Transit riders in the GTA and those who use GO transit will only pay once when transferring between services, starting Feb. 26
On Feb. 26, the Ontario government’s new One Fare program will come into effect. Under the new program, transit riders of transit agencies in in the GTA will be able to transfer for free between services.
The One Fare program is one of many transit developments the Ontario government is pushing forward as part of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Transportation Plan. The Greater Golden Horseshoe refers to a large and densely populated portion of southern Ontario ranging from Peterborough to the Niagara Region, surrounding Lake Ontario.
The program is currently set to include the Toronto Transit Commission, GO Transit, York Region Transit, Durham Region Transit, Missisauga’s transit system and Brampton Transit.
Free transfers involving local transit agencies will be valid for a period of two hours after the first trip begins. In this case, the second component of the trip becomes free of cost.
Transfers from GO Transit to another participating transit service will be valid for three hours. In this case, only the local transit component of the trip is covered.
Riders transferring between services will automatically receive their discount when they use the same PRESTO, credit or debit card to tap on and off of different services.
The program will see Metrolinx reimburse local transit agencies to account for their lost revenue. According to Associate Minister of Transportation Vijay Thanigasalam, the program will cost the province about $117 million each year.
In light of this cost, the government hopes that the improved service will attract more people to make use of public transit to move across the GTA. Premier Doug Ford also stated at a press conference on Feb. 5 at Downsview Park Go station that the program will save regular transit users as much as $1,600 annually.
Depending on the success of the current program, the government is considering expanding the One-Fare program to include more local transit agencies across the province.
“Our goal is to go to the next phase, to talk to and have dialogue with other municipalities beyond the GTA corridor so that we can bring the one-fare program into other regions,” stated Thanigasalam at the Downsview Park Go station.
Our goal is to go to the next phase, to talk to and have dialogue with other municipalities beyond the GTA corridor so that we can bring the one-fare program into other regions
Vijay Thanigasalam, associate minister of transportation, Government of Ontario
Many McMaster University students who commute from participating areas and use local transit services to get to the GO bus will also benefit from the program. According to the most recent numbers from McMaster, there are about 3,000 GO bus rides each week Monday to Thursday and about 4,500 every Friday. Students who commute to a GO Bus stop with a local transit agency in the GTA will save the cost of the local transit component of the trip.
Other developments soon to be under works are the construction of new and expansion of existing subway lines in the GTA. The plan also includes having two-way, all-day GO train service every 15 minutes between major cities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe by 2031.
More information about the One Fare program can be found on Metrolinx’s website.
Go bus workers plan to strike starting Monday, Nov. 7 if they do not reach an agreement with Metrolinx
McMaster University commuters could find themselves forced to hop on a Go train or carpool to campus if a new offer is not presented by Metrolinx by Monday Nov. 7. A vote held by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1587, which encompasses all Go bus drivers, revealed that 93% of workers were in favour of going on strike.
Go Transit is a division of Metrolinx, and the two parties had been in negotiations since Apr. 2022. Union workers had been working without a contract since Jun. 1.
The strike was initially set to start at midnight on Oct. 31 if an agreement was not reached by that time, applying pressure on Metrolinx to come to an agreement. The strike was averted when Metrolinx presented an offer, which union workers took to a vote on Nov. 2 and 3. ATU Local 1587 said they wouldn’t encourage their members to either accept or reject.
On Nov. 4, it was announced that the union declined the offer in an 81% vote in favour of rejection. Bargaining has continued over the weekend of Nov. 5 and 6.
ATU Local 1587 has set the new strike date for Nov. 7. If Metrolinx has not presented a counteroffer by midnight Nov. 6, all Go bus drivers and attendants will be walking off the job, leaving many commuters stranded or forced to commute via Go train.
ATU Local 1587 has set the new strike date for Nov. 7. If Metrolinx has not presented a counteroffer by midnight Nov. 6, all Go bus drivers and attendants will be walking off the job, leaving many commuters stranded or forced to commute via Go train.
