SAC’s big success of last year, winning subsidized metropasses for U of T students, has proved to be more popular than expected, as students have snapped up the discount passes in record time.
“Every day it’s been really busy,” said Anmar Khan and Aminah Husain, who were staffing the booth last Thursday afternoon. Khan said that they’ve been selling between 200 and 300 cards every day. The cards cost $87 per month
Rebecca Saxon, a third year English major standing in line to buy a pass, said she usually buys a metropass during the school year to commute from her home in the east end.
“Any savings is good,” said Saxon. “I think this is about as much as you’d pay if you bought them all year. I don’t really know what the cost savings is.”
“They’re supposed to be a trial project,” said Alexandra Artful-Dodger, vice-president operations at SAC. “The fact that they’ve been so successful indicates there is a need for these discounts.”
President Ashley Morton said that SAC sold 734 August passes, and that they’ve already broken that record for September.
“We’ve already surpassed that number in the first three days [of sales]” he said, predicting that the council “could hit 10,000 by the end of October and November.”
The trial period for the discountd transit passes has already been extended. It was originally to have lasted from August 2003 to August 2004, but the Toronto Transit Commission has lengthened the period to December 2004.
In order to continue the program with the full discount, SAC had to sell 500 passes each month, a quota which they fulfilled in just a day and a half.
The $87 Metropasses can be purchased by all students, staff and faculty of U of T, and are on sale in the basement of the SAC building at 12 Hart House Circle and at the Scarborough Campus Students Union.
