The free ride has ended for senior citizens in St. Lambert, as seniors from the area will no longer get their rides paid on Longueuil buses as of next week.
Council voted to chop the pilot project at a recent meeting, citing costs.
“We saw that we would end up spending about $220,000 a year, three times more than our capacity to pay,” said City Councillor Hugues Letourneau.
About 687 seniors collected the free passes each month but only about 412 of them - 60 percent - used the passes, which cost $26 per month to the city.*
Brossard is also cancelling its free rides for seniors at the end of this year after seeing its estimated cost of $300,000 overrun by almost $700,000.
Both towns say that they are considering other ways to eventually reinstate the program, possibly by paying only for seniors who actually use the service.
*Letourneau initially provided CTV Montreal with different figures, which he later corrected and have been updated in this article.
