To the Mayor of Mississauga, Council, and MiWay Management:
Let's start with the number, because numbers don't lie even when press releases do: $145 a month. That is what a Mississauga youth, a 13- to 19-year-old with no income, no car, and no choice but the bus, now pays for a monthly PRESTO pass. Not a discount. Not a "youth rate." The full adult price, dollar for dollar, cent for cent, same as a 45-year-old commuting downtown on a salary. Same as the Weston Family (should they ever decide to take a bus to experience firsthand how it is when they use their monopoly to gouge prices).
Here is the sleight of hand. MiWay still advertises a PRESTO youth single fare of $2.90 against an adult fare of $3.50, a discount that looks generous when printed on a poster. But the moment a student actually needs to get to school every day, the moment they need a monthly pass instead of paying per ride, that "discount" evaporates. There is no youth monthly pass. There never really was one worth the name. A kid riding twice a day, five days a week, is quietly rerouted onto the adult tariff, and the city gets to keep the discount in its marketing while collecting the full fare in its bank account. That is not a fare structure. That is a shameless bait-and-switch with a bus schedule attached.
And the "alternative" MiWay offers instead- the loyalty program, pay for 11 rides and ride free the rest of the week- works out to $127.60 over four weeks if a student rides every single day without fail. Miss a week for exams, illness, a snow day, a PA day, and the math stops working in the student's favour. It is not a discount. It is a bet the city is happy to make against teenagers. Shame on you all!
Let's also talk about why a school lunch program exists in the first place, since apparently it needs restating. Kids show up to class hungry. That is not a hypothetical; it is the daily reality of a city where the cost of everything from groceries to rent has climbed while paycheques haven't, and where the current administration's economic mismanagement has left most residents stretched thinner than ever. The free lunch program exists because a hungry kid can't learn, full stop. It is not a luxury; it is triage. And it is grotesque that the same city willing to acknowledge that reality at lunchtime turns around and charges that same hungry kid full adult fare to get to the building where the lunch is served.
And while we're doing math, let's do the grocery run. A family two kilometres from the nearest store, no car, sends a teenager to pick up milk and bread. That's a $4.50 round trip on PRESTO for a two-kilometre errand. Compare that to the cost of hopping in a car for the same distance: pennies in gas, no fare at all if it's already sitting in the driveway. So the system we've built actively rewards driving and penalizes the bus, for the shortest, most everyday trips imaginable, at the exact moment the city claims to care about emissions and congestion. A transit fare that costs more than driving does doesn't make for a climate policy; it's a driving incentive with extra steps. You cannot lecture residents about their carbon footprint while pricing the bus like the Emirates Airlines reserved for people who can already afford a car and are just being generous by not using it.
Other cities have figured this out, and not just on youth fares, on the whole model. Tallinn, Estonia, has run fare-free public transit for its residents since 2013, precisely because the city calculated that the social and environmental returns outweighed the farebox revenue. Luxembourg went further in 2020 and made all public transit free nationwide- buses, trains, and trams- for residents and visitors alike. Dunkirk, France made its entire bus network free in 2018 and saw ridership climb and car trips drop as a direct result. Montpellier followed in 2023, making transit free for all residents specifically to cut emissions and make the city liveable for people without cars. These aren't fringe experiments; they are deliberate policy choices made by cities that understood the same thing Mississauga apparently hasn't: charging people not to drive is backwards.
Now put Mississauga's youth fare side by side with literally any other place that calls itself a functioning transit system. In Montreal, a student monthly pass runs about $66, roughly 60 percent of the $110 adult fare, because the STM has decided students riding to school should not subsidize the system at the same rate as a lawyer riding to his daily lies delivered to the place they call work. In Paris, the Imagine R student pass costs roughly $32 to $48 per month, compared with an adult monthly fare of over $130, because Île-de-France Mobilités treats getting kids to school as infrastructure rather than a revenue stream. Toronto's TTC, whatever its other sins, still maintains a dedicated discounted pass for post-secondary students precisely because someone at that table understood the difference between an adult with a paycheque and a kid with a backpack.
Mississauga reviewed all of that and determined the correct youth discount is ZERO.
This lands on families who are already stretched past the point of absorbing another $150 line item a month, on top of everything else that has gotten more expensive in the last few years while wages haven't kept pace, thanks to failed, unqualified creatures like Doug Ford, Bonnie Crombie, Carolyn Parrish and alike. Parents are being asked to choose between driving their kids, which the city claims to discourage, and paying adult fare for a child, which the city apparently does not find contradictory. Either way, the household eats the cost, and MiWay collects it.
So here is the ask, plainly stated, because plain is the only language a fare increase this brazen deserves: reinstate a genuine discounted youth and student monthly pass, priced the way every comparable city prices one, at a fraction of the adult rate, not a rounding error away from it. Publish the reasoning behind the current structure, in writing, with numbers, not talking points. Look seriously at what Tallinn, Luxembourg, Dunkirk, and Montpellier have already proven works, and stop pricing a two-kilometre grocery trip higher than the gas it takes to drive it. And do it before another month rolls around and another set of parents opens their PRESTO app to find out their kid's ride to school now costs as much as their own.
