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The price of the U-Pass will be $66 per semester for the coming year and may be adjusted going forward.

Students who live outside of the Transit Windsor service area and those who purchase parking permits may opt out of the U-Pass.

Graduate students will vote on the U-Pass on March 28 and 29.

Transit Windsor executive director Pat Delmore said the continuation of the U-Pass is a win-win situation.

Photo by Dan Janisse / Windsor Star

“It’s a very positive story for us,” Delmore said.

“I think we’ve demonstrated in the first three years during the pilot that there’s a lot of benefits to the community as well as the students at the University of Windsor. Ridership has grown with our student base, we see that continue to grow.

“We’ve been able to take some of the revenue from the U-Pass and reinvest it back into the transit service, which is what the goal was of getting the U-Pass in.”

Photo by Jason Kryk / THE WINDSOR STAR

Delmore said it’s difficult to accurately quantify how much more revenue the U-Pass has provided Transit Windsor because university students were previously lumped in with college and high school student passes, but the numbers of U-Pass users has climbed.

“One of the things that we do know is that in Year 1 of the pilot only about between 3,000 and 4,000 students picked up a bus pass and we do know from September of 2018 to December of 2018 over 8,000 students used their bus pass,” said Delmore.

“We don’t know how often they used it, but we do know they used it at least once. So, just that awareness of what transit does out there, we certainly saw some increases.”