Should the TTC be free when it's cold outside?

The winter that never ends is stretching into March like a big jerk, and while the deep freeze has been hard to take, it might make you feel a bit better to know you haven't been imagining things. On and off the record, this winter has totally sucked.

Aside from the December ice storm we've also shivered through over three times as many cold weather alerts than last winter (32 versus 9). This has meant the city's homeless are in need of shelter more than ever, and resources that offer free transit tokens to allow the homeless to get to shelters are being stretched to the limit.

Councillor and TTC commissioner Josh Colle has got Toronto's back, or he's trying to. Colle has forwarded a motion to make the TTC (or, at least, the Blue Night Network) free during cold weather alerts. While the idea is mainly to increase the safety of the city's homeless population, the benefit would be for everyone.

As Colle told The Star, ""I'm not going to have a driver try and determine who's homeless." As with all cool TTC news, there is a catch: the TTC won't have even an answer for a couple of months. Still, this could be insurance against another brutal winter holding us in its clutches next year (sorry for bringing this up).

Should the TTC be free during cold weather alerts?

Photo by blursufing.com in the blogTO Flickr pool