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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 4:53 PM
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Are U-Pass prices fair?

As much as it does suck to pay for higher U-Pass prices if you're at VCC or Langara or some other smaller institution, I don't think it has anything to do with discriminating or whatever but rather economies of scale with smaller student populations making it more expensive for Translink to serve them with transit, thus reflected in the U-Pass price.

The last thing Translink needs to have its revenues decreased.



Quote:
Students say TransLink prices unfair
Small post-secondaries are paying higher fares and want the same deal as university students

By Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun
April 12, 2009

VANCOUVER — Students attending the region’s smaller post-secondary schools say they are tired of paying more for public transit than those enrolled at larger universities, and they are taking their fight to B.C.’s top public watchdog.

In a complaint filed with the Office of the B.C. Ombudsman last week, students of Vancouver Community College, Emily Carr University and Douglas College allege TransLink’s U-pass program is unfair and discriminatory.

Under the program, students at the University of B.C., Simon Fraser University, Langara College and Capilano University pay a specially negotiated monthly fare ranging from $26.75 to $38.

College students excluded from the U-pass program, meanwhile, are charged between $73 and $136 per month, depending on whether they are full- or part-time students.

For VCC student and student union representative Maggie Murray, the extra money she pays out every month to get to class makes a huge dent in her “poverty-line” budget.

“It’s the difference between taking the bus to school or maybe having a bit more food in my fridge,” she said.

The complaint is the result of years of failed negotiations between the schools and TransLink.

Students said transit costs should be universally applied, regardless of which institution they attend.

“You can’t have a subsidy where some people get it and some people don’t when they are travelling on the same bus,” said Tiffany Kalanj, a VCC student union staff member.

TransLink said it can’t afford a flat rate if that means losing money.

U-pass discounts vary from school to school, based on the number of students contributing to the program, said TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie. The greater the number of people involved, the lower the cost.

(When schools sign up, all students must pay the monthly fee, regardless of whether they use transit or not. The contract is renegotiated every three years.)

The transit service uses a revenue-neutral calculation to come up with a price, meaning the money generated under the program must equal the cost of running the service. The program has proved extremely popular, with about 60,000 UBC and SFU students using it daily, which has forced TransLink to put on extra buses and extend service hours.

Hardie said past offers to charge VCC and other college students about $35 a month have been repeatedly rejected.

“It was a good deal, especially compared with a monthly pass but the student councils of the day refused to take anything to their students that wasn’t like UBC,” he said.

Murray and others behind the U-pass complaint said TransLink’s calculations are questionable, adding officials have been neither transparent nor consistent about how they arrived at the varying rates.

Murray said an independent transit researcher hired by the colleges to review TransLink’s methodology came up with “very different numbers.”

According to Kalanj, 60 per cent of VCC’s 26,000 students take transit to the school’s two campuses. Of those, about two-thirds are part-time students who receive no subsidy at all. Full-time students, meanwhile, are extended a flat one-zone rate of $73 per month, regardless of how many transit zones they travel through to get to class.

Last week, the students gained support for their complaint from the City of Vancouver, after presenting council with a petition containing 6,000 signatures.

Kalanj said it could take six months for the complaint to be heard.

dahansen@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/News/Stu...240/story.html
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  #2  
Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 4:59 PM
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Economies of scale totally play into factor here, but I can see why VCC etc. would reject the U-Pass. At $35 a month, I don't think they can force the non-transit users to cough up that amount of cash.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 5:01 PM
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Disclosing the fact that I'm a UBC and SFU alum and therefore unfairly biased, I have to say I've always thought that the graduated-scale pricing was fair. The reality is that Translink needs all the help it can get right now, especially as the recession is squeezing them (and transit authorities everywhere - even NYC is facing the collapse of their system amidst budget cuts) and it's simply not fair to ask Translink to take on the burden of subsidy for students at this time.

Having said that, all those VCC students could work on getting into UBC and get the U-Pass way cheaper
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 5:30 PM
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Make All Universities the same price.

Increasing UBC and SFU slightly to offset new Universities/schools coming online would do the trick without decreasing revenues.

Translink has already said they'd do this, but UBC and SFU don't want to budge.

