Cleveland, Ohio Students at Cleveland State University will soon have to pay for their own RTA bus and Rapid passes instead of receiving them as part of their normal tuition and fees.
According to a Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority spokesperson, CSU notified the organization of its choice on Wednesday.
Students who wish to continue using unlimited passes will now need to pay the standard monthly fee of $95. Over the course of a semester, this would come to hundreds of dollars.
CSU has participated in the RTA’s U-Pass program for at least 20 years. Under this scheme, the school offered passes to all students in exchange for a set student fee, regardless of whether they used the RTA.
The most recent edition of the school’s U-Pass webpage from the spring states that this charge was $57.50 each semester for all students enrolled in at least one credit hour.
Students have expressed worries about the shift, according to a group called Clevelanders for Public Transit. The U-Pass website was launched by the organization.
CSU has received communication from Cleveland.com. On Wednesday, it was unclear if the reform would include a reduction in student costs.
The U-Pass program was an effort to increase riding while being nearly cost-neutral for the RTA under previous General Manager Joe Calabrese.
Projecting the total amount that students were already paying to ride the RTA helped decide the initial per-student prices. Increased riding was viewed as a good thing if students traveled more frequently as a result of the pass.
RTA said on Wednesday that the scheme brought in roughly $1.4 million annually.
According to RTA spokesman Robert Fleig, the organization is collaborating with CSU to set up the sale of day, weekly, or monthly passes to students at standard rates.
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