VANCOUVER – Students going back to school this September will have one less item mailed to them. The U-Pass cards, which provide students with unlimited access to Bus, SeaBus and SkyTrain services at a discounted cost, will no longer be mailed to students’ homes.
Ken Hardie with Translink says under the old program, which is wrapping up at the end of this month, there were some issues managing the distribution system.
“Too many of the cards were going missing, or were reported lost or stolen. We knew that some of the cards were ending up either being sold by the students or otherwise misused.”
Hardie says that is about to change.
On its website, UBC says, starting on August 25, students will be able to get their U-Passes “from a bank of high speed vending machines” in the UBC Bookstore.
SFU website says self-service dispensing machines will be available at all three campuses.
Dispensing stations will also be set up at other participating schools, which Hardie says now include Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Douglas College, Vancouver Community College, BCIT and Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in addition to already participating UBC, SFU, Langara College and Capilano University.
Carole Jolly, Director of Transportation Planning at UBC, says they are not worried about long line-ups. She says the high-speed vending machine system has proven to be successful at Vancouver Community College, where it has been in place since March.
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“Vending machines are extremely fast. It takes less than a second for a student to swipe a card and for the U-Pass to spit out. So we are anticipating that the line-ups will move really quickly.”
Students at UBC will have from August 25 to September 15 to get their September passes.
Jolly says they will also be setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts to notify students of wait times in real-time.
Once Translink implements the new Compass card in 2013, a special chip will be embedded in students’ cards, which will double up as transit passes.
“The technical advantage that we will have there is we will be able to turn off the card electronically if the student no longer qualifies to have it,” says Hardie.
Translink says they are well aware of students putting their U-passes up for sale on online classfields websites, such as Craigslist.
“We know that there has been fraud, but we’ve been making very good progress in that both Craigslist and local website vansky.com have both taken steps to reduce or eliminate the illegal trading of U-passes on their websites.”
Other changes coming with the new U-pass program this fall include a month-to-month card. Previously, students received a pass that was good for an entire term.
In addition, the new passes will not include names or photos, which means students will need to carry their student cards at all times to be able to use the transit system.
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