The principles of an "economy of scale" do not apply. Basically, Translink will issue a U-Pass if their after revenue doesn't change... or in other words, the U-Pass has to be revenue neutral.

So, if the VCC pass is $35, doesn't that mean that there must be a large percentage of transit users already using transit?

In other words, the revenue they currently get from students must proportionally high if they need $35 from EVERY student to break even.

A 1-zone month pass is $73. This would mean that just under 50% of VCC students use transit. A figure that makes sense, given that they're right on a SkyTrain line.

If this is true, they're essentially being punished for having high transit usage.

Contrast this to UBC, where the U-Pass is $26.75 which is 1/3 the cost of a 1-zone monthly pass.

It would seem to me that, at the time of negotiation, there were TWO UBC students NOT using transit to every ONE that did.

So, Translink serves to gain more from UBC, because there are proportionally fewer transit users.

It seems much more logical to use the size of UBC and SFU's student base to offset the costs for a larger pool of schools.

I bet if you made the U-Pass $29.99 all around, it would be revenue neutral. If anyone wants to the math on that based on school populations, it may be interesting.

EDIT: Remember, the U-Pass idea was controversial to start with, so Translink likely chose the school that they could offer the cheapest deal to, sweeten the deal. It would've been a lot more difficult to initiate a University-wide pricing policy, which would've been preferable to Translink, as the price would've likely been over $30 and hard to swallow for students where the plan wasn't really proven, or where students hadn't warmed up to the idea.

Now that people have seen its success, it's possible to try to initiate some standardization.

As for VCC students switching to UBC, no offense, but just because tuition is higher at UBC, doesn't mean the education is superior. I've known a few who prefer learning in a smaller class environment, or prefer practical-focused teaching to the traditional styles. Remember, the way these older institutions teach doesn't fit with everyone's learning styles and offer a different product.

Last edited by twoNeurons; Apr 13, 2009 at 7:14 PM.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 5:31 PM
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I've got to say, I do find it a -bit- unfair. Given that the program is supposed to be revenue-neutral, I'm not quite sure how economies of scale would play such a significant role. Even assuming that's the only reason that there's a difference in price, why can't Translink base the price on the aggregate of all students using the service rather than on a school by school basis? I mean, I'm pretty sure that most students use their U-Pass for things other than going to and from school.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 5:37 PM
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The problem with the aggregate arguement is that it's hard enough to get ALL UBC/SFU/Langara students to pay for something that only a percentage of them use - it would be just as unfair to ask UBC/SFU/Langara students to subsidize VCC/etc students as it is to ask VCC students to pay more.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 6:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexYVR View Post
The problem with the aggregate arguement is that it's hard enough to get ALL UBC/SFU/Langara students to pay for something that only a percentage of them use - it would be just as unfair to ask UBC/SFU/Langara students to subsidize VCC/etc students as it is to ask VCC students to pay more.
Sorry, I should have specified I was referring to transit using students, not all students. Although you could argue that that would definitely bring prices down for everyone.

As for it being unfair to increase the price for UBC/SFU students to bring down the costs for Langara/VCC, I'm not sold. You'd have to show me that UBC and SFU students spend less time using transit than Langara or VCC students before I would consider that they're subsidizing them. And in that case, why not charge UBC students who live in Burnaby more than those who already live in West Van? It just makes more sense to me to charge all transit using students the same price regardless as to which school they're going to.

Edit: For some reason I was thinking that only transit using students paid for U-Pass. Ignore that first paragraph.

Last edited by Windex; Apr 13, 2009 at 6:39 PM.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 6:20 PM
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^ i don't know about the other schools, but at UBC we hold student referendums whenever there's an increase to the U-Pass fee. A major increase would certainly make quite a bit of noise, and could swing the vote the other way - canceling the UBC U-Pass entirely.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 6:30 PM
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Well, there is also the fact many UBC & SFU students live on campus and therefore don't use transit regularly. Those students are paying for other students who use the buses. At UBC there are about 11,000 people living on campus vs the total student population of around 40,000.
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Old Posted Apr 13, 2009, 7:44 PM
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Plus with UBC and SFU the ridership pretty much packs buses for a large portion of the day, if Langara or VCC often have an overcapacity nearby then it is likely that their running costs per student trip are simply much high than busses going to UBC or SFU.
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Old Posted Apr 15, 2009, 9:12 PM
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Here we go:

Quote:
Campbell promises cheap transit passes to post-secondary students

B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Campbell rolled out his election-campaign platform Wednesday in Vancouver, promising to extend a popular subsidized transit program to all post-secondary students in the province.

