Children 12 and under will soon ride the bus for free, but local taxpayers won’t be the ones subsidizing it.
Jeff Norburn is the Director of Community Services with the City of Quesnel.
“In terms of a financial impact it’s essentially covered by the province, so that’s one of the commitments that they made, so they’ve provided funding through BC Transit to be applied to all of the local communities that have BC Transit.”
Norburn says it doesn’t add up to a lot.
“In our case it works out to about 560 dollars a month, or roughly four thousand dollars a year. So the City of Quesnel will be getting a credit for any lost revenue as a result of waiving of fees for youth.’
The change goes into effect on September 1st.
The Provincial Government estimates that 370,000 kids in BC will be eligible for this program.
The idea behind it is to make transit more affordable for families.