If approved in an upcoming referendum, UTSC students might get their hands on the long-debated Universal Pass, a discounted monthly TTC pass for Toronto post-secondary students.
The UPass is a proposed alternative to the TTC’s current Volume Incentive Program, which gives bulk buyers a discount on metropasses as long as they buy at least 50 passes a month.
In 2005, the University of Toronto Students’ Union secured a VIP discount with a yearly contract that begins and expires every January.
Since UTSU entered the program, the price of the VIP has risen from $87 to $96 per pass. The regular adult metropass costs $109.
The more metropasses a university purchases, the cheaper each pass costs for each student. However, the TTC limits the number of metropasses a school can buy. UTSU is limited to a maximum of 12,000 passes per month. This sets the pass price. UTSU is the single largest buyer in the VIP.
At a proposed cost of $480 per academic year, the UPass offers students unlimited travel on all regular TTC services, as well as York Region transit services, from September to May.
Student unions have shown some resistance to the UPass, however, because all students would have to purchase the pass, whether they like it or not. Fourteen student unions, representing universities and colleges across the GTA including U of T, Ryerson, and York, have been in negotiations with the TTC since last January. After more than a year, no school has signed up for the program
On March 19 and 20, the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union plans to hold a referendum for part-time and full-time students to decide whether or not to accept the offer. In order for the referendum to pass, it will need the support of the majority of full-time UTSC students.
UTSU VP external Dave Scrivener said that although the student union at St. George isn’t going to referendum with the UPass any time soon, they haven’t rejected the offer completely. If UTSC were to accept the UPass, it would weaken UTSU’s and other unions’ bargaining position in negotiations with the TTC.
“For such a massive levy increase, we want to make sure that students at U of T are familiar with the issue first,” said Scrivener.
A disputed study conducted by the TTC in 2005 claimed that 57 per cent of full-time UTSC students use the TTC and that if a referendum were to pass, 87 per cent of those students would use the UPass.
The same survey reported that 84 per cent of full-time St. George students use the TTC at least once per year, and claimed that 93 per cent of them “would use the UPass if available and passed in a referendum.”
According to TTC marketing research director Michael Anders, the price was calculated to bring in the same revenue that the TTC earns from metropass sales to university students. He said that the $480 fee would keep the TTC’s metropass earnings neutral, though critics have charged that the UPass program will inflate their ridership numbers,which are useful in getting increased financial support from the federal government.
“If all of the eight post-secondary institutions were to come along, which are about 150,000 students, we’re looking at somewhere around 15 to 20 million more rides,” said Adam Giambrone, TTC chair.
In the case of Scarborough, a campus of 10,000 students, Giambrone says that the TTC can expect to see around one million extra rides. Giambrone has noted publicly that the additional ridership will mean increased operating and maintenance costs for the TTC. The city recently announced increased service along many TTC lines, but critics have said the public transit network cannot accept a dramatic increased in ridership without drastically slowing down service. Anders and Giambrone have said repeatedly that any schools that approve a UPass referendum by the end of 2008 are guaranteed the $480 per year price until May 2010.
Asked if UTSU would be able to subsidize part of the UPass fee, Scrivener said that the student union simply doesn’t have enough money to give a meaningful subsidy.
“The amount of money we could potentially save by no longer offering the [VIP] metropass sales program is only in the ballpark of $20,000 for our financial year, which would offer a discount of less than a dollar per member of St. George,” said Scrivener.
Scrivener noted that UBC, SFU, and U of A all subsidize their transit pass programs.
“Perhaps the U of T administration is a little bit more thrifty,” he said.