Campbell said if his party wins a third term in the May 12 British Columbia election, they'll give all college and university students U-Passes starting in September 2010. The transit passes, which were first issued to university students in Metro Vancouver about five years ago, let all registered students pay a low monthly fee for access to public transit.

Other promises in the BC Liberal Party platform emphasized keeping government spending under control while increasing health-care, education and infrastructure funding.

"Now, more than ever, we need to build on the strengths that have taken our economy from the worst in Canada under the NDP to one of the strongest economies on the continent today," said Campbell.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/bcvotes2009...rm-u-pass.html
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Old Posted Apr 15, 2009, 9:40 PM
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Originally Posted by AlexYVR View Post
Campbell promises cheap transit passes to post-secondary students
Great. As long as they ensure there are enough buses on the road to handle the demand. We are still around 500 short.
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Old Posted Apr 15, 2009, 9:44 PM
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how much difference in tuition is there between Douglas College (insert samller college name here) and UBC?

I am sure students at the smaller colleges are getting a better break on that and thus can afford the higher priced transit pass

it all balances out

people want everything on a silver platter
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 12:06 AM
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The U-Pass should be the same for all institutions.. we should be working on making post-secondary education as affordable as possible to everyone.

SpongeG.. did you ever stop to think that maybe people attending smaller institutions aren't necessarily there by choice? Douglas College, VCC, Langara, etc are all much cheaper (and smaller) than UBC and SFU.. just because tuition is less for them doesn't mean that they have more money to spend on transit.
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 1:05 AM
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well that should be taken into account in their spending - these people are whining but they already have it good with lower costs where they are

i am just saying it all balances out in the end - smaller tuition fees leaves money over for transit - should they get a better deal than UBC etc?
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 1:25 AM
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Life isn't fair, we should stop trying to pretend it is so that when these students leave school they don't have all these preconceived ideals.
Translink is not ripping off the smaller schools, they are offering the best price they can. Every school is still greatly benefiting from it, when we went to school we had to pay the full 1 zone adult price and we didn't complain. The fact that UBC pays less should be seen as a bonus for UBC nothing more.
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 4:31 AM
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UPass is very expensive for local taxpayers who pay the lion's share for local transit services. Originally conceived to be revenue neutral, it is not the case as significant additional investments have to be made in service every year to try and keep up with demand, meanwhile revenue derived from UPass does not increase anywhere near the rate that expenses have increased to try and cope with demand. The smaller the institution, the further away from revenue neutrality the model can become. UPass holders are now the most highly subsidized transit users out there from the perspective of the local transit authority. While it is wonderful if you are entitled to a UPass, one does wonder what makes the UPass holder entitled to the higheset subsidy....higher than the working poor, students in elementary and high school and the disabled.

Also, to correct a common misconception out there, the $45 annual pass that goes to low income seniors and the disabled is subsidized by the Province. The Province issues these passes and pays the transit authority (TransLink or BC Transit depending upon the person's residence) the equivalent rate of a monthly concession bus pass for 12 months for each annual pass they issue. If the Liberals intend to provide transit authorities with similar subsidies to help fund a Province wide UPass program, then that is fine and well, it will come out of Provincial revenues. If the Liberals impose this on TransLink without funding, it will put another large dent in TransLink's new funding plan and that plan which has only started public consultation will have to be worked over to a large degree to re-balance it again. The end result will be that local taxpayers will pay more for less transit expansion...or pay more just to maintain existing service than what TransLink is proposing right now.

