But why do we need to use credit card and debit card to pay for TTC fare? What advantage do they have over a simple oyster-card like fare card, like what they use in New York, London and Boston, which is all we need. Do we feel our technology is so shameful that we just need to showcase something that is considered cool and somewhat unique even though it is utterly unnecessary? Or because we are just flush with extra cash waiting to be spent somewhere?
I call this function a complete waste of money (and time). All we need is a rechargeable fare card that can keep track of time and distance, and as I said before, it is nothing new. Plenty of their world countries have used it for years.
I... Umm.. What? Simple? Also, London, New York, and Boston are using 3 different things.
The credit/debit implementation is standard, off-the shelf, with about half the number of parts and banks pay for a large chunk of that. The instant you store a balance, you need fare check machines, balance check machines, and a massive backend including a call centre and withdrawal mechanism. Let the banks do all that; they're good at it.
Presto V1 was unique, very expensive to create as a result, and still has years worth of development to go to fix the problems (like the 24 hour delay to load fare via the web). Presto V2 is a dream for any contractor.
London created their card before any alternatives existed. Much of their knowledge went into creating the now standard, off-the-shelf electronic money exchange platforms used across most of Europe and Canada. London's card created modern banking/retail; TTC and GO should be taking advantage of that. Also simple? It's one of the most complex creatures out there and one of the lessons learned was that small-transaction electronic retail does not require all of that complexity.
FYI, London also back-ported those standard banking changes prior to the London Olympics and accepts any card issued from any major bank.
You only need to spend a day in New York to see their mag-stripe cards cause massive bottlenecks at bus stations. The Q33 has about a 50 minute run to the airport and 10 minutes of that is scanning transfers at Jackson Heights; operating overhead of that card is massive with NYs non-integrated transfer points.
The question is backward. You should be asking why McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Vancouver transit, and nearly every other retailer in Canada and Europe are able to use one transaction processing mechanism for small transactions successfully but GO Transit requires something special. Why does GO need something special (here's a hint, it doesn't, but they paid handsomely to roll their own).
