I Love Transit 2020: K–12 students ride the bus for free, Oct. 5–9

I Love Transit 2020: K–12 students ride the bus for free, Oct. 5–9

Kids Ride Free

Every day is a great day to take transit, but there’s no better week to hop on a bus than I Love Transit week! From October 5–9, 2020, students in kindergarten through Grade 12 ride the bus for free!

Grab your walking shoes and get trip ready with our Trip Planner, or reach out to our Customer Information team on Twitter or by phone at 604-953-3333.

Please note this offers applies to bus only and does not include SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express. As well, regular fares apply to teachers, parents and adults accompanying children and high school students on the system.

What is I Love Transit?

This marks the 11th year that TransLink’s holding I Love Transit, a week dedicated to celebrating our riders, transit enthusiasts and all the things we love about transit! As part of this, we offer free bus rides to K-12 students as a way to encourage kids to walk, bike or roll to school and to get to know the TransLink system.

It’s been our long-standing tradition to offer free bus rides to K-12 students during a week in October, first as part of International Walk to School Week and now as part of I Love Transit. It began in 2006 and a year later, we announced an ongoing commitment to the week — and we’ve been doing it since! The idea is to build a strong sense of community by encouraging and promoting active transportation as an alternative to private automobiles.

Want to take transit for free another time?

Enter our contest for the chance to win DayPasses! It provides unlimited transit use on all buses, SkyTrain and SeaBus for one day.

This year, ten randomly selected Metro Vancouver school classes will win DayPasses for up to 35 students in their class to take transit for free on any day of their choice. For students who are learning at home, 15 randomly selected parents will win DayPasses for themselves and their child. You can also purchase Compass Tickets with a DayPass on them for your entire class by emailing a request to bulkorders@translink.ca.

And don’t forget! While this year we won’t be able to host I Love Transit Camp, a behind-the-scenes field trip to TransLink, we’ll be able to do a “reverse” I Love Transit Camp! We’ll visit your school with a bus where kids will discover how to ride transit in a safe and fun way. Plus learn how TransLink moves half a million people a day across Canada’s largest transit service area.

How we’re helping to keep customers safe

We’ve been working hard to help keep Metro Vancouver moving safely through our Safe Operating Action Plan.

What TransLink is doing to make transit safer:

  • Mandatory masks on transit vehicles.
  • Increased cleaning and sanitizing.
  • Deploying cleaning “pit crews” to disinfect SkyTrain cars at high traffic stations.
  • Increasing bus and SeaBus disinfecting sprays to twice per week in addition to daily cleaning schedules.
  • Daily cleaning and disinfecting schedules on SkyTrain and West Coast Express cars, as well as HandyDART vehicles.
  • Limiting fare gate access at busy stations to help manage the number of customers on SkyTrain.
  • Limiting the capacity on buses to approximately two thirds full.
  • Installing two-metre spaced decals at some bus stops and station entranceways to help guide customers.
  • Expanding the availability of hand sanitizer dispensers, including on the entire RapidBus fleet, at key exchanges, and at more SkyTrain stations.
  • Monitoring passenger loads in order to deploy additional service at times and on routes where physical distancing is more difficult.

What customers can do to enhance their own personal safety and that of fellow passengers:

  • Stay off the system if you are sick or have any symptoms.
  • Wear a mask while on board transit vehicles.
  • Travel outside of peak times when possible.