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Metrolinx: Presto Fare Card

Old Mill and Royal York both have their old turnstiles removed and a large hoarding around the whole entry area. Royal York had several TTC "Ambassadors" on hand to explain how to exit the station.

I peeked in the door of the hoarding at Old Mill. They appeared to be in process of cementing the footings for the new entry gates.

No sign of activity at the Royal York Grenview entrance - I suppose they only do one end at a time.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
Old Mill and Royal York both have their old turnstiles removed and a large hoarding around the whole entry area. Royal York had several TTC "Ambassadors" on hand to explain how to exit the station.

I peeked in the door of the hoarding at Old Mill. They appeared to be in process of cementing the footings for the new entry gates.

No sign of activity at the Royal York Grenview entrance - I suppose they only do one end at a time.

- Paul
Click to expand...

I was at Royal York two weekends ago and they didn't even have a PRESTO reader. I had to pay cash fare. From the stone ages...to the Jetsons in one go.
 
By the looks of it Dupont is two months behind schedule. First was Late Spring ... then June 1st and then July 21st.
 
I'd think that if one wasn't fluent in French or English, it would only be a concern with those with screen readers.
 
When I was by yesterday St Clair West also had some of the barriers in the collector's area taken out, but I don't know if that's for Presto or for the station renovations
 
Does anyone know how the bus PRESTO installations are going and when they expect to finish? I have recently seen a couple of buses downtown with PRESTO but it is certainly not common. They are apparently moving west to east.

Also, why are they putting PRESTO at the rear doors of buses, are they going to offer all door boarding? I had thought they could not deal with fare inspections on buses so were continuing with only front door bus boarding outside fare paid areas.
 
DSC said:
Does anyone know how the bus PRESTO installations are going and when they expect to finish? I have recently seen a couple of buses downtown with PRESTO but it is certainly not common. They are apparently moving west to east.

Also, why are they putting PRESTO at the rear doors of buses, are they going to offer all door boarding? I had thought they could not deal with fare inspections on buses so were continuing with only front door bus boarding outside fare paid areas.
Click to expand...

1. I was at the ROM this afternoon and an Avenue 5 passed me southbound with the PRESTO sign in the front window clip and two readers. I was a bit amazed to see the little screen through the rear doors as it passed by.

2. It's TAP-on / TAP-off, no? So if I start at a subways station and pass through a faregate, and then end my journey at a subway station, then I would tap off at a faregate. But if I started at a subway station and then transferred to a bus in the fare paid area, would I not need to tap off when I got off? Isn't the point of all this to have a starting TAP and an ending TAP to each journey? Both for inter-jurisdictional fares and collecting data?
 
DSC said:
Does anyone know how the bus PRESTO installations are going and when they expect to finish? I have recently seen a couple of buses downtown with PRESTO but it is certainly not common. They are apparently moving west to east.

Also, why are they putting PRESTO at the rear doors of buses, are they going to offer all door boarding? I had thought they could not deal with fare inspections on buses so were continuing with only front door bus boarding outside fare paid areas.
Click to expand...

TransitBart said:
1. I was at the ROM this afternoon and an Avenue 5 passed me southbound with the PRESTO sign in the front window clip and two readers. I was a bit amazed to see the little screen through the rear doors as it passed by.

2. It's TAP-on / TAP-off, no? So if I start at a subways station and pass through a faregate, and then end my journey at a subway station, then I would tap off at a faregate. But if I started at a subway station and then transferred to a bus in the fare paid area, would I not need to tap off when I got off? Isn't the point of all this to have a starting TAP and an ending TAP to each journey? Both for inter-jurisdictional fares and collecting data?
Click to expand...

