7 days ago
OC Transpo's youth fare cancellation criticized
As the parent of two children, Katy de Sousa worries about how they will explore their independence.
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Her youngest child is 11, the age when he would start taking some transit trips on his own and exploring Ottawa, but OC Transpo 's cancellation of the youth fare pass will make that journey more difficult.
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OC Transpo will eliminate the discounted youth monthly transit pass as of Sept. 1, and those aged 11 to 19 will, from that point on, be charged the same price as adults. Fare hikes of five per cent took place in January 2025, due to a $120-million transit shortfall.
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De Sousa's family only has one car, which her husband uses to travel to work every day. She says they've scheduled their lives around having one vehicle and she often bikes or uses transit to commute around the city.
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But De Sousa says public transit is not convenient enough anymore because of longer routes (which she credits to the New Ways to Bus system) and the financial aspect, such as increased fares and the youth fare cancellation.
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'It's definitely going to have a financial impact on us as a family, having to pay more,' she said. 'If they don't have access to transit to get places … It's going to eat into my time to take them places.
'It also doesn't foster their own independence in being able to move around their city.'
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De Sousa says her oldest child, who is 19, has had to turn down job prospects because of the fare changes. Previously they used public transit twice a day to get to and from school.
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'There's just no transit available for them to get to in a reasonable time and for a reasonable amount of money to get to the job,' she said.
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Katrina Camposarcone-Stubbs, a public information officer with the City of Ottawa, said in an Aug. 5 statement to the Citizen that some youths would be eligible to receive a Student Transit Pass through their school boards instead of acquiring youth passes.
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'During the winter 2024 semester, over 85 per cent of Youth Passes were sold to school boards and not to individual customers,' she wrote. 'In early 2025, fewer than 100 individual customers purchased the Youth Pass themselves each month.'
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Coun. Sean Devine, representing Knoxdale-Merivale ward, said he didn't support the transit budget or its various elements, including elimination of the youth fare. OC Transpo's 2024 gross operating budget was $768 million. The budget for 2025 is $856 million.
