Metrolinx: Presto Fare Card

[nfitz]

I certainly hope that any new stations opening, like the TYSSE and Eglinton LRT line, includes PRESTO from day one.

PRESTO should be quite widely implemented by the time TYSSE open in a couple of years. I'd assume they'd have readers from day one, particularly given the regional nature of many of 5 of the 6 stations. By the time Eglinton opens, PRESTO should have been running on the TTC for 3+ years.

 

[aquateam]

Oh god, not this again.

You do realize, don't you, that most of HK's transit system predates the handover to the PRC, right? And that the MTR is run like a capitalist business with real-estate deals and everything? If you want to see a transit system that is actually connected to (historical) communism you could always look to the wildly different examples of Moscow, Prague, Beijing, Pyongyang ...

I think there's a lot that we could learn from HK's transit system, I've been there twice and I was amazed by how efficient it was. The main take we should get from it (other than the benefits that platform screen doors have on reliability) is the importance of land use around stations. MTR makes a profit (one of the only systems in the world to do so) because it operates as a developer, building offices and rental apartments at stations for income. This is the same way that the original streetcar suburbs worked, where streetcar systems were built as tools for increasing property values by developers. Meanwhile, in North America, we have stations surrounded by seas of parking, which only encourages auto use and prevents transit oriented development (TOD).

Singapore's transit system is also often cited as a paragon of excellence ... and yet during a major service disruption not too long ago it was found that not only were staff not properly trained to deal with the technical aspects of evacuating the vehicles, ensuring passenger safety, providing replacement bus service, etc., management essentially suggested that employees that they should consider providing an improvised taxi service with their own cars, because hey, extra money.

Is that kind of callous, unethical approach characteristic of communist dictatorships? Sometimes, but Singapore is pretty much a benevolent paternalistic capitalist dictatorship that brooks little to no dissent. It's essentially a one-party state with something of a family dynasty in charge for the past 50-odd years. If you're too critical of the government you can be sued for libel until you are broke, at which point you will not be able to leave the country and the island is effectively your debtor's prison.

Singapore is also a former British colony with a democratic system. I've been lucky enough to use their metro, it was also clean and efficient. Also had platform barrier doors. I think their secret was that they heavily tax car imports, have congestion charges/tolls, and they put the money for transit expansion.

Both these examples also show the influence that land use has on public transit ridership. As both are islands (well, there was a border for Hong Kong), they had nowhere to build but up, and sprawl was contained. Public transit use (or at least non-auto use) is directly proportional to population density, which Hong Kong has in spades.

In north america, we have plenty of developable land and that works to make public transit less efficient, by the nature of the many-to-many origin to destination pairs that cannot be efficiently served.

 

[ehlow]

Hopefully the new subway stations have the new fare gates too.

Question guys: Let's say Presto is fully rolled out. You're going from St Clair to King by subway, then transferring to the King streetcar. You tap at St Clair, and it deducts TTC fare from your card. Do you then tap again when entering the streetcar? Does automatically that it's a transfer and knows not to deduct fare again?

 

[nfitz]

Question guys: Let's say Presto is fully rolled out. You're going from St Clair to King by subway, then transferring to the King streetcar. You tap at St Clair, and it deducts TTC fare from your card. Do you then tap again when entering the streetcar? Does automatically that it's a transfer and knows not to deduct fare again?

Don't know. The rules haven't been laid out. Currently for Queen you can enter the back doors with a transfer or Metrocard, and only have to show it if asked. If you are required to tap on, it will know it's a transfer - this works well on other systems.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Comparing Ontario's Presto card with SEPTA's new Key card...

Everyone:

Does anyone know if the PRESTO card will continue to offer unlimited use monthly or weekly pass options
or will "caps" be instituted when and if the TTC begins to phase out the Metropass?

The reason that I ask is that SEPTA in Philadelphia is introducing its New Payment Technology "Key" card
in 2015 and when the system becomes fully operational the current unlimited use monthly and weekly passes
will have new cap limits of 240 rides/month and 56 rides/week with this new "Key" system - this has some riders
apprehensive because the SEPTA system is a "hub and spoke" system that relies on convenient transfers between
vehicles and depending on how this cap count is administered those that use multiple vehicles may have problems...
I feel that rides taken within a two hour time period should count as a single ride - a unlimited two-hour transfer
would be a good flexible option...How will Ontario's Presto card compare with SEPTA's new Key card?

