Students easy mark for streetcar plans

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/06/2010 (5678 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The revelation that Sam Katz apparently is in love with the idea of scrapping plans for bus rapid transit in favour of electric powered streetcars has been raising eyebrows. I have a suggestion for the mayor to help raise the additional funding required if he continues to be road-blocked by the province.

He could strike a deal with university student unions to have the cost of streetcars extracted from student fees as part of a U-Pass program. It would be a boneheaded move, but I can’t see why student unions wouldn’t jump at the idea. In fact, we shouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t already floated this as a proposal.

For years, student executives at Winnipeg universities have been trying to negotiate a deal with Winnipeg Transit to bring in a U-Pass plan that would see all students, not just those who use transit, forced to pay for a bus pass.

While those negotiations have faltered in the past because the price point offered by Transit has been too high, the superior environmental benefits of a streetcar system should make any progressive-minded student union executive drool. And, it is not like there isn’t any precedent for using tuition to finance infrastructure projects.

In many cities where a U-Pass program is in place, student unions have negotiated not insignificant improvements to transit systems. So students who don’t use transit are not just subsidizing students who do, they are subsidizing everyone else who benefits from better bus service.

Of course, students are asked for their approval via referendum. But a referendum is a terrible policy-making mechanism for universities. Voter turnout is frequently low and student populations are unstable. Every year, new students come in who were never asked for their consent. They allow student unions to bring in policies without having to take responsibility for them.

Despite sops to helping cash-strapped students, U-Pass programs are only weakly related to educational goals. Nowhere has this been more clear than in British Columbia, where the province announced last Wednesday it would be investing $20 million over three years to help pay for a province-wide U-Pass. Students will pay $30 a month or $240 for an eight-month school year. Each school will have to hold a referendum.

Hailing the plan, Nimmi Takkar, of the B.C. arm of the Canadian Federation of Students said, “The U-Pass is an investment in the next generation, in the economy and the environment. This program is going to make a major difference in students’ lives and go a long way towards building a transit culture in British Columbia.”

Investment in the economy? The environment? Building a transit culture? What exactly does this have to do with education? An editorial in the Vancouver Province had it exactly right when it criticized the plan as enlarging the “nanny state.” If the B.C. government wanted to help students, wouldn’t it be more prudent to invest in student grants?

If, say, the University of British Columbia raised tuition by $240 above the regulated rate, the student federation would be screaming. I suppose tuition increases are acceptable so long as they don’t actually go to education.

U-Pass programs are often little more than a way to circumvent normal policy making processes that would see improvements to transit financed through regular taxation.

Using tuition in this way frees politicians from having to use public money or as much public money as they would otherwise have to.

But why stop with transit? Certainly there are other causes that we could use student fees to pay for. How about universal daycare? Or legal aid services? We could even use student money to renovate recreation centres and fill potholes.

Given the fact that students are in university barely long enough to vote in even one election, they really are the perfect source to fund, well, anything. Both the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba are CFS members. Katz, in his bid to bring streetcars back to Winnipeg, might want to give them a call.

Carson Jerema is editor of Maclean’s On Campus.