I started with what I figured was the 'dummy' question, asking him if he was going. But to my utter surprise, he told me he wasn't. When I asked him why, his reason was the same as mine: cost. The University wouldn't help him go, and it seemed the summit's organizers didn't take local, expert knowledge seriously. He has a family, a home and his research to support, surely among other things; I could understand why the figure was out of his reach, as it had been for me.
I contacted the organizers via email, asking if they needed volunteers or help setting up the event, and received, to my expectation, no response. Effectively shut out from the convention, I ignored it and moved on.
A few days ago, the event resurfaced in my news feed when I saw an announcement for an outdoor exposition on both May 15 and 16 from 11:30 to 18:30, open to the public. Promoted by everyone from the mayor's opposition party to the STM itself, the expo was essentially supposed to be a showcase of the summit's hot topics. It consisted of the results of the event's photo contest, kiosks allowing regional transit agencies to show off parts of their new service, historical exhibits, and food trucks. The STM showed off one of its old GMC buses and one of its new all-electric buses, which was a nice touch. But the only people that showed up when I went were businessmen on their lunch break and disappointed schoolchildren on field trips; after all, this was a Tuesday at mid-day in downtown Montreal.
Two days ago, I heard more news coverage of the event, this time in the form of a meme on a Quebec-based Facebook page called "Décider Entre Hommes," which pokes fun, and concern, at the male-dominated nature of executive culture. Sure enough, its latest update was a photo of the summit itself. Nowhere in the photo is there a human being that is not white, male, and at least 50 years old, 40 if I'm being generous.
"Décider entre hommes" on Facebook
Given my original experience trying to attend the event, this didn't surprise me in the least. It did, however, rekindle my interest in what actually occurred during the event, so I scoured the web for content that would help me answer that question. The website of the event itself offered a short video blog and a written account of the action on Sunday and Monday, which I looked through.
I first watched the video highlights from Sunday and an interview with Robert Puentes, CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a non-profit transport think tank. Sunday's highlight video amounted to a compilation of feel-good music and fast-paced video, with brief references to the pathetic hackathon that was organized in tandem with the event, and to Denis Coderre's speech, in which he brilliantly and originally states, "In Montreal [...], we don't build walls, we build bridges. Climate change exists." [1]
I found Coderre's insight rather interesting, given the crumbling infrastructure of the city juxtaposed with the fact that no less than a billion dollars will be spent celebrating the city's 375th anniversary [2]. His groundbreaking acceptance of climate change is an interesting contrast to his actions a few days ago, where it took him a full two days to respond to one of the biggest flooding events Montreal has seen for a long time. Surely, accepting the reality of climate change comes with accepting the reality of increasingly frequent extreme weather events. And taking a dig at Trump perhaps isn't the best idea; after all, Coderre, too, is an overweight, middle-aged man who struggles with power abuse, verbal lapses, corruption, an infrastructure-spending fetish, and broken promises to a population that no longer trusts him.
Next up was Robert Puentes' interview video, which is accompanied with the same jovial music and cut-happy editing. I was astounded at the fact that the CEO of a transport think-tank and an ex-fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program could butcher the history of public transportation in North America so horrifically. He talks about taking the model of public transit agencies "rooted in the 1950s or the 1960s" and upgrading it [3]; and although publicly-owned transit agencies did occur around this time, it was through massive corruption, and the agencies hemorrhaged money for a long time, and in many cases, still do, despite increasing investment. The rest of what he says is too vague to draw any real insight from.
I moved on to the blog-type summaries from the first two days, and immediately noticed that they were written in the first person, but had no author listed. Past this confusion, the account seemed to be little more than a written version of the videos. Its content amounted to a self-aggrandizing, incoherent compilation of buzzwords, equally focused on the seemingly vapid content of the meetings and the perks and luxury of the venue itself. My favorite part was the summary of the first day, which included a section on gender inequality in transport agencies. [4]
Although it's perhaps self-evident that the only purpose of an expensive, champagne-soaked convention of any type is matching government officials, start-ups, and investors to generate an inbred profit machine, one would at least hope that a summit on public transportation would be an exception. Unfortunately, it's not the case here; I'd be surprised if even half of its attendees and speakers took transit on any regular basis. Its public disguise is equally pathetic; the outdoor expo was drab, uncreative, and poorly attended.
Why make a meme about the event's white-male demographic? The event itself already is one.
[1] Video.
[2] Have fun with this video and article.
[3] Here's Robert Puentes' interview.
[4] No hypocrisy here.