Buses are getting preto on the rear doors for poel to tap on when boarding at the rear doors at a terminal station. Eventually you will need to tap onto a bus or streetcar to transfer to it even if you are in a station. You can currently do it now and if you tapped on at a station it should give you a zero charge as it will recognize it as a transfer. Part of it is to help the TTC see how the ridership is distributed more easily then currently
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
Buses are getting preto on the rear doors for poel to tap on when boarding at the rear doors at a terminal station. Eventually you will need to tap onto a bus or streetcar to transfer to it even if you are in a station. You can currently do it now and if you tapped on at a station it should give you a zero charge as it will recognize it as a transfer. Part of it is to help the TTC see how the ridership is distributed more easily then currently
Click to expand...

Having to Tap on at fare paid terminals is probably because the Presto system would not know if a subsequent transfer to another surface vehicle is a new trip or not. And maybe Metrolinx pushed a bit for it to be able to implement fare by distance on the Subway lines.
 
Voltz said:
Having to Tap on at fare paid terminals is probably because the Presto system would not know if a subsequent transfer to another surface vehicle is a new trip or not. And maybe Metrolinx pushed a bit for it to be able to implement fare by distance on the Subway lines.
Click to expand...

Actually, one of the drivers is the Spadina Extension. Even if you assume the fare system isn't change anytime soon (fare by distance), the TTC subway will technically be a zoned system. York University is going to be both in the York Region AND TTC zone, but if you take the subway anywhere else it'll tack on a second fare when you transfer to a surface vehicle or exit a subway station.

Added side-effects include better knowledge of customer flows (detailed trip knowledge) and it'll be very difficult to commit fare-fraud if each transfer, and exiting stations, requires a tap.


I'm not sure all that is worth the inconvenience but I'm also not demanding council reduce my tax burden by $2/month (2%).
 
rbt said:
Actually, one of the drivers is the Spadina Extension. Even if you assume the fare system isn't change anytime soon (fare by distance), the TTC subway will technically be a zoned system. York University is going to be both in the York Region AND TTC zone, but if you take the subway anywhere else it'll tack on a second fare when you transfer to a surface vehicle or exit a subway station.

Added side-effects include better knowledge of customer flows (detailed trip knowledge) and it'll be very difficult to commit fare-fraud if each transfer, and exiting stations, requires a tap.

I'm not sure all that is worth the inconvenience but I'm also not demanding council reduce my tax burden by $2/month (2%).
Click to expand...

One of the drivers should be that it's an embarassment to run North America's third or fourth largest system by selling people aluminum discs to drop into turnstiles to pay fares. Today I got on the subway at Donlands. There is not one PRESTO reader at the station there. The collector booth had a sign "Collector not available. Deposit correct fare." As if. This situation is absolutely nuts. The faregate installation could not be complete soon enough.

I used my first magnetic stripe ticket on a faregate in 1986 on the Paris metro at Jussieu station which incidentally was bought from an automatic ticket vending machine. Then I used it to "swipe out" too.

Seriously folks. It's thirty years later. It's very upsetting to be this far behind. All the guessing and BS associated with approximating how many rides a METROPASS user really takes could have been gone years ago with TAP in / TAP out. It's no wonder the TTC management is having problems running the thing. There is not enough real data to know what the hell is going on. It is no wonder the TTC management is being run rough-shod over by politicians. It will be very hard to argue with X hundred million taps that show Y million dollars paid and Z million km travelled and HOW and WHEN in the future.
 
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One thing that will be essential is for TTC to ensure people can actually top-up or buy Presto cards at Presto-only entrances. I noticed this recently at the Bay entrance on Cumberland. It's Presto-only, but there's no Presto machine! So if you don't have a card, or have an insufficient balance, you need to exit and walk on the street to the other entrance. Oh, and at the other entrance there's only a machine selling NEW cards, not a top-up machine for existing cards.

Not to mention the problem of actually keeping machines in working order. I tried to top up at King a little while ago and couldn't because both machines were broken. A TTC staffer was trying to help a tourist navigate the situation, but conceded TTC staff aren't "trained" with Presto because...it's a Metrolinx project! Like a visitor to Toronto is supposed to care or understand that.

I really, really hope these are just temporary teething problems.
 
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