This strike would call for cancellation of all Go bus services, due to a walk off of bus drivers, station attendants, office workers, maintenance workers and safety officers. The strike would be indefinite, until Metrolinx presents an offer that workers vote in majority to accept.
McMaster students that commute may need to prepare an alternate route to school, due to the cancellation of Go buses that could start Monday Nov. 7. Updates on the strike can be found on ATU Local 1587’s page where they post vote outcomes and strike mandates.
This is an ongoing story.
If it felt like there were millions of new raptors fans this past summer, that’s because there probably were. There’s nothing quite like the first National basketball asociation championship in Canadian history to bring people together, one of the great powers of athletics. Whether it’s playing sports or watching the Toronto Raptors dominate the Golden State Warriors, sports have a habit of uniting people together over a common interest. This sense of inclusivity is also why intramurals play a big role in the off-campus community here at McMaster.
When you live off-campus, it can be hard to feel like you have a home at Mac. School can be a place associated with academic stress and not much else. This is why the society of off-campus students runs intramurals every week. Intramurals can be a great way to get to know more people who are also in a similar situations. Here’s what the president of the society of off-campus students, Jeremy Sewnauth, had to say about SOCS and intramurals.
“Sports are a universal thing that everyone can bond over whether you’re talking about it or playing it,” Sewnauth said. “At intramurals, we end up doing so many different sports, this term we’re running soccer, water polo and frisbee and those were the sports that the members of the society voted for.” Sewnauth said.
Taking part in the PlayFun division is a great way to get involved in sport through a relatively non-competitive environment, where no one takes things too seriously and everyone is just looking to have some fun. There’s no need to have extensive knowledge in the sport or know every detail about the rules. PlayFun is a casual level of sport where students can meet one another.
“You don’t have to have any experience, you don’t have to know how to play any sports, if it’s something you’re interested in or you just want to kill some time, you can just pop in and play. If you don’t know how to play it everyone that’s there is willing and able to teach you how to play,” Sewnauth mentioned.
Playing sports chosen by SOCS members themselves makes it likely that people will come out, as they are going to be playing the sports they voted for. This type of engagement with everyone in the club is part of why SOCS is so successful.
“Every single weekend we’ll have a full squad come out for soccer, frisbee and water polo which gives you the opportunity to bond with people. A lot of people after games end up hanging out and every time I’ve met so many people,” added Sewnauth.
SOCS aims to offer off-campus students a way to feel connected and provide a home at McMaster. They offer multiple ways of trying to do that but, sports and intramurals are definitely one of the best ways to accomplish their goal.
“A lot of the times you’ll see groups of people, like a floor in residence or something they’ll put together a team or that same group of students that were all friends before. In later years they’ll keep doing these intramural teams every year. We try to create something similar where we’re creating a community among sports,” said Sewnauth.
Being an off-campus student can often feel lonely but it doesn’t have to be. Intramurals are a great way to connect with other students. You can get a SOCS membership in the basement of the student centre and they’ll be more than happy to help you sign up for their intramural team.
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In an effort to improve the off-campus first-year university experience, McMaster Housing and Conference Services introduced the optional Commuter in Residence Experience program in 2017. But the program did not launch without its hiccups.
“CoRE grew out of the recognition that first-year off-campus students have unique needs, and commonly struggle to make the same connections to the campus as their counterparts in residence,” said Simon Wilmot, Residence Life coordinator.
To sign up for the program, students must pay a $325 registration fee. Some benefits of CoRE include the opportunity to participate in residence Welcome Week activities, access extra study spaces and consult with off-campus Community Advisors.
CoRE students can also join on-campus communities, attend events, access residence academic centres that provide free drop-in tutoring services and organize community events through the Community Activity Fund.
In spite of these benefits, the program has not been in high demand from first-year off-campus students, with only 20 registering for CoRE in 2017. Although 11 CAs were initially hired, this number was reduced to three due to the lack of student interest.
“As this was a new program our marketing came out late in the admissions cycle and unfortunately did not resonate with incoming students.”
Scott Wilmot
Coordinator
Residence Life
Wilmot believes that CoRE did not attract a sufficiently high number of off-campus students because of the high cost and lack of advertising for the program.