Transit is supposed to be the thing that makes a city work for the people who can't yet vote for the people running it, and for the people too hungry or too broke to have a choice in the matter. Right now, Mississauga is charging its students full fare for that privilege and calling it fair. It isn't. Fix it. Fix it now!
Sincerely,
Concerned Mississauga Parents, Students, and Residents.
MiWay staff responded to the open letter, acknowledging concerns about the lack of a monthly pass for youth and noting that it will be considered in ongoing fare strategy discussions. Their response pointed to several existing programs as evidence of affordability efforts:
* The PRESTO Loyalty Program caps weekly youth fares after 11 paid trips; the rest of the week is free (max ~$31.90/week if the cap is hit).
* The Affordable Transit Program (ATP), an income-tested discount administered by the Region of Peel, offers eligible youth a 50% fare reduction.
* The Sauga Summer Pass, giving free summer transit to residents aged 12–16.
* The UTM U-Pass, an unlimited-travel program for enrolled university students.
They cited a 40/60 fare-to-subsidy revenue split as the broader fiscal context for fare decisions, and thanked us for raising the issue.
Notably, the response did not commit to reinstating a youth monthly pass, and did not provide the written explanation of the fare structure that the original letter requested.
Below is the follow-up, addressing the gaps in that response directly:
Subject:
RE: Open Letter: MiWay Youth Fares — Neither Question Was Answered
Hello Ms. […], Cllr. […], and members of the MiWay staff,
My first letter requested two things. Your reply answered neither:
1. A commitment to introducing a real monthly pass for youth and students.
2. A written explanation, including figures, of the basis for the current fare system.
"Your feedback will be taken into account in MiWay's continuing discussions on its fare policy" is not a commitment. It carries no timetable and no accountability. I am again requesting both items and a specific delivery date.
The response also contains claims that do not hold up:
1. There is no youth monthly pass, as confirmed by MiWay's own 2026 fee schedule. That schedule includes a PRESTO Monthly Pass for adults at $145 and a discounted Adult Affordable Transit Program pass at $72.50 — and no youth monthly pass, in any form. A teenager aged 13 to 19 with no income has exactly one monthly option: the adult pass. This is not a matter of how the information was presented. It is the structure of the fare schedule as published by the City.
2. The loyalty program does not work the way your reply claims. You state that young riders reach a weekly fare cap after 11 paid trips in seven days, after which the rest of the week is free. A student who rides only to and from school, Monday to Friday, makes ten trips a week — one short of the threshold. That student never reaches the cap and is never entitled to a single free ride under this program. The "reward" your reply cited as an answer to the missing monthly pass does not apply to a student who commutes to school only. I want written confirmation that this is understood within the organization, and whether it has been factored into the fare strategy discussions your reply refers to.
3. The U-Pass comparison does not apply. UTM's U-Pass is restricted to enrolled university students. It has no bearing on the 13-to-19 age group my letter addressed. Citing it does not answer the question that was asked.
4. ATP is not a youth discount. It is income-tested, administered through the Region of Peel, and requires a separate application. It will not help a middle-income family whose teenager rides to school every day and does not qualify. Citing an income-based hardship program does not explain the absence of a universal youth discount.
5. A comparable pass already exists in this region. Durham Region Transit — another GTA transit agency — offers a Y10 monthly pass for riders aged 13 to 19: unlimited travel for $89.86 per month, marketed as saving over $200 across a school year. This proves a real youth monthly pass is financially and administratively workable in this region, by a comparable agency, today. MiWay's current structure is a policy choice, not a financial constraint.
6. The Montreal and Paris comparisons stand. Montreal's STM charges $110 per month for an adult pass and $66 for a reduced student pass — exactly 60% of the adult rate. Paris's Imagine R student pass costs roughly €33-€39 per month, compared with an adult Navigo pass at €90.80. In both cities, student access to transit is treated as a distinct policy category. MiWay's is not.
I expect a direct, written answer to each of the following:
* Why does no monthly youth pass exist under the current fare schedule in any form?
* Whether the 11-trip loyalty threshold was set with knowledge that a school-only commuter makes ten trips a week and therefore never qualifies — and if so, why that threshold was chosen.
* What financial or administrative changes would be required to introduce a youth monthly pass comparable to Durham Region Transit's Y10 pass?
* A firm date by which this written response will be delivered.
Please confirm receipt of this email and provide that date.
Sincerely,
Nick N.
2026-09-28 9:27 AM
Good morning,
We acknowledge receipt of your email which has been forwarded to the appropriate staff for review and response.
Thank you
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Administrative Coordinator to the City Clerk &
Supervisor- Vital Statistics