Metrolinx: Presto Fare Card

[LNahid2000]

Others charge more ... £5 now for Oyster in London ... refundable I suppose - but who bothers?

I hate to think how much I've lost on MTA Metrocards over the years, that have always got an extra ride or so on them when I leave NYC, and unlike Oyster and Presto that will last for a decade, expire in months.

London has other options for tourists though. I've always bought a day pass on a travelcard when I went to the UK, which doesn't have any charge for the card. The other cool thing is that if you buy a travelcard at a railway station, you get huge discounts on all sorts of attractions:

https://www.londontoolkit.com/whattodo/london_travelcard_2for1_discussion.html

 

[steveintoronto]

London has other options for tourists though. I've always bought a day pass on a travelcard when I went to the UK, which doesn't have any charge for the card. The other cool thing is that if you buy a travelcard at a railway station, you get huge discounts on all sorts of attractions:

https://www.londontoolkit.com/whattodo/london_travelcard_2for1_discussion.html

The Visitor Oyster card is a pay-as-you-go smartcard which can be used to pay for all public transport in London.

• Accepted everywhere – use on all London public transport, including discounted fares on riverboats
• 50% discount – a Tube journey in central London costs £2.40 with Oyster or £4.90 with cash
• No queuing – while other visitors to London queue at the ticket office with their luggage, you’ll be ready to travel when you arrive
• Price capping – travel as much as you like but never use more than £6.80 of credit per day in central London
• Exclusive offers and discounts - Save money on 40 exclusive offers and discounts by downloading the Visitor Oyster card offers booklet and simply showing your card at the venues! Offers include Planet Hollywood, London Beatles Store and M&M’s World and many more!
• Travel around London the smart way – Learn how to use your Visitor Oyster card to ensure you get the cheapest fares possible, along with lots of helpful tips and tricks for travelling around London!
• Fun fact! The name comes from one of the most famous Brits of all, William Shakespeare! "The world is your Oyster" was originally included in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'

• https://www.visitbritainshop.com/usa/london-visitor-oyster-card/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=US>>London Transport&utm_term=oyster cards&utm_content=US>>OC>>Head>>Phrase

London Travelcard v Oyster Card v Contactless Card in 2018

For the visitor to London, the question of which travel pass to purchase can be confusing. Those living and working in London will almost always have an Oyster Card in their wallet and, as a general rule of thumb, the Oyster Card is the benchmark to be beaten, although people are fast migrating to contactless payment cards.

Many will have a long-term travel pass attached to the Oyster, and these can be valid for as short as a week or as long as a year.
Buying a single ticket for one journey is rare, you are penalised very heavily financially. A one-way single ticket on the Underground in Central London is double that of an Oyster fare and not far off the maximum you can pay in a day of unlimited rides using Oyster.

On the buses buying a one-way ticket is just not an option offered.

The Contactless payment card is the new option available and the authorities hope this may become the dominant channel in the longer term. However for short-term visitors the adoption rate is far less and for good reason, especially if you are from overseas and do not have a British sterling or pound currency credit/debit card.

For the tourist or those making short visits to London there are aspects of the Travelcard that make them appealing and if understood can make Travelcards cheaper than Oyster cards or Contactless payment cards, especially if you are visiting the major sights on a first time visit.

So all in all it can be quite confusing for the visitor planning their visit to London to make an informed choice.

This page discusses the differences between Oyster, Contactless Payment Cards and Travelcards so you can identify the right product for you. Our detailed Travelcard, Contactless payment cards and Oyster card pages give a full explanation of each.
[...]

https://www.londontoolkit.com/briefing/travelcard_oyster.htm

I was chatting with a large group of Londoners last week on the GO train, some were engineers who work for UK transit consortiums, some were based temporarily in Toronto and they were appalled at how behind the times Toronto is for transit infrastructure, and actually miffed at how complicated and user-unfriendly Presto is.

That is all perfectly understandable, but what surprised me, from the 'Land with the most expensive railway fares in Europe' is "how expensive transit is in the GTHA". Perhaps they were comparing to mainland Europe? It's an interesting point of discussion. It certainly is expensive compared to most US systems I've used.

Presto is still a long way from seamless one fare travel in the GTHA.

