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GTHA Transit Fare Integration

Being able to use your debit card is convenient but will is stop being deducted as soon as you hit the monthly pass rate?
 
Being able to use your debit card is convenient but will is stop being deducted as soon as you hit the monthly pass rate?
That's something for the TTC board. In the back end, it's already set up for weekly capping after 10 trips.

Screenshot 2023-09-13 152055.jpg
 
I'd be more believing that it will happen, if the TTC spokesperson didn't refer to it as "welcome news". If it's news to him, what does the rest of the management and the board know about implementation and funding?
 
This can't come soon enough. It would help me. Although it may make me too lazy to walk up from Union to Yonge & Dundas if I know the TTC doesn't cost me extra anymore.
 
This can't come soon enough. It would help me. Although it may make me too lazy to walk up from Union to Yonge & Dundas if I know the TTC doesn't cost me extra anymore.
This is pretty much the idea of the Ontario Line trying to intercept people at Exhibition and East Harbour and deliver them further north, to take pressure off of Union.
 
All these exceptions to fares, where simply tapping your Presto is no longer the cheapest option is annoying. What stops GO simply doing daily rate-capping on Saturdays and Sundays?

IIRC the Presto system can only do daily, weekly OR monthly capping, and they chose monthly.
 
All these exceptions to fares, where simply tapping your Presto is no longer the cheapest option is annoying. What stops GO simply doing daily rate-capping on Saturdays and Sundays?

Presto has a number of technical constraints driven by the tiny on-card storage and software written for the original tap box which was low power and needed to calculate the fare within a small amount of time (a small fraction of the total tap time: read and write time dominated). A substantial code refactoring would be needed to make it more generalized: so developer time.

But... they could just drop Presto as a stored-value mechanism and treat it the same as a debit card instead. This eliminates nearly all of their legacy Presto complications, and also means they only need to write that mechanism once for all cards.
 
Presto has a number of technical constraints driven by the tiny on-card storage and software written for the original tap box which was low power and needed to calculate the fare within a small amount of time (a small fraction of the total tap time: read and write time dominated). A substantial code refactoring would be needed to make it more generalized: so developer time.

But... they could just drop Presto as a stored-value mechanism and treat it the same as a debit card instead. This eliminates nearly all of their legacy Presto complications, and also means they only need to write that mechanism once for all cards.
Development for that is happening right now. An account-based system is currently being used for PRESTO in Google Wallet. Physical PRESTO cards should be transferred over to the account-based system as well.

Singapore did something similar with their EZ-Link cards last year. But unlike the system in Singapore, account-based PRESTO cards are capable of displaying the cost of the fare, the balance on the card, and the remaining travel window when the reader has an internet connection.
 
IIRC the Presto system can only do daily, weekly OR monthly capping, and they chose monthly.
Originally perhaps, but my understanding is that one of the requirements for TTC to come on board, was to be able to do both daily and weekly capping. Though GO has certainly made an epic of their multi-step monthly capping - perhaps that screws up the ability to do a second type of capping.

Weren't one or two of the GTA agencies doing 2 types of capping? I can't find the table that used to be on the Presto website.
 
Interesting, I missed that among all the news about the station contribution fee. It's like a small side note.
Press Release: The legislation would also help the City of Toronto to better integrate its transit services with other regional transit networks by allowing the Toronto Transit Commission to enter into cross-boundary service agreements with neighbouring transit agencies.
I didn't realize that the TTC needed legislation to allow it to make its own cross boundary service agreements. And I wonder if the provincial government is going to do more for fare integration than just let Toronto negotiate with other transit services.

This legislation amends the City of Toronto Act, Subsection 395 by adding to it. Something about the TTC union possibly not allowing fare integration because of it being classified as contracting out.

Background, City of Toronto Act, Section 395, subsection (1)
Exclusive authority of TTC
395 (1) No person other than the TTC shall establish, operate or maintain a local passenger transportation system within the City until the TTC is dissolved or the control and management over the local passenger transportation system is removed from the TTC. 2006, c. 11, Sched. A, s. 395 (1).
Additions
Agreements with municipality or local board

(5) Despite subsection (1), the TTC may enter into an agreement with a municipality or local board authorizing the municipality or local board to operate, maintain or both operate and maintain, within the City, part of the municipality’s or local board’s local passenger transportation system on the conditions specified in the agreement.
(6) Where an agreement is made pursuant to subsection (5) for the purpose of integrating the services of the local passenger transportation system with those of the system operated by the TTC, the agreement is not a sale or transfer or deemed sale or transfer of the operation or part of the operation of the TTC under the Labour Relations Act, 1995.
(7) Where an agreement is made pursuant to subsection (5) for the purpose of integrating the services of the local passenger transportation system with those of the system operated by the TTC, the agreement does not constitute contracting out for the purposes of,

(a) any collective agreement to which the TTC is a party, including any collective agreement in operation on the day subsection 1 (3) of Schedule 1 to the Transportation for the Future Act, 2023 comes into force; and

(b) any terms and conditions of employment of the collective agreement that continue to apply following the expiry of the collective agreement.

City of Toronto Act, Section 395 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/06c11#BK543

Bill 131, Transportation for the Future Act, 2023,
 

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