While UPass is a grand idea, it has put tremendous strain on a transit system that was quite strained to begin with and is a loss proposition financially. Transit has suffered for too long because it was never run like a proper business. The Liberals are only going to make things worse, not better by imposing additional burdens such as this.
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 5:04 AM
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Coming from someone whose experience with the subject of transportation planning is limited, I would venture to say that transit has never worked when run like a business. Look at any transit model and you will (I would guess) see an entity heavily subsidized and usually partially owned by the government, especially in the North American model. As long as car ownership is relatively cheap (compared to say, Singapore or Copenhagen, because I know people will bring them both up), transit providers are stuck trying to sell an 'inferior' method of transportation for what is none the less a substantial, and very visible, monthly cost to users.

Interestingly since we're talking about the U-Pass, TransLink faces the same dilemma that UBC and other universities do - just like a full year's worth of tuition comes no where near covering the expense of educating a single student (I believe it's something like 17% currently?), transit fares will always be seen as 'too expensive' by users while never being enough to cover the full operational costs of the transit authority. This is why we have government subsidy and partial ownership.

As a (cold-hearted, capitalist) American who came to Canada for school and stayed, I can tell you, I give the side-eye to ANYONE who claims that $4,000 a year is putting a huge strain on anyone's financials - especially to anyone who claims that the difference between a $3,000 Langara education and a $4,000 UBC education will break them. There are always exceptions, yes, and there are also scholarships, merit-based aid, summer jobs, loans, etc. I miss my U-Pass but I'm happy to pay my $73 monthly to support a public transportation system, just as I was proud to pay tuition to support an education I believed in.

Once again, I have to agree with Jlousa. This is not a communist society. A UBC student has no obligation to cover the costs of a Langara student, and the fact that UBC managed to seal the deal at a better price than the colleges can is just an issue of influence, size, and economies of scale.


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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 5:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GeeCee View Post
The U-Pass should be the same for all institutions.. we should be working on making post-secondary education as affordable as possible to everyone.

SpongeG.. did you ever stop to think that maybe people attending smaller institutions aren't necessarily there by choice? Douglas College, VCC, Langara, etc are all much cheaper (and smaller) than UBC and SFU.. just because tuition is less for them doesn't mean that they have more money to spend on transit.
But a lot are there simply because they couldn't be bothered to go elsewhere bother or didn't have the initiative to get to better places. It's kind of an irrelevant point. If you can't work hard enough during the school year to stay in university you generally can work hard enough during the summer or part time to support yourself. I'd like to point out that if anyone is willing to get off their ass and work some of the more challenging jobs available in the summer season it's not hard to expect to earn $15-20K in a summer regardless of what field of study you're taking.

While on coop terms there really isn't much additional opportunity to earn more money than a college student in the summer. The tuition difference makes a huge difference. The students of the various colleges should be able and expected to cover their asses just as effectively as university students.

Also where do you draw the line when organizing the costs? If you want to break another level you may as well say that arts students at UBC should pay less for the u-pass than engineering or commerce students at UBC or SFU. Hell, they already pay less for tuition (~$135/credit for arts vs $15x for engineering vs $20x for commerce at UBC) even in the same classes, not to mention they have to take less classes.

I really don't feel sympathy for people who complain about tuition costs. Its there, but it makes it so you have to justify the investment in yourself and actually put consideration and a hell of a lot of hard work into a degree. If you make it a free ride you devalue the degree.
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Old Posted Apr 16, 2009, 5:51 AM
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Originally Posted by AlexYVR View Post
Coming from someone whose experience with the subject of transportation planning is limited, I would venture to say that transit has never worked when run like a business. Look at any transit model and you will (I would guess) see an entity heavily subsidized and usually partially owned by the government, especially in the North American model. As long as car ownership is relatively cheap (compared to say, Singapore or Copenhagen, because I know people will bring them both up), transit providers are stuck trying to sell an 'inferior' method of transportation for what is none the less a substantial, and very visible, monthly cost to users.
I hate to bring this up yet again, but.... Japan. Private bus and train operators provide a huge amount of services, and the public ones tend to charge enough to cover most of their expenses.

(standard disclaimer: of course, this requires less ass-backwards planning than we have here and there's various cultural and geographic factors at work. Still, saying that transit has never worked when run like a business is not at all correct)
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