 

[Neutrino]

With respect to cost, when I was in Paris in 2012, the fares were 1.1 euro per ride, IIRC. Definitely a major difference from the GTA.

 

[steveintoronto]

With respect to cost, when I was in Paris in 2012, the fares were 1.1 euro per ride, IIRC. Definitely a major difference from the GTA.

Euro exchange is 1.52 to CAD today.

Paris Métro Fares and Tickets (2018)
Paris Métro single tickets and carnets

The basic Métro ticket is a small piece of cardboard (formerly mauve, now white) with a magnetic strip that costs €1,90. It's issued by RATP, the transportation authority for the Paris region.

You can save money by purchasing a carnet of 10 tickets for €14,90 from vending machines near the turnstiles in Métro stations. (A carnet is simply a stack of individual tickets.) If you're traveling with a children, see the "Tips" section below.

A single ticket will take you anywhere within the city of Paris on the Métro and RER networks, and you can transfer between lines--or between the Métro and the RER--on the same ticket.

You can also use T+ tickets on buses and trams, although you can't transfer between the Métro and RER and buses or trams on the same ticket.

https://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/paris-metro-tickets.htm

Hard to compare due to the separate bus fare (this is true in London too, depending on the type of fare you pay) but including the RER (equivalent to GO RER, which is yet to be materialize) is a real plus.

Addendum: The transfer to bus info above is not exact. Here it is from the Agency:

01. How does it work ?
The t+ ticket allows you to travel using the metro, the RER in zone 1, the Île-de-France region’s bus lines (except Orlybus and Roissybus), the tramways, and the Montmartre funicular.

The following transfers are possible:

• metro/metro for 2 hours, following validation;
• metro/RER and RER/RER within Paris, for 2 hours between the 1st and last validation;
• bus/bus (including transfers between the RATP and OPTILE networks), for 90 minutes between the 1st and last validation;
• bus/tram and tram/tram, for 90 minutes between the 1st and last validation.

02. How much does it cost ?
t+ ticket Prices
A l'unité 1,90 €
Carnet de 10 14,90 €
Carnet de 10 (tarif réduit) 7,45 €
Ticket d'accès à bord* 2,00 €

https://www.ratp.fr/en/titres-et-tarifs/t-tickets

Here's the catch:
* Single tickets only are sold on board buses (valid for one bus trip, no transfers)

 

[Neutrino]

Yes, we took RER from CDG to the centre of Paris and then subway to our hotel, and then subway to all the attractions. It was pretty damn convenient and affordable.

 

[nfitz]

I was chatting with a large group of Londoners last week on the GO train, some were engineers who work for UK transit consortiums, some were based temporarily in Toronto and they were appalled at how behind the times Toronto is for transit infrastructure, and actually miffed at how complicated and user-unfriendly Presto is.

Seems ironic given Oyster still has a warning for those with Canadian MasterCards and any foreign Visa card, that they may not be accepted - AND overseas transactions fees may apply!

 

[timio]

^ A few years ago, we borrowed a friends Oyster cards and ran into issues reloading with my Visa so we had to circle around the station to find a machine that accepted cash for reloads.

 

[PinkLucy]

I had no issues using my MC to top up my Oyster card and it took less than a minute to get a refund for the unused balance.

 

[WillTo]

Asking for a friend:

Has anyone encountered a bus TTC reader that rejects a tap, even though there was money on the card (no, it is not a matter of waiting the 24 hours for the bus reader to be updated).

My coworker tapped, got rejected, tapped again, got rejected, paid cash fare.
Later he checked online and he was actually charged!

 

[innsertnamehere]

Asking for a friend:

Has anyone encountered a bus TTC reader that rejects a tap, even though there was money on the card (no, it is not a matter of waiting the 24 hours for the bus reader to be updated).

My coworker tapped, got rejected, tapped again, got rejected, paid cash fare.
Later he checked online and he was actually charged!

sometimes this is human error - you tap once and don't see/hear it, so you tap again, thinking it didn't work, and get denied as Presto registers an already active fare on the card.

It comes back to the issue of the TTC not displaying text based feedback displays for presto reads - a simple small message should be displayed that would resolve the issue.. something like "already tapped". Users would quickly understand and move on. But because the TTC believes (despite every other transit agency in the province not following this) that to make text base displays AODA compliant, they would need the text read aloud, they avoid it.

