All Posts Tagged With: "TTC"
TTC wants to renege on part-time student transit pass
If an unbalanced budget is the concern, pass shouldn’t be extended to some groups in favour of others
A new policy recommendation going to Toronto’s city council tomorrow seeks to cut the student transit pass discount for part-time students as of July 31. The Toronto Transit Commission cites lost revenue as the major reason for reversing a decision that’s barely a year old.
In November 2009, the TTC voted to extend the high school student transit pass price ($99) to post-secondary students beginning September 2010. In December, private career college students raised a fuss about being excluded from the new discounted price.
The TTC’s solution: Allow them to receive the discounted price, and exclude part-time students instead. This is a case of a lack of support for part-time students yet again.
The Toronto Star reported on a review of the new pass program, which lead to the policy recommendation now on the table:
“That review says extending the post-secondary-school discount to private college students is too costly. It means $400,000 annually in lost revenues, bringing the total loss under the discount to $7.7 million — with “negligible” gains in ridership.
“So the report is recommending removing part-timers from the program, to mitigate the fare loss by $1.4 million. The move would also reduce the number of riders the TTC expected to gain through the post-secondary passes, from about 500,000 to 400,000.”
Sure, I can understand budget restraints, but taking something away from one group just to give to another is just plain cruel. If your budget is strained in the first place, I would suggest not including new groups in your discount programs until you can afford to do so.
In this case, it’s even more unfortunate as most part-time students study part-time for a reason. Many are supporting dependents, many can’t get enough funding to attend full-time and are therefore forced to work while going to school, and the list goes on.
There are so many pressures on students these days, and this is another example of how under-funding public transit is hurting everyone, including part time students who are doing things like raising dependents and trying to make their own life.
Private colleges barred from reduced transit fares
A program to give Toronto students discounted bus passes will exclude students from private career colleges
Not every Toronto student will be able to take advantage of new discounted bus passes. The Toronto Transit Commission is introducing student passes for $99 per month, compared to regular adult passes that cost $121. However, students attending one of Toronto’s private career colleges will be ineligible for the discounted rate. That’s “unfair” and “discriminatory” says John Nunziata of the Ontario Association of Career Colleges. He estimates that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 students attending a career college like Medix School or Herzing College in the Greater Toronto Area.
Nunziata says that the majority of students attending a private college are low income adults who are, in many cases, unemployed. “These are some of the neediest of the post-secondary students, some are on UI (unemployment insurance), others are participating in government-sponsored career programs,” he told the Toronto Star.
TTC chair Adam Giambrone did not rule out permitting students from private colleges from benefiting from the program in the future, but says the sheer number of private colleges raises budgetary red flags. He also pointed out that unlike students in approved programs, many students attending private colleges only attend for a couple weeks at a time. “The problem is you have hundreds of institutions across Toronto. If you were to allow all of them, it is a huge budget impact. Without a detailed review (of each and every one), it would be very expensive,” he told the Star.
Students, social media, and net rage
If social media empowers people, can that power be abused?
I’ve been in a minor twitter war lately on the topic of the #TTC. For those either not in Toronto, or else not paying attention, there has been a recent explosion of stories about transit employees slacking off on the job. The first was about a sleeping fare collector caught on camera. Fair enough – sleeping on any job has got to be a no-no. Then it was a bus driver caught on video while taking an unscheduled washroom break and getting a coffee. Now it’s become the thing to do to snap photos or film videos of TTC employees doing just about anything. And it’s getting a lot of attention.
On the one hand this is a good news story. It’s about citizens taking power over their public services, and it represents yet another victory of social media. The very same tools that allow dissidents in Iran to get their message out allow disgruntled TTC riders to get their point across too. Never let it be said I’m against that. But at some point there also has to be a limit. The problem has been expressed in any number of creative ways. Some say “little brother is watching you!” Some refer to citizen-paparazzi. I say that even a little bit of power can be abused, and if it’s abused by enough people then we have a big problem. But however we express the issue, I think we can all agree there must be a limit.
There are 10,000 or so TTC employees (warning – info from Wikipedia – in any event there are a lot) and if you aim enough cameras at all of them you’ll always catch someone. That’s life. If we start resenting people their coffees and their pee breaks, or make a public issue of it every time someone sneaks out back for a smoke, we’ll only succeed in making their lives intolerable. And in a world where turnabout is fair play, there’s decent odds someone will be making our own lives unbearable in return. This kind of war can’t end well for anyone. We’ve seen how social media can improve our lives. We may be on the verge of seeing how it can screw them up too.
Considering how wired and net-savvy most students are, I think this an issue that’s especially relevant to our generation. I’m also reminded of a minor but memorable event that occurred during my tenure on the local students’ union. We had a message forum for students. It was well-used and appreciated in its time. Then students started ragging on the local Tim Horton’s on our campus – complaining about the wait times, the service, and then about specific staff members. And I heard from one of those staff members as a result. She was genuinely hurt. Just a regular, minimum wage employee trying to do her job. The attention made her very uncomfortable. Her daughter attended the same campus. And I couldn’t help feeling as though we’d crossed a line. Today that line is even easier to cross, and in dramatic fashion.
There are justifiable complaints about the TTC, just as there are justifiable complaints about many other things. The ability to articulate and coordinate those complaints, as citizen-journalists and as participants in social media, is very powerful and important. But that power has got to be tempered with at least some sense of responsibility. If it is not, we risk not only harming people out of proportion to their individual blameworthiness, we also risk delegitimizing the very tools that have proved so effective.
It really does sadden me how often students are and feel disempowered. Just as TTC riders feel disempowered. And change is certainly overdue in both contexts. But I also think that people who are used to feeling disempowered, once they latch onto a bit of power, are sometimes apt to use it in negative ways. It’s an idea I’d urge everyone to think more about – especially before you aim your camera, or your iphone, or your blog at someone. It’s always in order to question and even attack institutions. But before you attack individuals be sure it’s warranted. Because next time it’s just as likely to be you.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
