Nearly 900 of the 3,000 residents pay $30 per month for three-zone fare passes under the program, compared to $151 per month for off-the-mountain residents.

The program will end on Dec. 31 and residents have until Jan. 15, 2012, to turn in their passes.

The Community Pass program, unique to UniverCity residents, started in 2006 to boost transit ridership and was largely subsidized by Vancity Financial during its first two years. Since 2008, the program has been jointly subsidized by publicly funded TransLink and the Simon Fraser University Community Trust.

TransLink justified its ongoing subsidies for the residents’ transit costs by saying Burnaby Mountain is fairly isolated and the cheap fares have helped to fill otherwise empty buses going up and down the mountain after dropping off and collecting students at Simon Fraser.

“It’s based on the fact you’re using capacity that otherwise would be going to waste,” TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said.

But the TransLink board of directors decided on June 17 to put an end to the subsidization and to cancel the program. An earlier proposal to increase the monthly pass price over two stages, starting with an increase to $46 on Sept. 1, was dismissed.

“Recently, TransLink considered an option to increase the pass price in two stages but maintain a portion of the subsidy,” Cathy McLay, CFO and vice-president of financial and corporate services at TransLink, wrote in a letter to residents.

“However, in a time when limited funding has made sustaining transit services a challenge, ongoing discounting of the Community Pass cannot be maintained.”

Gordon Harris, the trust’s president and chief executive officer, said the trust understands TransLink’s decision to end the program.

“It’s pretty challenging to provide this kind of transit pass for a single community,” he said.

He said the program had succeeded in its original goal to increase transit use among the mountain’s residents — approximately 40 per cent of residents use public transit — which is about three times the average in Metro Vancouver.

He said that the community is disappointed by the decision but it should be “ready to go without the pass”.

“I think people recognize that they’re living in the larger region of Burnaby and that it’s a community that has benefited a lot in the last five years,” he said. “But that was just one of many different programs we launched to become a sustainable community, and now it can stand on its own and people can use transit like everyone else in the region.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/TransLink+pulls+plug+UniverCity+rate+pass/5009291/story.html