 

[steveintoronto]

I had no issues using my MC to top up my Oyster card and it took less than a minute to get a refund for the unused balance.

Seems ironic given Oyster still has a warning for those with Canadian MasterCards and any foreign Visa card, that they may not be accepted - AND overseas transactions fees may apply!

I never had an issue once with MasterCard on my BoM account going back over a decade in London for various work sojourns. Some years back, some non major bank cards had an issue due to the time it took to transact with them. Those cards were problematic everywhere, even inside Canada at times.

Here's where it's at now:

[...]
[PDF]Contactless Payments Travel Well in London - Mastercard

Use Master card instead of Oyster card in London's tube - London .
Etc. etc.
As for foreign accounts, unless you open an account in Sterling, of course you're going to pay FX, plus whatever the bank skims on top.

How's Presto coming along there? Still scraping knuckles on the sidewalk?

 

[rbt]

But because the TTC believes (despite every other transit agency in the province not following this) that to make text base displays AODA compliant, they would need the text read aloud, they avoid it.

TTC will stop being quite so anal regarding AODA interpretation when David Lepofsky dies (a full retirement seems unlikely).

Having a blind semi-retired lawyer, who made a career working for the Crown on Supreme Court cases, has some exceptional challenges. That he teaches law at U of T as a hobby and beatup the TTC on AODA compliance cases as a learning exercise with his students has made TTC a bit defensive.


That said, every station has a balance checking machine which can report the information you want.

 

[nfitz]

Here's where it's at now:

I'm not sure the TripAdvisor information is official. The Mastercard website, doesn't cover Visa, and appears to be a year old.

Surely the TFL link I provided above is more current and official - https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-paymen...less-payment-cards?intcmp=8610#on-this-page-1

 

[steveintoronto]

I'm not sure the TripAdvisor information is official. The Mastercard website, doesn't cover Visa, and appears to be a year old.

Surely the TFL link I provided above is more current and official - https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-paymen...less-payment-cards?intcmp=8610#on-this-page-1

The information is retroactive, it's been up for years, and here's from the same site, but since *contactless cards* have been made available in Canada to use the 'contactless feature' as some Presto top up machines now are (with a $50 limit IIRC), they can be used on the Oyster system:

What are contactless payment cards?
Most UK banks now issue their debit, credit, charge or pre-paid cards as contactless cards. This means you can use them for purchases under £30 with no need for a PIN or signature - just touch your card on a contactless card reader.

• Can I use my UK card to travel?
• Non-UK contactless cards

• Pre-paid cards
• Joint accounts

Some other methods of contactless payment are accepted on our services, including mobile phone apps, key fobs, stickers and wristbands.

If you're travelling with other people, each person must have their own card. You can't share the same contactless card to pay for travel.

If you've got a contactless card but haven't used it yet, you might need to make a chip and PIN payment elsewhere before you can use it for contactless payments.

Find out more about mobile payments and other methods of contactless payment.

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless/what-are-contactless-payment-cards

BofM recalled my last card, and those of many others to reissue the contactless enabled one just over a year ago. They also fixed some security issues at the same time, but that's another matter...

 

[11th]

Not quite. Tapping when boarding buses/streetcars is now mandatory when boarding from fare paid areas.

I'd like to see them add PRESTO terminals in fare paid areas so that you can tap as you arrive and wait to board. Imagine travelling from deep inside Scarborough on a couple of buses, a subway and then getting downtown, just as your 2 hours are almost up and then getting screwed because you had to wait another 10 minutes for a streetcar or bus to pull into the station before tapping after the 2 hours, charging you another fare for the final leg of your trip.

It'd also make boarding more efficient for busy waiting areas. If every single person has to tap as they board, that's going to slow things down considerably.

Yea, I realized I missed that part after I hit post.
There's also another problem with the tap in fare paid area. If someone is to travel from Bloor-Yonge to Steeles and Don Mills, to save a second fare, they'd be better do their < 2:00 tap at Pape (to 25 Don Mills), and not Don Mills (to 25 Don Mills) or Finch (to Steeles East routes).