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The Berkeley City Council unanimously approved a resolution calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to set aside $11.9 million for a three-year program to provide free bus passes for low-income middle and high school students last week. 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia are trying to drum up support for the plan, which will come before the MTC July 25. 

The MTC is the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. 

The three-year pilot program would provide free bus passes to more than 33,000 middle and high school students who participate in free or reduced lunch programs in Alameda and West Contra Costa Counties. It would also reduce the $95 rate all students must pay for a one-year AC Transit bus pass by 65 percent.  

According to a study of student transit needs by AC Transit last year, many low-income families find it difficult to afford $27 monthly bus passes for their children and instead opt to pay as they go.  

As a result, the study found, the school attendance rate of low-income children tends to drop towards the end of the month as the money runs out, particularly in areas where walking to school simply isn’t an option. 

In Sacramento, where teen activists recently convinced the transit operator to reduce high school and middle school students’ fare by more than half for a three-month test period, a recent student found that 52 percent of students missed school because of the cost of the bus. 

With a free bus pass program in place, said Lara Bice, a legislative aide to Supervisor Carson, “there will be reduced absenteeism at schools because families won’t have to choose between paying bus fare and paying for rent.”  

Since school districts receive state education dollars based on their “average daily attendance” rates, they could stand to gain millions in additional education funding under the plan as well, Carson and Gioia argued in a recent letter to MTC commissioners. 

In approving the resolution in support of the program last week, Berkeley city councilmembers said providing free bus passes for low-income families is a matter of social justice. 

“In Berkeley we don’t have that kind of documentation (of students missing school because they can’t afford bus fare), but we can only assume that there are low-income people who have a hard time buying bus passes,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Miriam Hawley. 

“If a low-income family has two to three kids, it could be a huge drain on the family budget,” Hawley added. 

Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean said of the absenteeism traced to students’ inability to pay bus fare, “If it happens in Richmond, I’m sure it happens in Berkeley.” 

Hawley said Friday that access to free bus passes would also make it easier for more Berkeley students to take advantage of after-school programs which are offered all over the city but are sometimes difficult for students to reach. 

In their letter to the MTC, Carson and Gioia cite studies that suggest the after-school hours of 3 to 6 p.m. are “peak hours” for teens to commit crimes, smoke, drink, use drugs or have sex. 

Carson and Gioia hope to have as many cities as possible pass resolutions in support of the free bus pass program before the MTC’s July 25 meeting, Bice said. The idea is to have the pilot program included in the MTC’s $80 billion Regional Transportation Plan, which outlines regional transportation improvement plans for the next 25 years. 

In 30 public outreach workshops conducted by the MTC to help formulate the RTP, citizens consistently asked that the plan include measures for making transit more affordable to low-income families, Carson and Gioia observed in their letter to the MTC. And yet, to date, the MTC has committed to no such measures, they said. 

“In response to public comment, community needs, and environmental justice issues, we believe that it is imperative that MTC consider – and fund – this pilot project,” Carson and Gioia wrote. 

The MTC is expected to finalize the RTP sometime this fall. If the free bus pass pilot program is approved, Carson and Bice hope that it’s impact over three years could persuade the state to pick up the tab for continuing the program in the future.