Free youth transit passes will be available for students in Manitoba's largest city beginning in September, as Winnipeg Transit prepares to roll out a new pilot program at the start of the school year.
Passes will be given to enrolled youths aged 11 to 21 during 2026-27 school year
Lauren Scott · CBC News
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Free youth transit passes will be available for students in Manitoba's largest city beginning in September, as Winnipeg Transit prepares to roll out a new pilot program at the start of the school year.
The pilot program will give complimentary passes to students aged 11 to 21 who are enrolled in public, independent or home school programs in the city during the 2026-27 school year, a Winnipeg Transit spokesperson said in an email to CBC News on Thursday.
The passes will be valid from next month until August 2027.
Winnipeg Transit says it's working with the provincial government to distribute the passes through Manitoba's education system, with school divisions starting to dole them out next month. They will be given out by grade.
How schools distribute the free passes might vary from one institution to another. Schools will provide information about how to get passes directly to families, the spokesperson said.
Winnipeg Transit will share more details about the pilot program's rollout by the end of August, the spokesperson said.
Children aged 11 and under can already ride the bus for free in Winnipeg if they are travelling with a fare-paying customer.
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The Manitoba government pledged in its March budget to introduce fare-free public transit for youths aged 18 and under across several transit systems, setting aside $10 million to reimburse municipalities for the one-year pilot project.
Youths in Selkirk were the first in the province to ride public transit for free. The Manitoba city northeast of Winnipeg introduced a pilot program in June allowing students aged 12 to 21 to get a free NextStop pass.
Brandon is expected to become the province's second city to give out free transit passes to youths starting on Sept. 1.
Students in the northwestern city of Flin Flon will get free bus passes starting in September, a municipal spokesperson told CBC News. The passes will be handed out to students through the schools, the city said.
Kyle Owens, president and chair of grassroots advocacy group Functional Transit Winnipeg, says he has mixed feelings about the pilot project. While he's excited public transit will be more accessible for young people, he's concerned the city's transit system isn't reliable enough for youths to keep using it.
The province said in March the forthcoming free transit program could potentially create lifelong transit users while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"Expanding accessibility to Winnipeg Transit means that you have a whole generation of new riders that you can introduce to the system by reducing barriers …. The problem is that the system already is not meeting the needs of Winnipeggers," Owens said.
"Those students are being introduced to the system for the first time. And instead of creating a new generation of riders, we're going to create a new generation of people who are frustrated with the system, just like the people who are already using it."
Winnipeg Transit's system overhaul — launched last summer — follows a "spine-and-feeder" model, where larger, more frequent routes run along major artery streets and smaller feeder routes connect to them. Owens said those connector routes aren't meeting the needs of Winnipeggers and he worries many students might be late to school or left out in the cold come winter.
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"Without that reliability, all you're doing is setting up tens of thousands of young people for frustration," Owens said, adding some youths might opt to drive if the system isn't reliable enough.
Owens said he would like to see transit infrastructure expanded to include priority signals and dedicated transit lanes for buses.
"Reliability, frequency of service is the best thing that we can do to create a new generation of riders," he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lauren Scott is a Winnipeg-based reporter with CBC Manitoba. They hold a master’s degree in computational and data journalism, and have previously worked for the Hamilton Spectator and The Canadian Press.
With files from Darren Bernhardt
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