See: www.septa.org/key/index.html

LI MIKE

 

[nfitz]

Everyone:

Does anyone know if the PRESTO card will continue to offer unlimited use monthly or weekly pass options
or will "caps" be instituted when and if the TTC begins to phase out the Metropass?

The reason that I ask is that SEPTA in Philadelphia is introducing its New Payment Technology "Key" card
in 2015 and when the system becomes fully operational the current unlimited use monthly and weekly passes
will have new cap limits of 240 rides/month and 56 rides/week with this new "Key" system - this has some riders
apprehensive because the SEPTA system is a "hub and spoke" system that relies on convenient transfers between
vehicles and depending on how this cap count is administered those that use multiple vehicles may have problems...
I feel that rides taken within a two hour time period should count as a single ride - a unlimited two-hour transfer
would be a good flexible option...How will Ontario's Presto card compare with SEPTA's new Key card?

See: www.septa.org/key/index.html

LI MIKE

I don't think anyone knows what TTC will do yet. Though there's been absolutely no discussion of a cap system by any vendor, and I doubt they'd go that route.

There are now 10 transit agencies using Presto. We don't know what TTC will do. Of the other 9 agencies, we've seen 3 different models.
1) Purchase unlimited monthly and/or weekly passes
2) Monthly or weekly capping. After X riders in a month (or week), all rides are free.
3) Both passes and monthly or weekly capping for those that don't have passes

To date, four agencies have gone for option 1, 3 agencies have gone for option 2, and two have gone for option 3. Oddly, for option 3, one of then is cheaper to buy passes, and the other is cheaper to have monthly capping.

None have gone for you get X rides free, but X+1 will cost you model that your suggesting. I can't see that flying, particularly as those that are making a lot of trips, are typically taking a lot of very short trips, that strain the network far less than someone going on a 20-kilometre each-way daily commute.

If you want to see what each of the 10 agencies does, see https://www.prestocard.ca/en-US/Pages/ContentPages/FaresTravel.aspx - each one is unique.

 

[nfitz]

Odd, TTC's new Presto site - http://www.getpres.to/ also exists as http://matthew-gray-b52i.squarespace.com/ (which it jumped to while I was browsing it).

Hmm, seems a bit unprofessional ...

 

[the lemur]

Of course it does. You can't compare the economics of Toronto to highly-corrupt right-wing or communist dictatorships. I'm simply pointing out that even if one disagree's (and one could make a case that when Octopus was first tendered in 1994, Hong Kong was still under control of a comparable democracy to Canada), there's not even any evidence that Octopus installation was cheaper, given that the $100 million+ cost 20 years ago only got you 50+ stations and 70 streetcar.

Indeed there isn't. The fact that the TTC continually dragged its feet on when to adopt Presto, or whether to do so at all, didn't help either. As for politics, there have been municipal, provincial and federal governments of different stripes in place in the past few decades, none of them really interested in or capable of overcoming the inertia that characterizes transit development here, whether it's a relatively straightforward issue of funding or an ability to agree on what type of transit to create, where and when. It's as if no one really wants to be seen to help Toronto too much.

 

[nfitz]

The fact that the TTC continually dragged its feet on when to adopt Presto, or whether to do so at all, didn't help either.

Not sure why there's much blame on TTC here. The prime issue from day one, has been the Provincial government, and then Metrolinx when the province passed Presto to them. The province estimated the TTC cost in the $150 million range when everyone agreed verbally to proceed during Miller's first term, but when push came to shove, and they wanted TTC to cough up the money the estimate was now $350 million to $450 million, and couldn't even handle credit/debit cards, etc. It took years of provincial red tape until December 2012 for the province to come to terms.

And the terms give Metrolinx control of the rollout schedule.

Shouldn't we be thanking TTC for not tossing $300 million out the window? And shouldn't we be blaming Metrolinx that this isn't going faster?

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Not sure why there's much blame on TTC here. The prime issue from day one, has been the Provincial government, and then Metrolinx when the province passed Presto to them. The province estimated the TTC cost in the $150 million range when everyone agreed verbally to proceed during Miller's first term, but when push came to shove, and they wanted TTC to cough up the money the estimate was now $350 million to $450 million, and couldn't even handle credit/debit cards, etc. It took years of provincial red tape until December 2012 for the province to come to terms.

