Regina youth advocate urges council to make transit free for all young people
A student and climate advocate says recent fare hikes are pricing young people off the buses.
REGINA · Following a narrow city council vote, transit fares in Regina have increased by 10 per cent, pushing the cost of a monthly youth pass to $66. Student and climate advocate Jannatul Nashrah says the hike places a real burden on local families and forces young people to stop riding. She argues the city should instead invest in a permanent, fare-free transit system for all youth. Doing so would build lifelong green commuting habits and help the city meet its climate goals, she said.
"When fares go up, youth do not magically find extra money, we simply stop riding," Nashrah wrote in a commentary. "This prices out the exact generation that the city needs to keep on the buses if we ever want to build a real culture of sustainable transit ridership in Regina." She said a $66 monthly pass represents stressful financial trade-offs for students, forcing choices between getting to an after-school job, participating in extracurriculars or straining family budgets. The fare increases, which also raise adult cash fares to $3.50, were approved by a 6–5 vote of Regina City Council to offset short-term budget pressures. Nashrah said city discussions have focused heavily on costs, including a potential $21.1-million price tag for a permanent citywide strategy for high schools. She acknowledged the figures are serious but said looking only at the immediate balance sheet misses the value of the service.
"Investing in buses now saves our municipality money on costly roadway expansions later," Nashrah wrote, pointing to Regina's own Climate Action Plan which emphasizes the economic damages of traffic congestion, road wear and air pollution. She argued that if the city can fund major road projects, it can prioritize a fraction of that capital for transit lines serving future taxpayers. Nashrah said removing the financial barrier creates immediate, lifelong transit habits. She cited local data from a recent four-month pilot project at F.W. Johnson Collegiate, where student bus ridership tripled when fares were made free. "The numbers clearly show that youth want to take the bus, they just need the financial barrier removed," she wrote.
Regina city council voted 6–5 to extend the F.W. Johnson pilot through the school year. Nashrah said keeping the program restricted to a single school leaves thousands of students across the city behind. She noted that over 23 communities across Canada, including Kingston and Halifax, have successfully introduced reduced or free youth transit models. Critics have argued free transit passes do not directly solve school attendance numbers, a point debated by city officials. Nashrah countered that viewing transit solely through that lens misses the point of youth independence. "A free pass allows a teenager to visit a local library, travel to a weekend job, or safely return home from evening community activities without relying on a parent to drive them," she wrote. "We are full-time members of Regina's community who need to move around our city sustainably." Nashrah is a member of the Regina Youth Leadership Institute and previously wrote for the "Beats & Seeds" initiative supported by Experience Howl and the David Suzuki Foundation.
With files from Yahoo News