Since co-founding the University of Toronto Rocket Riders — the first transit advocacy group at the St. George campus — in March 2024, I have had countless opportunities to listen to students’ transit needs. These interactions have reinforced my understanding of students’ acute need for better public transit in Toronto.
However, even as service disruptions have become mundane and emergency maintenance a constant for the TTC, the one solution that student advocates continue to bring up time after time is the U-Pass. Short for universal transit pass, the U-Pass is a proposal to include an unlimited TTC pass for all students at the university as part of their tuition fees.
So what’s the problem with such a proposal?
In the winter 2025 semester, Rocket Riders conducted a transit survey at the St. George campus, which received over 200 responses. Survey findings have made it clear to me that a U-Pass is less desirable and feasible than its proponents believe it to be.
In my view, it is irresponsible for student advocates to commit to the U-Pass when students have so many transit needs that deserve more of our attention. We learned from the Rocket Riders Transit Survey that service reliability is by far the number one concern students have with the TTC today, followed by frequency and safety. The U-Pass does nothing to address these issues, nor is it a particularly realistic remedy for the cost issue.
A short history of the U-Pass
My views on the U-Pass emerged through discussions with Elijah Miller-Buza, my fellow co-president of the Rocket Riders and a University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) director-at-large. Miller-Buza believes that, though the U-Pass is a “very appealing concept,” it ultimately “feels more feasible than it is.”
A UTSU policy document last updated in 2020 includes a commitment to supporting the U-Pass as part of the UTSU’s sustainability policy. In a 2018 referendum, 65.6 per cent of UTSU voters rejected the U-Pass when asked if they would pay an eye-watering $322.50 per session, almost $400 in 2025 when adjusted for inflation.
More recently, in a now removed September 2024 Executive Report, the UTSU recognized that “momentum has halted for the time being” on a renewed attempt at the U-Pass, admitting in a January 2025 interview with The Varsity that it was not going to happen anytime soon.
The U-Pass proposal, then, is hardly new. The 2018 referendum ought to have served as a decisive judgment of the U-Pass, yet successive generations of student union executives have decided to reopen the conversation without engaging the student body.
Why should we stop talking about it?
89.6 per cent of respondents in Rocket Riders’ transit survey indicated they were willing to pay some amount for a U-Pass. Yet, less than 10 per cent of respondents were willing to pay more than $400 for one, and whatever price the TTC may demand now will likely exceed the 2018 figure adjusted for inflation. This attitude explains why so many students turned out to vote against the U-Pass in 2018, and nothing about students’ willingness to pay today indicates that this would change.
Furthermore, the provincial government’s introduction of the One Fare Program has made cross-system transfers in the GTA free. This renders a potential U-Pass completely useless for the 32.1 per cent of survey respondents who use GO trains as part of their commutes, creating a constituency of students who take transit but would receive no benefit from the U-Pass.
Miller-Buza raises a unique point in saying that “a U-Pass gives the TTC an extremely predictable income source… in perpetuity.” This presents the potential of disincentivizing the TTC from addressing student concerns as the “funding they [would] receive from students would be unlinked from… how well they serve students, or how they consider students, or how they [reach out] to students.” For context, with this semester’s undergraduate enrollment, the TTC would receive approximately 19 million dollars from a mandatory U-Pass fee.
The effort it would take to overcome the obstacles to the U-Pass would, in my opinion, dominate the work of transit advocates, at the cost of everything else. Such a trade-off is not worth it if it means that transit advocates must give up the capacity to work on any other transit issues, especially if the U-Pass brings with it unintentional consequences.
What are the alternatives?
“We should not be in the business of extinguishing the perennial light at the end of the tunnel, only to offer no alternatives,” said Miller-Buza. “Measures like a student fare, increased frequency on routes near campus, and fare capping provide a multitude of benefits, all while being… far more feasible than the U-Pass.” The responsibility then falls onto us as student advocates to change the minds of those who shape transit conversations on campus, as I discussed in a January 2025 interview with The Varsity.
One alternative is fare capping, a proposal to limit the maximum amount a TTC user can pay for transit each week or month. TTCriders — the premier grassroots advocacy group for transit users in Toronto — has an ongoing campaign for fare capping, and 97 per cent of students surveyed supported fare capping when introduced to the idea.
Fare capping gives students the flexibility to commute as many times as they need to per week instead of packing all their courses into a few days, as the most they can pay for transit will always be the same. What’s more, the TTC has already endorsed fare capping in principle, with its Strategic Planning Committee voting to further pursue fare capping in a September meeting. A concentrated push from advocates, in my view, could easily get this over the finish line.
Miller-Buza also points out Toronto’s odd lack of a student fare when “cities all around the world either have free transit for students or specialized student fares.” While the TTC offers a discounted post-secondary monthly pass at $128.15, students on an adult fare would need to ride the TTC at least 10 times a week for it to be economical, something that only 35.7 per cent of Rocket Riders’ survey respondents do. This is another example of something that could realistically be changed with intense, directed pressure.
If student politicians want to deliver better transit for students, it should not matter how flashy the proposal might be or who takes home the credit. In the words of my fellow co-president, it’s our job as advocates to “redirect students from the false hope presented by the U-Pass to the tangible and achievable progress that can be made elsewhere.”
Students deserve a better public transit deal. Let us therefore move on from uninspired, repetitive U-Pass discussions and towards effective, meaningful, and ready-made solutions.
Rudy Yuan is a fourth-year student at Trinity College studying international relations, German studies, and political science. He is the co-president of the University of Toronto Rocket Riders — The Student Transit Forum.