“As this was a new program our marketing came out late in the admissions cycle and unfortunately did not resonate with incoming students,” said Wilmot. “We also believe that the initial cost of the program was a barrier to participation for many students.”
A former Society of Off-Campus Students representative, however, believes that CoRE’s low demand stems from the fact that most first-year off-campus students were not consulted in the development of the program.
“[CoRE] first years were isolated from Welcome Week events and only interacted with their CAs and not at all with the SOCS reps,” they said.
To improve the program, the SOCS representative suggests that HCS schedule events at accessible times as off-campus first-years tend to miss concerts, for instance, because the last Go bus leaves campus at 10:45 p.m.
The rep also recommends increasing outreach to off-campus students from the university.
“The outreach to first-year off-campus students from the university is non-existent,” they said. “Whereas residence students get emails from Residence Life, off-campus [students] don’t get that because of the privacy act, so we cannot gain the emails of first years to let them know the schedule before Welcome Week.”
To ignite more interest from first-year off-campus students, Wilmot will be working to rebrand the 2018 CoRE program. HCS will specifically be connecting the CoRE program to Living and Learning Communities, which bring together like-minded students in residences at the university.
“We hope to connect off-campus students with these communities and provide them with access to exclusive LLC programming and resources,” said Wilmot.
HCS is also plans to lower the program fee.
“We are also reducing the program fee from over $300 in 2017 to less than half of that in 2018,” said Wilmot. “We are still working on some of the details, but our intention is to dramatically reduce the cost of the program.”
Wilmot’s objective is to recruit over a hundred students to the program in 2018 and then double that the following year.
As the university takes steps to rebrand and lower the cost of the program, HSC will need to ensure the needs of CoRE students, reps and off-campus first-years’ voices are met. Jennifer Kleven, who leads the CoRE program at HCS, is open to hearing feedback from students and reps.
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By: Mohamed Mahmoud
As a student who is currently living off campus, I can confidently say that McMaster feels more like home to me than any other campus could have. Like most students from Mississauga, of the first places I considered applying to was the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus. But as soon as I took the campus tour, I knew there was no way I could make it my second home.
McMaster was not like that for me. Aside from the fact that I needed a reputable school for engineering, one of the main reasons McMaster was one of my top choices was because of the student sense of community that Mac comes with.
Yes, there are many universities in Ontario that are visibly and reputably surrounded by million-dollar homes and expensive cars that are centered with the hustle and bustle of a downtown city center. There are larger campuses and better parties, but there is a more important priority for first years.
When I was an incoming first year, I knew that the environment that what would soon become my second home is surrounded would need to be welcoming. McMaster in collaboration with the Westdale community certainly provides me with a sense of inclusion, and I believe that this is something that is unique to McMaster.
As someone who has both commuted on the GO bus and lived off campus, I can certainly vouch that living so close campus is a luxury. It allows for me to get to know students more closely with time being more of a flexibility (even though 30 hours a week of school is hardly a luxury for engineering kids), my full-time commitment seemed like less of a hassle.
I also had the opportunity to visit local coffee shops and had a chance to admire the character that downtown Hamilton buildings have in comparison to the ones in Mississauga.
As someone who has both commuted on the GO bus and lived off campus, I can certainly vouch that living so close campus is a luxury.student sense of community that Mac comes with.
With the reputation of Hamilton being viewed as a “ghetto” area, and in light of the recent break-in reports on the Spotted at Mac Facebook page, there have been mixed feelings about whether or not living off campus is such a great idea. This is understandable. However, these reporting have presented something great about the Mac community that not all universities have.
With so many students living off campus in the Westdale area, these reports have prompted an increase in police presence around the campus and a great support with student stake outs and communal protection. With the security on campus and the increased security off campus as well as groups like the Students Walk Home Attendent Team, students can begin to feel more reassured of their safety both on campus and off campus.
Hamilton may be seen as a second-class city next to Mississauga or Toronto, but it opens doors for a friendlier environment for students to grow, live among their peers and experience a sense of community beyond McMaster’s borders.
