Belleville Transit, in conjunction with Loyalist College, will be creating a survey for Loyalist students asking if they’d like to be issued a year-long bus pass when they start the school year.
The cost of the so-called U-Pass, or universal pass, would be included as part of the College’s tuition.
Many colleges and universities offer U-Passes as part of tuition with costs ranging from $190 to close to $400 a year.
Currently, Loyalist College students pay $520 for bus passes for eight months of the year.
Belleville Transit committee Chair Kathryn Brown says the value of a student survey was proved in Kingston with students at both
Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College.
Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College.
“The city had made the decision to discontinue the U-Pass. It was the students who brought it back, it was the students that talked about how it was important and why it was important to them and I think that’s what we want to gauge here through what we’re proposing going forward with this survey.”
A majority of students would have to support the U-Pass. Previous attempts through plebiscites at Loyalist to institute U-Passes
have been unsuccessful.
have been unsuccessful.
U-Passes would make boarding buses quicker and cut down on the number of people crowding onto buses without paying the fare.
Belleville Transit’s Manager of Transit Operations says spot checks of people waiting to board a bus showed a “very serious” fraud problem.
The actual wording of the survey would have to be approved by Belleville Transit and Loyalist College.
