The Toronto Transit Commission is offering Toronto’s university and college students a deal. Students will get transit passes for “only” $60 a month during the school year which is substantially cheaper than the cost of Metropasses that students can now purchase.
But as with most things that governments do that appears to give their citizens a real benefit, there is a catch. If participating institutions opt into the program, the passes will be made available to each and every student, whether they want the pass or not. The cost of the transit pass for the school year will then be added to their tuition fees.
Other jurisdictions throughout North America have similar programs with their transit authorities to provide “cheap” fares for students. But according to the Toronto Sun, the cost to students in Toronto will be more than double what the average cost is in other cities. Two examples given are Mississauga and Chicago where students are required to pay $89 and $164 respectively for a school year. Toronto students would pay $60 a month or $480 for the eight month pass.
Students in the GTA seem to have different reactions to the fact that their tuition will increase to cover something that they may not want. Because of its location, York University is harder to access than many others schools and students are more reliant on public transit. The proposed monthly passes don’t seem to be too controversial. But in downtown schools such as the U of T and Ryerson, it is a different story. Many students either walk or bike to class and therefore there is more resentment on having to pay for a service that they neither want or need. According to the Toronto Sun, a 2005 survey showed that only 57 per cent of students use public transit. And those, especially in the downtown core, do not use the TTC every day. If those figures are still accurate, 43 per cent of students will end up with higher tuition fees with little or no benefit from the increase.
Although students, many of whom have to work more than one part time job to put themselves through school will find the addition of $480 a year a burden, there is a bright side to all of this. They will learn something and let’s face it; learning is what higher education is all about.
To begin with, despite everything that the students may believe or have heard over the years, the support for public transit has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the environment. If it did, the city mothers would think twice about imposing a program that would discourage students from walking or biking and encourage them to ride on a pollution spewing bus. The proposal has everything to do with money. The cash strapped city has to come up with the bucks to increase the pay of the already overpaid transit workers and if this has to be accomplished on the backs of the city’s university and college students, tough.
The fact that several students may end up paying for something that they don’t need, don’t want or will never use, is nothing new. That’s practically the definition of a taxpayer. Taxpayers are constantly being forced to pay for services that they don’t want and these kids might as well get used to it. And perhaps, just perhaps, being forced to pay a relatively large sum of money that many students will have difficulty coming up with, will ensure that the next generation of full time taxpayers may pay a little more attention to governments, especially local governments than those who elected the current councillors did.
If this program is implemented, it will be an expensive lesson for those who have no desire to get their money’s worth out of the TTC pass. But at least these students would have learned something.