And the terms give Metrolinx control of the rollout schedule.

Shouldn't we be thanking TTC for not tossing $300 million out the window? And shouldn't we be blaming Metrolinx that this isn't going faster?

I think the reason the blame falls on the TTC is because every other transit agency involved implemented it without saying a word or stalling for even a day.

Of course you're right that TTC, by nature of its scale, had cost issues the others didn't and it was only fair they asked for some way of off-setting it, but it doesn't remove the blame from them stalling a rather significant regional project, IMHO.

Further (IMHO) if Presto hadn't forced their hand, I don't know that Miller et. al would have even looked at open payment. TTC seemed quite happy to have unionized employees counting little metal tokens until the end of time, as far as I can tell. Again, I appreciate why funding constraints etc. might have limited their ability to innovate but, any way you slice it, it's been a long time since they were the ones moving the ball downfield. So, one can explain their conservative, retrograde attitude, but that doesn't mean one has to excuse or - even worse - applaud it.

 

[rbt]

I think the reason the blame falls on the TTC is because every other transit agency involved implemented it without saying a word or stalling for even a day.

Metrolinx absorbed most of the cost of installation and trip-subsidy for those agencies.

TTC, being larger, was a large enough number that someone took notice and expected them to pay full price (even though Presto full price was well beyond market value).

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Metrolinx absorbed most of the cost of installation and trip-subsidy for those agencies.

TTC, being larger, was a large enough number that someone took notice and expected them to pay full price (even though Presto full price was well beyond market value).

I acknowledged as much, didn't I? We could go on a whole tangent and probably agree about how much more the province (And feds!) could do for transit.

I just know I watched that whole process and felt, for all their legit complaints about the money, the TTC had to be dragged into the 21st Century. It's not like, pre-Presto, they said, "Hey, we've heard about the Metrocard and Oyster being in use in real cities and want to try something like that..." I remember talking to David Miller back in 2003 and his attitude was (somewhat understandably) TTC needs to fix a bunch of other things before we start worrying about fare cards and things like that. So, I suspect "state of good repair" would have been the TTC priority until kingdom come while people continued to pay with antiquated, obsolete, loseable, labour-intensive tokens.

The Q was why TTC gets blamed, not whether it's 100% fair but there's plenty to go around.

 

[nfitz]

I just know I watched that whole process and felt, for all their legit complaints about the money, the TTC had to be dragged into the 21st Century.

The opposite, surely. When the province came up with the details of Presto, including the high price, and how old-fashioned it was, TTC instead went ahead and successfully tendered something more modern and cheaper. The province then worked to sink that, and bullied TTC into instead adopting Presto. However, had to agree to make Presto accept debit/credit and phones, in order to do so.

Sure, this was after 2003, but 2003 was still pretty early in fare cards.

 

[muller877]

The opposite, surely. When the province came up with the details of Presto, including the high price, and how old-fashioned it was, TTC instead went ahead and successfully tendered something more modern and cheaper. The province then worked to sink that, and bullied TTC into instead adopting Presto. However, had to agree to make Presto accept debit/credit and phones, in order to do so.

Sure, this was after 2003, but 2003 was still pretty early in fare cards.

...but unproven (or mostly unproven). No proven company (e.g. Octopus) wanted to touch this with a 10 foot pole. They knew the end game was Presto and didn't want to play the TTC game of trying to reduce Presto's cost.

And in 2003 the Octopus card was 6 years old and was being used outside of the transit system for parking meters (and I forget when I was first there...2002 or 2004...but when I was there I could already use it at retail incluiding Starbucks, 7-11, etc). So early for North America but not that early.

 

[Electrify]

The opposite, surely. When the province came up with the details of Presto, including the high price, and how old-fashioned it was, TTC instead went ahead and successfully tendered something more modern and cheaper. The province then worked to sink that, and bullied TTC into instead adopting Presto. However, had to agree to make Presto accept debit/credit and phones, in order to do so.

Sure, this was after 2003, but 2003 was still pretty early in fare cards.

The problem is that one of the key reasons for Presto was to integrate fares regionally, which would have been difficult if the TTC was using one system and everyone else was using another.