Deans considers extending U-pass over summers
OC Transpo open to talking with universities
Expanding OC Transpo’s student UPass program so it covers summer school sessions might make sense, says the chair of Ottawa’s transit commission, but nobody should expect a return to monthly student passes.
City council voted to cancel discounted monthly passes for postsecondary students after bringing in the U-Pass program, which only students at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa have voted to join. On those campuses, full-time students get even cheaper passes, but they’re mandatory for everyone, whether they take transit regularly or not.
For OC Transpo, it’s meant to work out even, since people who never bought student passes now subsidize passes for people who always did.
For students who don’t go to UPass schools, it’s meant buying fullprice adult passes, which cost $98.75 a month, $20 more than the passes OC Transpo sells to students under age 19. And that’s a lot of people: ❚ students at Algonquin College, La Cité collégiale and smaller post-secondary institutions; ❚ adult high-school students; ❚ part-time students at any institution (only full-time students are eligible).
U-Passes are only good during the usual academic year from September to April, as well, so anyone taking classes in summer, or working a summer job but going back to school in the fall, has to buy an adult pass.
All summer, student leaders from all Ottawa’s biggest schools have been asking to meet Mayor Jim Watson to plead their case.
This week, they were thrown a bone: he and transit commission chair Diane Deans will meet them Sept. 10. But Wednesday, after several attended a transit commission meeting hoping to get the issue on the agenda, Deans warned them not to expect much.
“The transit commission has dealt with this issue,” she said. “Any time we offer a discount to a group, somebody has to pay for it. Either taxpayers have to pay for it or other fare categories have to pay for it.” The UPass program is what OC Transpo offers students and that’s the end of it, she said.
She urged the student unions that haven’t joined the program to hold
‘We’re willing to talk to them about a summer student U-Pass program. If they’d like to talk about that, we’d like to talk about that.’’
DIANE DEANS
Transit commission chair
referendums to ask their members whether they want in.
That said, the program might be tweaked, Deans said.
“One of the points that I heard that I thought was a really good point was that there are summer semesters in Ottawa where there’s lots of full-time students participating in a summer semester.
“We’re willing to talk to them about a summer student U-Pass program. If they’d like to talk about that, we’d like to talk about that. If we can make the numbers work, we would do that.”
Justine De Jaegher, a vicepresident of Carleton’s graduate students’ association, said at least that’s something.
“It’s something we’d like to talk about,” she said. “Until I know all the circumstances of what that would look like, like who’s eligible and all of that, I don’t know, but it’s something I think we’d be willing to talk about. We just want to make transit more accessible for students.”
The lack of student passes in summer is a problem for all post-secondary students, De Jaegher said, and the U-Pass schools are acting in solidarity with those outside the program to argue that a student is a student, no matter how old he or she is.