if we're lucid about it, this pseudo-success is only exclusively attributable to the explosion of the registration tax," said Coun. Julien Hénault-Ratelle, referring to changes to Quebec vehicle registration that allows for funding of public transit.
"The motorists are going to pay more for less services."
Some budgetary challenges will come up in the next 10 years and the STM is asking for support from the municipal, provincial and federal governments. They're a "critical" part of the solution, according to the agency.
The total cost of the STM's long-term plan is around $25.8 billion.
Important parts of this plan involve: infrastructure maintenance, the Blue Line extension and the electrification of the transit authority's bus fleet.
The STM is currently in contract negotiations with its bus and Metro drivers. The agency says that the situation will not impact the budget, but the Opposition says the STM is not being transparent.
"Usually, if they decide to have a lack in term of transparency, it's probably because they are going to cut staff doing operating jobs, having a direct effect on the services for Montrealers," said Hénault-Ratelle.
Pierre Barrieau, lecturer in transportation planning at Université de Montréal, says it's "good news" that the budget is balanced, but wonders what it cost to get there.
"The STM has an aging network and it is having more and more issues. And, unfortunately, they do not have the funding to take care of it," he said.
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With files from CBC's Gabriel Guindi and Brennan Neill