Calgary council approves $5.15 monthly transit pass for city’s poorest riders

Calgarians living in extreme poverty will soon pay just $5.15 for a monthly Calgary Transit pass — a 95 per cent discount off the regular price.

City council unanimously voted in favour Monday of introducing a new sliding scale for low-income transit pass holders that will come into effect beginning in 2017.

Depending on a user’s income, monthly adult bus passes will cost between $5.15 and $51.50 monthly.

That’s a discount of between 50 and 95 per cent off the 2017 regular monthly adult bus pass fare.

Currently, it costs $99 for an adult monthly transit pass and no matter how much a low-income Calgarian earns, that person pays $44 to ride the bus or train every month.

The new sliding scale means a single Calgarian, who makes half of the poverty-line level (about $12,000 a year), will pay $5.15 for a monthly pass.

Someone who makes between 85 and 100 per cent of the low income cut-off will get a 50-per-cent discount.

“This is a big deal,” said Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

“It means that people who are living in real, extreme, poverty in our city — and there are many of them — will now pay just over $5 a month to be able to have a transit pass,” Nenshi said.

“And this makes a huge difference in people’s lives. It gets them to medical appointments, to school, to job interviews.”

Formerly homeless Calgarian Nigel Kirk told a council committee earlier this month that a $5.15 low-income transit pass means a homeless person “can now literally pick bottles for a day and buy a (monthly) bus pass with it.”

“That’s huge. They can now find jobs. They can go to their appointments. It’s a huge victory,” Kirk said.

The new bus pass price tag was made possible in May, after the province kicked in $13.5 million of funding over three years for lowincome transit passes.