Winnipeg Transit Free for Kids

Transit rides for under 11 accompanied by adults has been part of bus transport for some time. The city, with provincial funding, has added students with ID from school age 12 to 21 to the free users. It is a one year project to see how it will run. It is just under a $90 a month benefit for students per child in Winnipeg. The cost savings for a family with two kids could be as high as $1,500. The program will run in Winnipeg, Brandon, Flin Flon, Selkirk and Winkler. Across all those communities the province will set aside $10 million.

It is such a modest investment with real money savings for families that is hard to believe it hasn't been considered before now. And given that the province has invested in things like a $5 million plus daycare that remains shuttered and a source of crime, it seems like this is a good idea whose time has come.

Young people will take the bus to things like school events when school buses are not operating such as weekends, evenings and holidays. They will go to recreation facilities, concert venues, museums, movie theatres, restaurants or to see grandma if they have the buses, routes and their student ID. One other aspect is that kids can use this during the year when not at school to work. This could be one of the more meaningful benefits to being a student and families in terms of cost and enriching the lives of those involved.

The city of Winnipeg will have to be responsive to security, capacity and routing over this test pilot. The reliability of the system could help build trust and forever users. A healthy system is not just five days of commuters but people who use it for hockey games, going to the mall and the like. It can't be a long walk to a stop, a long wait for a bus and danger every step of the way. Winnipeg Transit could use this for generational change and an accelerated timetable of rapid transit.

Gillingham seemed ecstatic that he could make this announcement during an election cycle. It almost seemed an endorsement by Kinew but it could also mean trying to get some sympathetic councillors on board when the NDP go to the polls. That might be as early as next year. It could be they are looking to knock off Obby Khan and the PCs and take the last Liberal seat. This could prove a popular urban policy.

Around the world, some cities have taken up public transportation as a truly taxpayer system for students right up to the university level. Ensuring that student cards are the price of admission is a selling point for being in school, a real savings for families that could have two or three kids and promotes an environmental response to cars on the road. It up to the city and school divisions to make use of their service and make it great and up to the province to make this permanent.