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A proposal to give free London Transit passes to Grade 9 and 10 students at one east-end high school must “make financial sense” for both the school and the municipal government, one politician says.
A report going to the London Transit Commission on Wednesday notes that the two-year pilot program at Clarke Road secondary school – initially intended to roll out this fall – has been pushed back to fall 2025 and would cost roughly $900,000 over both years.
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“I want to make sure that this pilot is going to deliver the results that we need, and that’s to have improved services,” Ward 5 Coun. Jerry Pribil, one of the city council appointees to the transit commission, said, adding the details must make “this project cost-effective for the future.”
The program’s blueprint was to start the pilot with Grade 9 students at Clarke Road for one year, then expand to include Grade 10s in the second year. That would take in 225 students in the first year and 450 in the second, according to a staff report.
Clarke Road was chosen as the location for the pilot project because several transit routes serve the east-end school.
In the staff report previously presented to transit officials, it was noted there are several questions remaining about the rollout of such a program, including the lack of a clear objective for it and the lack of funding beyond the two-year trial run.
In the report going to the commission on Wednesday, staff note that city staff plan to pull together London Transit, city hall and Thames Valley District school board officials to detail the responsibilities of each organization in the pilot project.
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