By Ethan Shones 
As of August 1st, students at Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC) can no longer access Rochester Public Transit (RPT) for free. The Rochester City Council and officials at Rochester Public Transportation have decided to remove RCTC’s Park and Ride. Students will now have to purchase a bus pass. Students who rely on public transportation—such as myself— now have to put money they could use for tuition, rent, or other needs towards commuting to and from campus.
This should not be a surprise. Bi-partisan attacks on public transit (and, by extension, working-class students and young people) are happening across the state. I think it’s crucial that we organize a fightback in Rochester against the ongoing cuts to funding for our basic needs, while the rich get richer.
I have been a student at RCTC for six years. RPT has been essential to myself and other working-class students who rely on city buses to get to and from campus. I can’t afford a car and live on the opposite side of town, so getting to college would be incredibly difficult for me. But thanks to the former system where RCTC students had free access to public transit with our Student ID doubling as a city bus pass, getting to campus had been easy for me and allowed me to put my meager savings towards other necessities like tuition, rent, food, etc.
A student bus pass purchased through RPT can cost up to $100 and will barely last for an entire semester. For students who make Minnesota’s abysmal minimum-wage of $11.13/hr, bus fare will come at a great cost to their education and livelihood. A 2021 study by The College Board Titled “Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid” found that transportation is one of the biggest reasons students may not be able to finish college. During the 2021-2022 year, community college students were projected to spend a whopping $1,840 on transportation! The Hechinger Report has described how a lack of transportation could result in working-class students having to walk miles to get to college, impacting their academic success.
When elected officials make decisions like this instead of funding social services, it hurts working-class students and creates barriers. When I began attending RCTC, getting a bus pass came with getting my student ID. I went to the library, got my photo taken, printed out the ID, and it doubled as a bus pass. To get the student bus pass RPT provides, I had to go to the RPT office—I don’t have a license yet, so a family member drove me—and upon arrival, I was informed they only accept cash but that I could also purchase a bus pass at Hy-Vee. I was then informed at Hy-Vee they do not sell bus passes any longer, despite RPT’s website saying to this day that you can buy them there. I then had to get cash at an ATM at a gas station and drive back to their offices to pay with cash before finally getting my bus pass. Experiences like mine are unfortunately all too common for working-class people trying to access basic social services like public transit and healthcare.
The decision by the Rochester City Council members to not renew the Park and Ride Contract only serves to maximize the profits of TransDev, the huge $11-billion multinational corporation that has the contract with the city. According to their own website, TransDev is “the largest private sector operator of multiple modes of transit in North America.”
We need working and young people to get organized in an independent movement to defeat the budget cuts, and to go on the offensive to win a massive expansion of public transit that is free for all, paid for by taxing the rich.
The corporate executives at Transdev are predictably opposed to the demands of the drivers, who are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005. According to RPT bus driver and Amalgamated Transit Union representative Adam Buzbee, actions meant to stymie the union range from using cameras in the buses to monitor drivers for hundreds of hours, watching them for the slightest mistake they make to use an excuse to retaliate against them, to using divide-and-conquer tactics by bringing in non-union drivers from out of state to drive the buses in place of union members. Buzbee says that when he tried to approach non-union drivers with union cards, Transdev filed a trespass and threatened him with arrest!
These deplorable actions were exposed at the City Council on June 16th, when members of the Bus Drivers’ Union, Workers Strike Back (which I am a member of), and myself went before city council to protest these actions. We argue that Transdev is only making the Rochester Public Transit worse for our community. We find it shameful that the City Council has refused to take action against the billionaire and multimillionaire executives and major shareholders of TransDev. These politicians are selling out students who will get hundreds of dollars squeezed out of them.
That’s why I’m a member of Workers Strike Back, which is fighting nationally for free public transportation and free public healthcare funded by taxing the rich, a 25-dollar-an-hour national minimum wage, and good union jobs for all.
Workers Strike Back was co-founded by socialist Kshama Sawant, who was a City Council member for a decade in Seattle in Washington state. Kshama’s office led the way to win the first-ever major-city $15/hour minimum wage, a wage that is now $20.76, the nation’s highest. Her Seattle victory opened the door to historic wage increases for tens of millions of workers across the nation. Kshama’s office also won the historic Amazon Tax on big business to fund affordable housing. Kshama and Seattle’s workers won only because they understood they needed to fight back.
On July 21, I and another Workers Strike Back member attended the Rochester City Council meeting and spoke during the public comment period again alongside Adam Buzbee and the Amalgamated Transit Union about why working-class people and students should not accept cuts to public transit, and instead demand that the City Council tax the rich to fund free public transit for all.
Winning free public transit for students and all working-class people is directly linked to higher wages and better working conditions for transit drivers and working-class people in every industry. To end these attacks on working-class people, we urgently need to build a real working-class fightback to take on the billionaires and their two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. I hope you will join us in this fight.
Solidarity!
Special thanks to David Montequin for help with writing and editing.