News and Views »
Straight Issues
Lori MacDonald holds up a sign as part of a student-union protest against TransLink’s pricing policies for its U-Pass program.
August 21, 2008
Students ready for fare fight in Metro Vancouver
How can the U-Pass program be changed to benefit more transit riders?
Tiffany Kalanj
Organizer, Students’ Unions of Vancouver Community College
“Our position has been that TransLink has the responsibility to look at all students in a standardized way. And if you’re a student in the Metro Vancouver area, you should have access to transit, and we should define that price for all students in the Metro Vancouver area, and not do a campus-by-campus price. There are 20,000 students at VCC, Douglas College, and Emily Carr who are currently excluded from the program.”
Derek Robertson
Chair, Kwantlen University Student Association
“We got a tentative offer from TransLink for $19 a month, but that involves zero transit improvement, just as the transit is right now. It’s not acceptable. What the KSA will be looking at is bringing the price of the U-Pass up so it’s comparable with SFU and UBC, and with that increase demand a number of service upgrades, route changes—things that will benefit the students in the Kwantlen area.”
Shamus Reid
B.C. chair, Canadian Federation of Students
“[TransLink’s] policy really makes no sense from a fairness perspective. It basically means that the poorer students who take transit the most have to pay the most for a U-Pass, because there’s little benefit from a business perspective for TransLink to offer a low-cost U-Pass. Under this revenue-neutral policy, VCC students can’t get a fair-priced U-Pass, because they already take transit a lot. It basically comes down to a poverty tax.”
Vanessa Kapka
External representative, Emily Carr Students’ Union
“It can benefit more people by becoming standardized. TransLink is hesitant to funnel more money into the program because it would end up costing more. But I think the overall end results will be worth the extra money. Transportation is a major issue for the majority of students going to postsecondary institutions in B.C. It’s terribly discriminatory for students to be paying three times more than others do.”
Student unions across the region claim that TransLink is discriminating against students. And they plan to make differential transit fares
an issue in this November’s municipal elections.
Student unions at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver Community College, and Douglas College want politicians to support their campaign for fair prices in the regional transportation authority’s U-Pass program.
According to Lori MacDonald, executive director of the Emily Carr Students’ Union, the long-standing revenue-neutral policy of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority in negotiating U-Pass packages has resulted in a discriminatory pricing system.
“It means that some students will be paying twice as much as other students,” MacDonald told the Georgia Straight. “Students generally support having a U-Pass, because it means they can have unlimited access to transit throughout the Lower Mainland.”
A student at UBC gets a U-Pass for $23.75 per month, while another at SFU receives the discounted pass for $26.10. At Langara College, a U-Pass costs $38. A regular monthly one-zone TransLink pass goes for $73.
MacDonald noted that last year, TransLink offered students at Emily Carr and VCC passes for about $40 and $50, respectively, which the unions rejected as unfair.
“It’s unfair because students will be paying different prices for the same service,” MacDonald said.
She explained that TransLink has to ditch its revenue-neutral policy, which calculates U-Pass prices so that revenue matches the amount earned from students at a particular institution prior to the program being introduced. The next step, according to MacDonald, is to standardize prices in such a way that students currently using U-Passes don’t have to pay more.
MacDonald said student unions will be raising these issues in a forthcoming letter to B.C. Liberal minister of transportation Kevin Falcon. “We are also asking that the B.C. government provide dedicated funding for the expansion of the universal pass to all public postsecondary institutions in Metro Vancouver,” she said.
TransLink spokesperson Ken Hardie noted that U-Passes will cost more the longer it takes student unions to negotiate with the transportation authority.
“If you go through a round of negotiations and TransLink says, ‘Look, we could give it to you at this price,’ it’s like a lot of things—that offer is good only for a period of time because, very clearly, as time goes by, your cost of business goes up,” Hardie told the Straight.
Hardie also emphasized that TransLink’s revenue-neutral policy ensures that the transportation authority would be able to address transit needs across all sectors and areas in Metro Vancouver. “Offering a U-Pass to a school is not cost-neutral to TransLink,” he said. “It ends up costing us more money.”
Hardie explained that transit fares are actually subsidized by about 45 percent, and with increased demand for transit service “our subsidy goes up because we’re not recovering 100 percent of costs.”
MacDonald and her colleagues have been meeting with Geoff Meggs, former executive assistant to then–Vancouver mayor and now senator Larry Campbell, who intends to make the U-Pass one of the key issues in the municipal elections this November.
“There will have to be a standardization of the price, and it’s the only fair way to handle the matter,” Meggs, who is seeking a Vision Vancouver nomination for its council slate, told the Straight.
Meggs recalled that Vision Vancouver councillors Raymond Louie and George Chow brought forward to council on February 12 a motion asking the City of Vancouver to make representations to TransLink on the implementation of the U-Pass program at Emily Carr and VCC. The same motion also called for a fairly priced U-Pass. It likewise pointed out that TransLink had a surplus of $386.1 million in 2007.
Mayor Sam Sullivan ruled the motion out of order, noting council has no control over the matter. When questioned by Louie, the mayor’s ruling was sustained by members of Sullivan’s Non-Partisan Association caucus in council.
email
print
2 comments 
Comments
TransLink wanted to do two things:
1) Increase transit ridership on paper.
2) Appease politicians that they were actually doing something.
The U-Pass was first conceived to put 'bums' on empty bus seats. In Vancouver, buses did not have empty seats.
TransLink doesn't actually count boardings on buses to calculate ridership, rather they use a strange alchemy of passes sold, revenue, and spot loading counts. This is hardly scientific, but TransLink is incapable of doing anything else.
By having a UBC U-Pass TransLink created an aura of actually doing something, while doing little or nothing at all. They received increased revenue, but REAL ridership increases were questionable.
The UBC bound buses, already at capacity at peak hours, could not handle the extra 'bums' and long ques at bus stops were the norm. Smaller colleges and schools were never considered because they did not have the volume of students that would make it worth while for the "U-Pass".
What the U-Pass has done is:
1) Shown that TransLink has the 'German Disease', where the public transit system is only for the poor, the elderly, and STUDENTS. In effect, public transit has become a social service - the 'kiss of death' of any public transit system.
2) Given the opportunity for TransLink to claim higher ridership, whether it is true or not.
3) Stressed the transit system to the point that it has forced customers off the system and into cars.
Hardie's statement "“Offering a U-Pass to a school is not cost-neutral to TransLink,” he said. “It ends up costing us more money." is farcical, for if buses are already at capacity, how can extra revenue be a detriment?
The truth is, U-Pass has nothing to do with good transit policy and everything to do with TransLink politics.
Post a comment