TTC: New Fare Gate Installation

[Megaton327]

These gates seem like such overkill. Why not just presto readers? That's all there is on buses and streetcars. Same with GO transit. What is it about subways stations that the transit user suddenly becomes untrustworthy?

In truth its not a fare paid area anymore. Its a POP area. Once the bus and streetcar system became POP, so did the subway since you enter the subway system via the that method. Also these gates are easily hurdled. As to putting inspectors on every vehicle, no I don't think I wrote that, though there's probably a sweet spot in that area between the resources applied to it and the income it generates.

It is most certainly not a POP area. You are not required to have, and will not be asked to show, POP while riding the subway or in the fare paid zone of a subway station, unless you've just gotten off a streetcar.

Buses have an operator stationed next to the doors/presto reader, they check that each passenger coming on pays their fare, and are supposed to notify transit safety if someone doesn't so that they can come and issue a ticket.

Streetcars have fare inspectors. Those are expensive.

The subway has none of the above, and will not due to the horrendous cost constraints.

There is no logical, feasible alternative to fare gates that results in as little fare evasion. Just having open access with Presto readers but no POP requirement or fare inspectors would probably result in something like >95% fare evasion.

 

[timio]

Out of the systems I've been on, Munich and Prague are the two that use POP for their subways (or at least did when I was there). Toronto, Montreal, NYC, London, Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona all use gates / turnstiles of some variety. (again, time may have changed the accuracy of this statement).

 

[Richard White]

Out of the systems I've been on, Munich and Prague are the two that use POP for their subways (or at least did when I was there). Toronto, Montreal, NYC, London, Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona all use gates / turnstiles of some variety. (again, time may have changed the accuracy of this statement).

Budapest, Hungary uses POP for their entire system but have random inspections at the tops of escalators when exiting the subway platforms. They also have hefty on-the-spot fines i.e. pay now or we pretty much double the fine and have you arrested.

 

[Neil]

Amsterdam is POP too. Yes they have fare gates at some stations but some are shared platforms with heavy rail so its just a reader there.
There other ways to identify fare evaders. A few cameras and image processing software synced to the reader could pick offenders out of the crowd with a high degree of accuracy. However, I'm sure the current solution was the result of the fare gate dept in the TCC, who probably consulted fare gate manufactures and consultants, and looked at fare gates of other agencies and came up with a solution that consisted of, wait for it, fare gates.

And alas, I'm in the fare gate thread, so may not change any minds here. So good night all.

 

[Richard White]

Amsterdam is POP too. Yes they have fare gates at some stations but some are shared platforms with heavy rail so its just a reader there.
There other ways to identify fare evaders. A few cameras and image processing software synced to the reader could pick offenders out of the crowd with a high degree of accuracy. However, I'm sure the current solution was the result of the fare gate dept in the TCC, who probably consulted fare gate manufactures and consultants, and looked at fare gates of other agencies and came up with a solution that consisted of, wait for it, fare gates.

And alas, I'm in the fare gate thread, so may not change any minds here. So good night all.

Now see.. I wanted electrified fare gates. Evading paying your fare? ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!

 

[rbt]

Out of the systems I've been on, Munich and Prague are the two that use POP for their subways (or at least did when I was there).

Berlin is POP too (both U-Bahn and S-Bahn) and have a combined ridership of about 2.6million trips per day. That said, a German caught not paying their fare would be committing career suicide. I took dozens of trips over a couple weeks and didn't see a single fare inspector.

Canadians need a bit of a reminder to do the right thing. We have a bit too much `stick it to the man` in our culture for that to work with low levels of loss.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Berlin is POP too (both U-Bahn and S-Bahn) and have a combined ridership of about 2.6million trips per day. That said, a German caught not paying their fare would be committing career suicide. I took dozens of trips over a couple weeks and didn't see a single fare inspector.

Canadians need a bit of a reminder to do the right thing. We have a bit too much `stick it to the man` in our culture for that to work with low levels of loss.

