City hall is looking into supplying school divisions with a bulk supply of cost-reduced transit passes so the organizations can provide those cards to students at a discounted rate.
The public works, infrastructure, and environment advisory committee held its February meeting recently and heard about a subsidized student transit program from Ward Strueby, director of education for Holy Trinity Catholic School Division, according to the meeting minutes.
He spoke about a meeting about this topic that occurred weeks early and provided an overview of that discussion, which included representatives from Holy Trinity, Prairie South School Division, Saskatchewan Polytechnic Moose Jaw Campus and the City of Moose Jaw.
“Administration informed the committee that the city offered reduced transit passes for students in the past and this reduction did not increase student ridership as the city had hoped,” the minutes said.
Despite that warning, the advisory committee put forward a recommendation to have city hall make available transit passes for community organizations at reduced rates so they could provide those cards to students at lessened costs.
That recommendation was sent to city council, which briefly discussed the motion during its Feb. 14 regular meeting.
Todd Johnson, chair of the advisory committee, provided further context to the request.
“They see the value in providing students (with) a discounted rate for ridership to encourage that, and to encourage that at the beginning of the school year,” he said.
Even though city administration advised that ridership never increased when discounted bus passes were issued years ago, the education organizations want to purchase the bulk passes and discount them for students so that the municipality doesn’t have to do anything, Johnson added.
Besides school divisions, large businesses could also purchase bulk passes at discounted rates for their employees and encourage them to take public transit, said Coun. Jamey Logan, the council rep on the advisory committee.
Even though he introduced the motion, Logan acknowledged that it did not have enough information for council to make an informed decision. He thought the recommendation was too open-ended and left council “in a bad way” and suggested that the motion be retooled with input from city administration before it came back to council.
“It has some value to it,” said Coun. Heather Eby. “But … it needs more work.”
Coun. Dawn Luhning then introduced a referral motion to have city administration work more on the recommendation and consult further with the advisory committee.
Council passed the motion unanimously.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Feb. 28.
