doady
Senior Member
U of T campus rejects transit pass for students
March 23, 2008
Noor Javed
Staff Reporter
Public transit won't get any cheaper for students at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus after they overwhelmingly rejected the discounted transit U-pass proposal because it required all students there to pay for it – even those who didn't use it.
More than 2,000 students participated in the referendum last week, with 73 per cent voting against the proposal that offered a monthly pass for $60, and credits that could be used on GO Transit or York Transit routes. For most, the deal-breaker was the no-opt-out policy, which obliged all students to pay $240 per semester.
"It didn't benefit enough students to make sense," said student Zuhair Syed, who voted against the pass that would benefit a few thousand of the campus's 13,000 students.
Chris Smith, who led the campaign for the U-pass, said he knew it would it fail because of the clause.
"Most students thought it would have been an amazing plan, if people who didn't need the service had an option of opting out of it," said Smith, vice-president external of the student union. "But the TTC couldn't offer that to us."
Smith was one of a number students who first approached the TTC almost five years ago with the idea of a U-pass. The TTC conducted studies to see how much they could discount the price so that it would be "revenue neutral," and not an added expenditure.
"I don't think the TTC could have offered a better deal," said Smith.
But after years of work to get to this step, there was some disappointment that the proposal didn't receive support from students.
"We would have preferred that it would have passed," said TTC chair Adam Giambrone. "But the U-pass is a hard sell in Toronto."
Partly, he said, because it's difficult to cut the price of the pass.
"Considering how much people use transit, we calculated what the price of the U-pass should be," he said. "If we were to lower the price to $50, we would see a 10 to 20 million-dollar expenditure, and we figured it was not worth it."
Ryerson and York have yet to vote on the U-pass, but students there have expressed similar concerns.
Still, Smith says the dream of cheap transit isn't over yet. "The next step is to lobby the provincial government to become involved," he said. "There isn't a whole lot they are doing for tuition fees, so why not do something for transit?"
March 23, 2008
Noor Javed
Staff Reporter
Public transit won't get any cheaper for students at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus after they overwhelmingly rejected the discounted transit U-pass proposal because it required all students there to pay for it – even those who didn't use it.
More than 2,000 students participated in the referendum last week, with 73 per cent voting against the proposal that offered a monthly pass for $60, and credits that could be used on GO Transit or York Transit routes. For most, the deal-breaker was the no-opt-out policy, which obliged all students to pay $240 per semester.
"It didn't benefit enough students to make sense," said student Zuhair Syed, who voted against the pass that would benefit a few thousand of the campus's 13,000 students.
Chris Smith, who led the campaign for the U-pass, said he knew it would it fail because of the clause.
"Most students thought it would have been an amazing plan, if people who didn't need the service had an option of opting out of it," said Smith, vice-president external of the student union. "But the TTC couldn't offer that to us."
Smith was one of a number students who first approached the TTC almost five years ago with the idea of a U-pass. The TTC conducted studies to see how much they could discount the price so that it would be "revenue neutral," and not an added expenditure.
"I don't think the TTC could have offered a better deal," said Smith.
But after years of work to get to this step, there was some disappointment that the proposal didn't receive support from students.
"We would have preferred that it would have passed," said TTC chair Adam Giambrone. "But the U-pass is a hard sell in Toronto."
Partly, he said, because it's difficult to cut the price of the pass.
"Considering how much people use transit, we calculated what the price of the U-pass should be," he said. "If we were to lower the price to $50, we would see a 10 to 20 million-dollar expenditure, and we figured it was not worth it."
Ryerson and York have yet to vote on the U-pass, but students there have expressed similar concerns.
Still, Smith says the dream of cheap transit isn't over yet. "The next step is to lobby the provincial government to become involved," he said. "There isn't a whole lot they are doing for tuition fees, so why not do something for transit?"