Pretty much everywhere in Germany uses the POP system. So did Los Angeles. In Ottawa we've decided to copy Toronto though, even though the confed line isn't really moving any more people then the transitway did, steel wheels=fare gates. And even though the trillium line really doesn't have the ridership to justify the expense of fare gates, we couldn't just have it on one line. Technically you could do some sort of hybrid here though. Because of timed transfers, and only a few key stations having fare paid zones for buses, you do always have a proof of payment on you. Once Toronto fully switches over that would be true for you as well.

e.g for the loops you could just have standalone readers without gates at event times (such things exist, as they were here and moved around while they installed gates at trillium line stations) and thus have the right to do random fare checks at any station even though you're behind the fare gates.

Or at crush load times, open up the gates to speed up movement.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Speaking of transfers, what's the plan for transferring from a bus to the subway if you aren't going through a fare paid zone? There's no manned ticket booth at the new stations on the SSE and I imagine the same is true on the crosstown and the future DRL. OcTranspo went the QR code route due to the expense of refitting entire bus fleet with paper Presto cards bring prohibitive. That's not an option here because the TTC didn't think it was worth it to include on their gates.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Budapest, Hungary uses POP for their entire system but have random inspections at the tops of escalators when exiting the subway platforms. They also have hefty on-the-spot fines i.e. pay now or we pretty much double the fine and have you arrested.

Many of the European cities have reduced transit fares, but for a shorter time. 30 minutes or 90 minutes, in addition to the full 120 minutes.

Thirty minutes is not that useful in the 905, where they have w-i-d-e headways between buses, but in the old city of Toronto, it can be.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Well you'll pay twice if you didn't use Presto it's a win win.

To explain how the OC Transpo version of the same gates work, here's a clip of me getting free tickets for my kids. They still need a ticket to open the gates, so the way it works is that I can "purchase" 0 dollar tickets, but I need to provide my presto card.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

Speaking of transfers, what's the plan for transferring from a bus to the subway if you aren't going through a fare paid zone? There's no manned ticket booth at the new stations on the SSE and I imagine the same is true on the crosstown and the future DRL. OcTranspo went the QR code route due to the expense of refitting entire bus fleet with paper Presto cards bring prohibitive. That's not an option here because the TTC didn't think it was worth it to include on their gates.

The Presto system is programmed with all legal transfers to and from the subway and other routes right now. They did have trouble with a few of them that they may still be working on ie 121 front street doesn't alow a transfer to union station. Individual RFID paper tickets will only be used for single use fares, once Tickets and Tokens go the way of the Dodo.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The Presto system is programmed with all legal transfers to and from the subway and other routes right now. They did have trouble with a few of them that they may still be working on ie 121 front street doesn't alow a transfer to union station. Individual RFID paper tickets will only be used for single use fares, once Tickets and Tokens go the way of the Dodo.

Presto is obvious and the 2 hour transfer will be presto only, I meant if you pay cash on a bus what happens. You can get an rfid ticket at a Subway station, but I haven't seen any plan or timeline to replace the thermal printed transfers from a bus.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

Presto is obvious and the 2 hour transfer will be presto only, I meant if you pay cash on a bus what happens. You can get an rfid ticket at a Subway station, but I haven't seen any plan or timeline to replace the thermal printed transfers from a bus.

Drivers on the buses will probably issue you a single use ticket instead of a transfer. The new streetcars will print them instead of transfers.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Drivers on the buses will probably issue you a single use ticket instead of a transfer. The new streetcars will print them instead of transfers.

Of course, but like the presto gates will it take 8 years to fully convert the buses so that its seamless? Given the timeline of the gates and them already phasing out ticket collectors the buses should have already had the new rfid ticket dispensers by now, but afaik they still have thermal printers. Of course I'm remote so I might be uninformed.

But it would have been way cheaper and easier to fit the gates with qr code readers like Ottawa than refitting every vehicle in the fleet. It wouldn't have changed anything else about the presto rollout. OC Transpo only needed to make a software update to the existing thermal printers at a fraction of the cost, even with the gates maybe being slightly more expensive then the Toronto version with both kinds of reader.

 

[DSC]

Presto is obvious and the 2 hour transfer will be presto only, I meant if you pay cash on a bus what happens. You can get an rfid ticket at a Subway station, but I haven't seen any plan or timeline to replace the thermal printed transfers from a bus.

Sooner than later the only way to use TTC will be with Presto cards (permanent or temporary). When we finally get "timed transfers, the transfer (or, more accurately, the expiry time) will be reflected on the card.