Students who attend post-secondary institutions in Calgary often struggle with making ends meet, but when they’re charged for something they wouldn’t necessarily use, it’s downright frustrating.
Every year, every student who attends school at any post-secondary school in the city needs to pay $280 for a U-Pass. It’s part of an agreement with Calgary Transit to ensure a reduced rate for students who use the service to get to class.
The fee is added to their tuition and the schools end up paying that money, over $12M, back to Calgary Transit.
Marla Johnson, whose son Logan is enrolled at SAIT, says the U-Pass isn’t anything other than a tax.
Furthermore, she says that when Logan tried to use it, he found the LRT parking lots were often full. Even when he does manage to get parking, he said taking transit often doubled his commute time.
“It makes it difficult to do homework because you get home and you want to do some before you go to bed, then you get up and you still have some homework to do,” he said.
Logan wishes he could use the money for a bus pass for something else.
“I’d like to put that money toward a parking pass so I can actually go to school and park and not worry about having to buy a U-Pass I don’t want and buy a parking pass that I need to get there most days.”
Transit officials say that students can’t opt out because, if they did, the rate for students who need to use transit would go up.
“The program was negotiated with [the schools] and this is best for the majority… if a student wants to opt out, his best bet would be to go through his school,” Calgary Transit said in a statement.
Logan said he tried, but SAIT declined his request.
The city says it does offer students a flat reduced rate, but those are for low income students and don’t apply in this case.
Meanwhile, ridership on Calgary Transit is down four percent compared to this time last year and the city is projecting a $10M shortfall in the service by the end of 2017.
(With files from Lea Williams-Doherty)