In addition, paying my own rent and struggling to make time to go grocery shopping in order to stop spending on food has taught me many valuable life lessons. In struggling to cook my own meals without my mom and feeling broke every time I check my bank account, I can now say that I understand what “adulting” is.
When choosing which schools to apply to, my guidance counsellor told me to seek out the campus that is the smallest and balance that with the reputation of the program I was going into. At first, I did not understand why this was important, and sought out the school with the largest campus with the classiest city life. But as my first round of university midterms came along, I began to understand why community and a sense of inclusion is so important for students.
As students, there is no doubt that we are susceptible to the feelings of loneliness, anxiety and depression, and trust me, Thode does not help.
Though there are people to reach out to and share your feelings with at ever university, sometimes that’s not what you need to “fix things”. In some cases, simply having a sense of belonging is just enough to do the trick.
Although we don’t have the University of Toronto name and our buildings are not extravagant, we have something that is more genuine and definitely more important to graduate with.
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It’s well known that McMaster’s enrolment is high and the campus is short on space, but this month, off-campus and commuter students at McMaster will be given a new place to hang out.
A new lounge is opening on campus, dedicated to off-campus and commuter students. The lounge, named “The Lodge,” will occupy the space in Wentworth House that was formerly taken by The Phoenix.
The aim of the space is to help commuter students of all years connect to Mac by giving them a place to relax and study.
Jennifer Kleven, Director of the Off-Campus Resource Centre, thinks the lounge will make a noticeable difference to off-campus and commuter students, who may not feel the sense of community that residence students do.
“Sometimes they feel this disconnect,” she explained. “And it’s been shown that the more connected they feel to the school, the higher their grades will often be. And we think that’s really important.”
The project of establishing the lounge was started early in 2012, and it has been a joint effort between the Off-Campus Resource Centre and McMaster’s Office of Student Affairs, with input from the Society of Off-Campus Students (SOCS).
Gina Robinson, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and a major advocate for the lounge, had a hard time hiding her excitement about the project.
As a Mac grad and a former commuter student, Robinson appreciates the needs of students today.
“I’m really passionate about the commuters,” she said. “I can remember being a commuter student—it was difficult at that time.
She described how students once used Hamilton Hall as a communal space, before the student centre was built. With straightforward amenities—tables and chairs, a couple TV’s, and a microwave—it felt to her like a home away from home. She hopes current commuter students can have that same feeling.
Robinson and Kleven looked at research on commuter students from American schools such as the University of Ohio and University of Miami, as such research hasn’t been produced by Canadian universities, despite the trend of “refocusing on off-campus and commuter students.”
Although the idea has been widely praised, questions have been raised about the choice of location for the lounge. The old Phoenix, while it can accommodate a large number of students, is in Wentworth House, which is set to be torn down this spring to make way for the university’s new Wilson Building for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Kleven explained that they saw the space as a good opportunity to launch the initiative as a pilot project.
“We all know space is tight on the campus,” she said. ”So why not take advantage of it while we can? It was going to sit vacant, nobody was going to be using it, so why not use it?”
“We wanted to create a space now,” explained Robinson, emphasizing that there is a pressing need for a lounge.
With a temporary space, however, they needed to be careful with money.
“When we were spending money we were trying to do it very carefully,” said Robinson.
The project received $25,000 from the Student Life Enhancement Fund for the project, which will be spent on furniture for the space. The remaining $20,000-$25,000 that have been budgeted will come from the Office of Student Affairs.
Although some of the costs are one-time—for example, the wireless will cost about $5000—Robinson and Kleven believe it’s worth it.
“It’ll be good money spent if this is a successful initiative, and then we can find more permanent space,” said Robinson.
Finding permanent space for The Lodge is something the team can only hope for at this point. Although Kleven and Robinson have appealed to the university administration for a permanent space, it’s not easy to find on such a packed campus.
Explained Kleven, “we’re hoping that we’re going to get hordes of students…[so] this will be an obvious example to the administration that we need this type of space on a permanent basis.”
