Kitchener council joins call for free transit on election days

Kitchener council is the latest municipality to call on the Region of Waterloo to provide free transit rides on election days.

Bil Ioannidis brought the motion forward to Kitchener, Ont., council on Monday night, pointing out there's free transit to get people to and from events on New Year's Eve andOktoberfest.

"The more tools that we could use to help promote voting is beneficial in my mind," he told CBCNews.

It follows in the footsteps of Cambridge council, which approved a motion brought forward by Coun. Scott Hamilton to provide free rides.

At the May 17th meeting when the motion was approved, Hamiltonsaid the idea came from citizens he spoke to over the course of more than six months. Some said mobility was an issue, he said at the time, but also he saw it as a way to promote transit use.

On May 30, Waterloo council approved a similar motion.

The motions will now be forwarded to regional council because it's the region that oversees Grand River Transit.

Regional Coun. Tom Galloway, who also chairs the planning and works committee, says thisissue is on the radar of regional staff. He expects it will be on a regional council agendaahead of the municipal election in October.

Students support idea

Sana Banu, president of Conestoga Students Inc., says students often want to vote in elections, buttheylive on tight budgets and may find themselves choosing between paying extra transit fares to cast a ballot or saving that money for necessities like food or bills.

It's why the student union got behind thecall for free transit on election days.Banu spoke in favour of the motion at the Cambridge meeting, then reached out to Waterloo and Kitchener council members to see if they would consider doing something similar.

She says youth voter turnout could be better, particularly for municipal elections like the one this upcoming October.

"The key issues that affect students day-to-day housing, transit, bylaw enforcement happen municipally," she said.

"It really is very important for our students to get access to the right representatives at the local level who can empathize with the issues that our students are going through and provide them with those tools that can make their liveseasier."