Transit officials eye change on rules for low-income passes

A Calgary couple making less than $28,000 a year lives in poverty by almost everybody’s definition — to Statistics Canada’s benchmark definition, to social-service agencies, to the city’s property tax assistance program.

But to Calgary Transit, that wage for a two-person household is too rich for a break on $94 transit passes, not far enough below the low-income cut-off (LICO) to qualify.

The $40 monthly low-income passes are only for couples — or one-child single parents — taking in $21,136.50 of less (before taxes).

“What we’re saying to the people who make between 75 per cent of LICO and LICO is that you’re poor, and while we’re sorry about that, you’re not poor enough to help,” said Dan Meades, a poverty reduction advocate.

But this discrepancy could ease later this year. Days after the city’s first increase in 15 years to the nonpoverty seniors’ deeply discounted annual pass, a new report to aldermen calls for a massive overhaul to civic fee subsidies based on age and income. In it, city managers propose a sliding scale of transit discounts for low-income Calgarians.

Although proposed fees and levels aren’t spelled out in the report — they’d come in a paper in November — the analysis does not that the recreation department and other city branches use the standard low-income cut-off as its measure for discounts, while the bus and LRT system go by 75 per cent of that figure.

Meades, executive director of Vibrant Communities Calgary, says those people closer to the cut-off mark are more likely to be employed, and therefore more likely to need transit daily for commuting. He would prefer transit to be offered free to all Calgarians below the poverty line, but says that they should at least get some level of discount.

The report also suggests some sort of graduated discount rate for seniors. Low-income seniors get a year of transit for $15, while other seniors get annual passes for $55 — up this year from $35.

Council, wary of the coming wave of baby boomers who will turn 65, agreed to start adjusting this subsidy upwards, but balked during last November’s budget talks at hiking the annual pass to $96 by 2014.