Port Authority of Huimont and Tourres
| Autorité portuaire d'Huimont et de Tourres | |
| File:Worst logo ever.png Logo of the Port Authority | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | June 19, 1954 |
| Jurisdiction | Isle-Royale, Ainin |
| Headquarters | 1 quai des Hirondelles Huimont, Isle-Royale |
| Employees | 224,000 |
| Minister responsible |
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| Agency executive |
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The Port Authority of Huimont and Tourres (French: Autorité portuaire d'Huimont et de Tourres), colloquially known as the Huimont Authority (French: Autorité d'Huimont), is a provincial government agency that serves as a port authority, transit authority and highway authority in Isle-Royale. It operates and manages public transit, passenger and freight transportation infrastructure, and provincial highways in the Huimont-Tourres metropolitan area.
Founded in 1954 by the Isle-Royale Legislature as a consolidation of the Port of Huimont Commission, Isle-Royale Toll Roads Commission, Huimont Transit Authority, Tourres Transit Authority, 17 smaller local transit boards and 7 local highway agencies, the Port Authority was seen as an experiment in bureaucratic streamlining and centralisation. However, it soon became bloated in its own right, and its existence remains controversial with local government advocates who call for its dissolution and the devolution of its powers back to the metropolitan area's municipal governments.
Prominent components of the vast transportation network that it oversees include local bus services, the Huimont Métro rapid transit service, the Huimont Peripheral Railway commuter rail service, the Port of Huimont, several major artery roads such as the Western Autocours (IR-51), and all but two bridges and tunnels leading onto the island of Saint-Michel government district, in addition to both major rail stations (Huimont Station and Tourres Mercier Station) and all three commercial airports (Huimont Gérard Hébert International Airport, Tourres Mercier International Airport, and Huimont Neubourg Airport) in the metropolitan area.
The Port Authority is the third-largest employer in the province of Isle-Royale, behind the Aininian Ministry of Defence and the region of Capitale-Nationale's Board of Education.
History
A series of rapid transit derailments and road closures attributed to poor maintenance caused by overlapping and incompetent administration in the 1950s led to calls among lawmakers for the creation of a unified transit board in the island province of Isle-Royale, which was more or less continuous with the Huimont-Tourres metropolitan area due to its small size. A first bill was passed by the provincial legislature but vetoed by Premier Alexandre Baudelaire, who was later forced to sign it into law on June 19, 1954 after the legislature passed it a second time. The bill consolidated many cantonal, prefectural, regional, and provincial government bodies into a single agency, which would later be known as the Port Authority of Huimont and Tourres. The administrative change was promoted to citizens as an experiment in bureaucratic consolidation and increasing government efficiency under two slogans: une région, un système, une autorité (one region, one system, one authority) and tout à fait simple (totally simple).
The merged system proved more difficult to manage than first thought, due to the wide variety of incompatible systems used by the multiple agencies. In addition, labour disputes between the National Federation of Civil Servants and the Port Authority crippled transit services in the metropolitan region on three separate occasions in the years immediately following the consolidation, in 1959, 1962 and 1963. The body, chartered as a non-profit state-owned corporation, was bailed out in the aftermath of the Recession of 1980 and restructured, controversially eliminating 60,000 positions deemed superfluous.
The Port Authority's network has continued to grow in recent times. Due to capacity concerns at Gérard Hébert Airport, a new airport for domestic and low-cost flights was built by the Authority in northern Tourres, becoming Tourres Mercier International Airport. After the completion of the Olivier Lapointe Bridge brought intercity high-speed rail to the province, management of the Huimont–Talon high-speed railway's two stations in Isle-Royale fell to the Port Authority, although the network itself remains under the ownership and management of the Great Aininian Railroad.
Criticism
The Port Authority has been variously criticised as bloated, bureaucratic, inefficient and insensitive to local needs. It is the target of the ire of many local politicians and community activists, who wish to see its dissolution and replacement by a system of independent municipal bodies organised underneath a cooperative umbrella provincial body.
Noted backers of the Port Authority include the Social Democratic Party and the National Federation of Civil Servants, who fear a loss of employment from such a reorganisation, and the Green Party, which believes that only a powerful central body can provide reliable green transportation options.