After being suspended for the summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U-Pass will be resuming in September, with increased options for students residing outside of the Lower Mainland to opt out.
Some students living outside the area initially expressed concerns about paying for a service they won’t be able to use.
“It just doesn’t make sense to pay for the U-Pass in the fall … I won’t even be on the continent,” said Sarah Sadh, a second-year cognitive systems student at UBC.
But since the announcement of the increased ability of students to opt out, the concern has shifted to the fact that general usage of transit, even within the Lower Mainland, has decreased for many students.
“Everybody who’s already living here is going to stay at home or on campus because everything’s online or shut down … Even if students are using transit here and there, they’re probably going to be actually spending way less than $170, which is the cost of [4 months of the U-Pass],” said local UBC student Jeevan Srann.
However, reasons for reinstating the U-Pass are plenty, according to AMS VP Kalith Nanayakkara.
One such reason is cost. Over the summer, the AMS operated a subsidy program that allowed students currently in Vancouver to have decreased transit costs.
“We had to allocate about a million dollars to this program because, based on our COVID-19 survey, those were the projections we were able to come to. Along with the [Graduate Student Society], we asked for a million dollars and UBC gave that to us, but if we had to carry that forward, it would’ve been way more costly for students,” Nanayakkara said.
Another was due to the structure of the U-Pass program. Ten post-secondary institutions took part in the negotiations with TransLink before coming to a collective decision to reinstate the program.
“Not all schools can afford to have that much money given to their students for a bus pass,” Nanayakkara said of the AMS’s summer subsidy program.
“It’s just UBC that’s able to do that. Even if we had individually chosen to keep the subsidy going, the other nine schools had no choice but to keep the U-Pass going,” he said of the collective agreement by the ten schools.
In order to apply for an exemption, students have to fill out a form and enter the address outside of the Lower Mainland where they are primarily residing.
Nanayakkara stated that since the U-Pass exemption form will have thousands of applicants, the AMS will perform random rather than individual audits to get proof of residence and confirm that students are residing outside the area.
Other fee reductions
Currently, the AMS also has a reimbursement process for immunocompromised students and for students who need financial help.
Immunocompromised students or those living with immunocompromised family members could be reluctant to use public transit because of the risk of getting COVID-19.
“If students are immunocompromised or if they have family members who are immunocompromised, they can fill out the Disability Exemption form and select the disability option and they’ll be exempted from the U-Pass,” Nanayakkara said.
Students suffering financial hardships can apply for support for paying for the U-Pass through the AMS Hardship Subsidy Form. Nanayakkara said that the form is ready and will be up on the AMS website.
“There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes and it's important for us to remind students that we're trying to ensure that no students are falling through the cracks and that we're trying to find a system that benefits as many as possible.”