In UTMSU’s board meeting last Monday, UTMSU stated that they have successfully negotiated with Miway to drop the nine percent yearly increase of the U-Pass fees to seven percent.
Currently, full-time UTM students pay a sessional fee of $101.17 for their U-Pass.
With the drop in the percentage, the increase would result in a sessional U-Pass fee of $108.25 instead of $110.28.
In an email to The Medium, UTMSU’s president Nour Alideeb stated that she’s pleased with the negotiations.
“I’m really proud of the negotiations that took place over the summer,” she wrote.
According to Alideeb, along with UTMSU, the UTM Graduate Student Association representatives will use the result of this negotiation with Miway to start working on introducing a GTA U-Pass and other options that could help students with their transit services.
Establishing a GTA U-Pass was one of UTMSU’s goals from the elections last Spring.
“I know that UTMSU will continue to be a leader in transit talks, and I’m very excited to see what will come out of it,” wrote Alideeb.
As previously reported by The Medium, the Miway increase of nine percent was a result of “fraud” that students commit with the U-Pass.
According to UTM’s chief administrative officer, Paul Donoghue, at the Campus Council meeting last Wednesday, 100 percent of UTM students are obligated to buy the U-Pass, while only 85 percent of the student population end up using it.
The new negotiations with Miway are expected to become effective in September 2017.
