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Token transition
It's out with the old one on Wednesday. As for the shiny and new, it's only a stop-gap, writes Christian Cotroneo
January 28, 2007
Christian Cotroneo
The city moves to the rhythm of a million tiny clinks.
With the morning swell of commuters, token after token tumbles into collection boxes on buses, streetcars and subways.
For just under a fifth of TTC riders, it's a way of getting quickly through a turnstile, half-asleep or half-beat or half-dead from a night at the pub.
Most weigh less than a penny, so if one slips through the fingers, it's not always easy to hear the telltale chime as it meets the floor. For all the to-and-fro of tokens, they're for people who are neither here nor there.
In-betweeners use them – those who take public transit often enough to cash a $20 bill in one of the big red machines, but not often enough to get a full-fledged transit pass.
But who pays that much attention to the lives of subway tokens anyway?
"We've never seen any merit in them," says Don McLean, vice-president of Toronto-based auction house Waddington's. "We used to get the 1954 one through. And we'd get transfers from very early on that people have had framed, and things like that. But you know what? They made a lot of that stuff.
"How rare can they be?"
Not very – for now.
It will be at least 2012 before Toronto gets its smart-card system – a one-card pass incorporating transit networks in Burlington, York Region, Brampton, Mississauga and Durham – taking the humble token out of production, and making it at least half-way precious.
Since introducing them in 1954, the Toronto Transit Commission has hardly changed the style of its tokens. In more than 50 years, the TTC only introduced one major variant: a 1975 coin with a crown and wings on one side and three maple leaves on the other. (In 1968, a very small quantity of brass tokens, commemorating the east and west extensions of the Bloor-Danforth line to Warden and Islington stations, appeared briefly.) All 24 million old tokens in circulation are being replaced with the gold-and-silver models that debuted late last year, looking like shrunken toonies.
In some clink-free cultures where smart cards rule, there is already token nostalgia.
New York City, for example, phased out tokens in 2003. Now people are collecting them, with listings on eBay asking for as much as $10 for a once common copper coin.
The Internet is rife with shrines to transit tokens, each with their own unique faces.
An old token of Vermont's Burlington Rapid Transit Co. looks almost Masonic, with triangles encircled in silver.
The Chicago Transit Authority rolled out a model that looks like a silver wheel, complete with thick spokes.
A San Francisco token is dark, thick and heavy, with the initials SF carved whimsically in the middle.
In 1986, the New York City Transit Authority produced a more Spartan coin: a nickel-sized circle of brass with a bull's eye of steel.
The trouble with tokens – and a major reason behind the extra fancy new models – is they're often counterfeited. Last February, after a two-year investigation, five million fake tokens were seized from a U.S.-Canada counterfeiting ring. It was the third major seizure in the last two years, aimed at an underground industry that has cost the TTC a reported $10 million or more over the past two years.
That's a big reason why the TTC decided to introduce a new model last November, and will phase out the old token after close of operations Wednesday.
The new tokens – gold-coloured on the outside, silver-coloured on the inside – are being touted as "next-to-impossible" to reproduce, complete with embedded copy protection.
Nevertheless its days are certainly numbered, as the recently minted Greater Toronto Transportation Authority works on a super-secure smart-card system that would encompass the region.
The question is, since cities like London, New York and Hong Kong have already implemented successful and secure, smart systems, why has it taken so long here?
Answer: a cost of $300 million.
"Our position is that if you had $300 million to spend right now, you might want to spend it on a new streetcar route or brand new streetcars as opposed to brand new smart-card technologies," says city councillor Adam Giambrone, who also chairs the TTC.
The most daunting part, he adds, would be changing the computers that read fares.
"Sure, it's a little bit of a headache to install it on the 1,600 buses, 300 streetcars and all the subway stops. But the biggest thing is actually the computer applications."
The technology would have to determine what to charge each commuter. The plan is to link the whole GTA transit into a continuous, one-card ride so a commuter could board in Pickering, ride through the Toronto system, get off, and board a Mississauga Transit bus.
"Many of the other cities started the smart card because they had to replace all their fare equipment," Giambrone explains. "And so at that point, it made sense to make the decision to go to a smart card if you're already going to spend tens or millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, in the case of a city like New York, to replace your fare collection equipment. We're not at that point."
The Hong Kong metro system unveiled its smart card, dubbed the Octopus, back in 1997 to replace the usual battery of tickets and tokens used to ride the city's trains, trams and buses. Users replenish the card's value electronically at kiosks. People found it extremely handy, and its tentacles now stretch into supermarkets, parking meters, and fast-food restaurants. More than 14 millions cards are in circulation, roughly double Hong Kong's population, making it perhaps the smartest card on Earth.
Giambrone says the options are still open on what Toronto's version will do.
Will it, like the venerable Starbucks card, be a permanent resident of your wallet, with money to be allocated to it through the Internet or at a TTC station?
Or will it be just a slightly more sophisticated version of a monthly Metropass?
Giambrone compares a smart card's potential to the money card system introduced by Dexit – without the miserable failure aspect, of course.
When introduced to Toronto in 2003, the Dexit system, which used radio-frequency identification tags, was touted as a digital-currency system. With no coins or bills, participating merchants would simply swipe your Dexit for purchases and the card could be refilled from bank funds by phone or over the Internet.
But last summer, the company underwent significant restructuring, and is still looking to see a profit.
The power of a smarter Toronto transit card, however, appears more assured given the success of Octopus and others, like the Oyster card in London and the T-money system in Seoul.
Which would leave chronicling the secret lives of transit tokens to the province of collectors and the occasional daydreamer who finds one stashed away in a dusty drawer.
