yrt+viva=1system
Senior Member
Anyone think that Metrolinx will find some sort of way to end the contract with Accenture and go with a more experienced company who have worked on projects this complex?
To be fair though - can you think of a fare card system that is this complex? The fare rules in Montreal and London for example are much, much simpler (and Oyster has had it's issues ... the infamous Oyster extensions for example).Anyone think that Metrolinx will find some sort of way to end the contract with Accenture and go with a more experienced company who have worked on projects this complex?
The fact that there's an 'override' button at all damns this thing to failure. Simplify: Tap on/tap off. That's it. If that doesn't work with existing fare structures, then change the fare structures.
How do other agencies deal with this? Virtually every London commuter train arrives in it's main-line terminal fully loaded (if not more so), and any Oyster user has to tap out as they get off the train. I guess those trains coming from afar may have a lot of non-Oyster users, but the trains that have the shorter runs within London now have Oyster at all stations.The problem with that option isn't GO's fare structures. It's that 2000 people getting off each GO train at Union in the morning rush who all would need to tap out before they could head to their offices would create a pretty huge bottleneck.
3) If you have a default GO trip set, and you take another GO trip within 2.5 hours of tapping on for your previous trip you must use the Override first - even if you are only taking your default trip (apparently this was 4 hours before Sunday!). And even if you do this, you will have to pay the full-fare - and not the discounted fare (7.5% off for all trips, and higher after trip 35). They said if you are doing this, you should be using tickets, not Presto
The problem with that option isn't GO's fare structures. It's that 2000 people getting off each GO train at Union in the morning rush who all would need to tap out before they could head to their offices would create a pretty huge bottleneck.
Seeing as a really large proportion of GO's riders are using the same two endpoints every trip every day, the notion of a "default trip" option that cut things down to a single tap probably made a lot of sense on the drawing board. I just don't think anyone realized how tricky it would be to have both a default trip functionality and an open-jawed trip functionality coexisting on the same card.
Would be cool if readers were added to office buildings in the downtown core, to allow people to proceed right to their office, and 'tap off' as they get onto an elevator or something like that.
How do other agencies deal with this? Virtually every London commuter train arrives in it's main-line terminal fully loaded (if not more so), and any Oyster user has to tap out as they get off the train. I guess those trains coming from afar may have a lot of non-Oyster users, but the trains that have the shorter runs within London now have Oyster at all stations.
Seems to me, you only have to put more machines on the platforms, the stairs, the corridors ... it's not like you have to stop walking to touch against one.
You can fix most any problem by throwing more money at it. If you're talking about one Presto reader per car per platform at Union Station, that's about 200 machines by itself. Assuming the other 58 stations only have 1 platform each, that's another 700. I'm not sure how much they cost per machine including installation, but I'd guess at least $500,000 each, so $450m? If a car is full only to seating capacity, and it's 1 second per passenger to swipe, it's 2.5 minutes for 151 people without having any issues. The 2031 Union Station Improvement scheme is trying to get dwell time to under 5 minutes per train.If they're worried about there being too many people off-loading at Union to "tap-off' that really limits Presto's potential for the TTC, with many stations where the crowds coming off trains can be just as heavy -- no chance of fare by distance, etc. I can't imagine this is a problem that wouldn't be solved by the existence of more readers.
You can fix most any problem by throwing more money at it. If you're talking about one Presto reader per car per platform at Union Station, that's about 200 machines by itself. Assuming the other 58 stations only have 1 platform each, that's another 700. I'm not sure how much they cost per machine including installation, but I'd guess at least $500,000 each, so $450m? If a car is full only to seating capacity, and it's 1 second per passenger to swipe, it's 2.5 minutes for 151 people without having any issues. The 2031 Union Station Improvement scheme is trying to get dwell time to under 5 minutes per train.
Exactly. Just Contract Administration is around $4000 a week. $500k is definately on the high side, but it's just as definately a six-figure number, and the average number of platforms is definately above 1.It's not the machine that costs that much. It's infrastructure behind it.