Token transition
It's out with the old one on Wednesday. As for the shiny and new, it's only a stop-gap, writes Christian Cotroneo
January 28, 2007
Christian Cotroneo
The city moves to the rhythm of a million tiny clinks.
With the morning swell of commuters, token after token tumbles into collection boxes on buses, streetcars and subways.
For just under a fifth of TTC riders, it's a way of getting quickly through a turnstile, half-asleep or half-beat or half-dead from a night at the pub.
Most weigh less than a penny, so if one slips through the fingers, it's not always easy to hear the telltale chime as it meets the floor. For all the to-and-fro of tokens, they're for people who are neither here nor there.
In-betweeners use them – those who take public transit often enough to cash a $20 bill in one of the big red machines, but not often enough to get a full-fledged transit pass.
But who pays that much attention to the lives of subway tokens anyway?
"We've never seen any merit in them," says Don McLean, vice-president of Toronto-based auction house Waddington's. "We used to get the 1954 one through. And we'd get transfers from very early on that people have had framed, and things like that. But you know what? They made a lot of that stuff.
"How rare can they be?"
Not very – for now.
It will be at least 2012 before Toronto gets its smart-card system – a one-card pass incorporating transit networks in Burlington, York Region, Brampton, Mississauga and Durham – taking the humble token out of production, and making it at least half-way precious.
Since introducing them in 1954, the Toronto Transit Commission has hardly changed the style of its tokens. In more than 50 years, the TTC only introduced one major variant: a 1975 coin with a crown and wings on one side and three maple leaves on the other. (In 1968, a very small quantity of brass tokens, commemorating the east and west extensions of the Bloor-Danforth line to Warden and Islington stations, appeared briefly.) All 24 million old tokens in circulation are being replaced with the gold-and-silver models that debuted late last year, looking like shrunken toonies.
In some clink-free cultures where smart cards rule, there is already token nostalgia.
New York City, for example, phased out tokens in 2003. Now people are collecting them, with listings on eBay asking for as much as $10 for a once common copper coin.
The Internet is rife with shrines to transit tokens, each with their own unique faces.
An old token of Vermont's Burlington Rapid Transit Co. looks almost Masonic, with triangles encircled in silver.
The Chicago Transit Authority rolled out a model that looks like a silver wheel, complete with thick spokes.
A San Francisco token is dark, thick and heavy, with the initials SF carved whimsically in the middle.
In 1986, the New York City Transit Authority produced a more Spartan coin: a nickel-sized circle of brass with a bull's eye of steel.
The trouble with tokens – and a major reason behind the extra fancy new models – is they're often counterfeited. Last February, after a two-year investigation, five million fake tokens were seized from a U.S.-Canada counterfeiting ring. It was the third major seizure in the last two years, aimed at an underground industry that has cost the TTC a reported $10 million or more over the past two years.
That's a big reason why the TTC decided to introduce a new model last November, and will phase out the old token after close of operations Wednesday.
The new tokens – gold-coloured on the outside, silver-coloured on the inside – are being touted as "next-to-impossible" to reproduce, complete with embedded copy protection.
Nevertheless its days are certainly numbered, as the recently minted Greater Toronto Transportation Authority works on a super-secure smart-card system that would encompass the region.
The question is, since cities like London, New York and Hong Kong have already implemented successful and secure, smart systems, why has it taken so long here?
Answer: a cost of $300 million.
"Our position is that if you had $300 million to spend right now, you might want to spend it on a new streetcar route or brand new streetcars as opposed to brand new smart-card technologies," says city councillor Adam Giambrone, who also chairs the TTC.
The most daunting part, he adds, would be changing the computers that read fares.
"Sure, it's a little bit of a headache to install it on the 1,600 buses, 300 streetcars and all the subway stops. But the biggest thing is actually the computer applications."
The technology would have to determine what to charge each commuter. The plan is to link the whole GTA transit into a continuous, one-card ride so a commuter could board in Pickering, ride through the Toronto system, get off, and board a Mississauga Transit bus.
"Many of the other cities started the smart card because they had to replace all their fare equipment," Giambrone explains. "And so at that point, it made sense to make the decision to go to a smart card if you're already going to spend tens or millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, in the case of a city like New York, to replace your fare collection equipment. We're not at that point."
The Hong Kong metro system unveiled its smart card, dubbed the Octopus, back in 1997 to replace the usual battery of tickets and tokens used to ride the city's trains, trams and buses. Users replenish the card's value electronically at kiosks. People found it extremely handy, and its tentacles now stretch into supermarkets, parking meters, and fast-food restaurants. More than 14 millions cards are in circulation, roughly double Hong Kong's population, making it perhaps the smartest card on Earth.
Giambrone says the options are still open on what Toronto's version will do.
Will it, like the venerable Starbucks card, be a permanent resident of your wallet, with money to be allocated to it through the Internet or at a TTC station?
Or will it be just a slightly more sophisticated version of a monthly Metropass?
Giambrone compares a smart card's potential to the money card system introduced by Dexit – without the miserable failure aspect, of course.
When introduced to Toronto in 2003, the Dexit system, which used radio-frequency identification tags, was touted as a digital-currency system. With no coins or bills, participating merchants would simply swipe your Dexit for purchases and the card could be refilled from bank funds by phone or over the Internet.
But last summer, the company underwent significant restructuring, and is still looking to see a profit.
The power of a smarter Toronto transit card, however, appears more assured given the success of Octopus and others, like the Oyster card in London and the T-money system in Seoul.
Which would leave chronicling the secret lives of transit tokens to the province of collectors and the occasional daydreamer who finds one stashed away in a dusty drawer.