[Ed Drass]

what's old is new again: bank cards to pay fares?

Not disagreeing with your assertion that the TTC has spent too long hanging on to "what works"...

We don't seem to be too upset using that other ancient technology -- metal keys. They're centuries old -- and there's no big rush to get rid of them.

Tokens are a bit embarassing to our world-class neurosis, but $200-400m is still the quoted cost to TTC. How upset can you be about tokens?? BTW, I asked a Presto official about this price -- he gave a non-answer. Neither disputed nor confirmed.

Giambrone has indicated that TTC is looking at accepting bank cards to pay fares -- and presumably that involves chip-equipped cards at an appropriate turnstile. What's involved in enabling a card to be debited like this -- one fare at a time, quickly, without ID confirmation? And the back-office costs... who bears them?

Should this prove feasible, it partly bypasses the need for a stand-alone fare card, no?

Then there's the cell phone payment thing -- is that being used anywhere ... beyond HK?

Also, on the fraud/counterfeit front -- has anyone in the world tried to estimate the cost to transit agencies through fare card hacking?

 

[junctionist]

It's not "world class neurosis" to want electronic fares but a rational desire to improve and progress. The system of getting on a bus taking a transfer for proof of payment so you can walk into a station like Runnymede, then either wait in line to show the transfer to the fare collector or awkwardly squeeze by someone who's paying can be eliminated. How about being able to be fares online? No more short changing on buses with "throw a lot of small coins so the driver doesn't notice" method. Metropasses that you can buy from one part of the month to the other? There are a variety of convenience and efficiency improvements this would result in.

Then there's the matter of station fare collectors, who can be retrained to do other tasks in the system where more staff is clearly needed, like maybe making subway trains look less like recycling depots.

Think of the possibilities.

 

[CDL.TO]

Junctionist makes good points.

Also, how about people like me?
- Makes fewer than 49 TTC trips a month, so a Metropass doesn't make financial sense.
- Doesn't usually start or end trips at subway stations, making purchasing tokens inconvenient.
- Needs to go out of the way to find a store that sells tokens.

I also feel bad people people who use the TTC and a 905 system. Having to deal with multiple passes, tickets, and/or tokens must be a real pain in the butt.

Just because 'the current system works fine for me, so I don't see a problem', doesn't mean that it's not frustrating for thousands of other people.

 

[nfitz]

- Makes fewer than 49 TTC trips a month, so a Metropass doesn't make financial sense.

49 trips? That would cost you $110.25 a month (if you manage not to lose any of those tokens). With a subscription the monthly pass is $100; and with the 15% tax credit it is $85. The line these days is an average of 38 trips a month - or 19 return trips.

 

[Whoaccio]

Maybe it's just perennial TTC skepticism, but how does a smart card system cost 400m? My high school had contactless security cards a decade ago. Fine, my school had less doors than the TTC, but digital money seems to be advancing everywhere but the TTC. Hell, even Playdium has had digital money of sorts for well over a decade.

Also, what does the TTC anticipate the cost of adding a new POP system is? We have been promised that all TC LRT routes will operate with some kind of new fare medium to stop our new space age LRTs from idling while people fumble for change at the front door. How much would that cost? What I guess I'm trying to say is, the costs of something like a smartcard should also be considered in light of what upgrades it will offset the need for.

I even wonder if it would be possible to go to the Banks and say, hey, if you start giving out credit cards with some kind of RFID system compatible with our system, we will pay you one or two cents per rider. That would also encourage the use of the cards beyond the TTC, in consumer purchases under 20$ for instance.

P.S.
Metropasses are problematic for people that aren't totally reliant on the TTC. It's hard to predict with certainty whether or not you will make ~530 TTC trips within a year, which implies return commuting nearly every weekday. What if you take a holiday, travel for work, break a leg, get a new job you can walk to, get fired or simply don't work 5 days a weak?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Not everyone subscribes and not everyone makes enough for the tax credit to kick in. Even 38 trips can be problematic in a month like February or any month with holidays.

 

[nfitz]

Not everyone subscribes and not everyone makes enough for the tax credit to kick in.

True, but it fully kicks in for a single person by $12,000 - which is less than a full-time minimum wage job. Doing it as a non-refundable tax credit was a lousy idea, but it still benefits most people; and certainly anyone with a full-time job ... heck any pretty much anyone who is part-time, if they only get minimum wage and work at least 24 hours a week.

Even 38 trips can be problematic in a month like February or any month with holidays.

Sure, but if you average 38, you'll still come out ahead, even if you loose on the occasional month.

 

[kEiThZ]

Deducting 10 days for stat and bank holidays, you'd still get 250 working days for a year. From that if you subtract the standard 2 weeks vacation you end up with 240 days for the year or 20 days per month on average. This means it's only 50 trips per year over and above the standard cash fare. If you commuted to and from work on just your work days and occasionally broke your commute (say once a week) to pick up groceries, dry cleaning, etc. it would be worthwhile. But, of course, once someone has a metropass, they are far more likely to use the TTC for off-peak travel.

 

[CDL.TO]

49 trips? That would cost you $110.25 a month (if you manage not to lose any of those tokens). With a subscription the monthly pass is $100; and with the 15% tax credit it is $85. The line these days is an average of 38 trips a month - or 19 return trips.

That's nice. But how about people like me?
Subscription doesn't make sense because doing contract work means I don't know where I'll be working 6 months from now, never mind 12 months from now. Also, I cycle in the summer which means I use the TTC even less during those months. I probably used the TTC fewer than 20 times last July.

And yes, many people don't make enough to claim the tax credit. I certainly make more than 12k a year, but I have enough other tax credits that when it came time to claim for my Metropasses last year I didn't get anything back. I ended up giving them to a family member to claim instead.

I must reiterate that just because 'the current system works fine for me, so I don't see a problem', doesn't mean that it's not frustrating for thousands of other people.

Hopefully policymakers are able to look beyond their own routine and design a system that ensures maximum convenience for everyone.

 

[Jonny5]

Pet The Post, the TTC is going to be retrofitting metropass readers onto all bus and streetcar fareboxes at a cost of $1.5million. So we now have to wait at every stop while some dumbass spends 5 minutes trying to swipe his pass properly in what will no doubt be half broken card readers.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=2166015

 

[nfitz]

That's nice. But how about people like me?

For people like you there are other options. Token, and the new fare card. And I'm completely in favour of TTC moving to Presto, asap.

 

[DavidH]

Pet The Post, the TTC is going to be retrofitting metropass readers onto all bus and streetcar fareboxes at a cost of $1.5million. So we now have to wait at every stop while some dumbass spends 5 minutes trying to swipe his pass properly in what will no doubt be half broken card readers.

Wait a sec. You are assuming the reader is broken but it's somehow the rider's fault? Or is he just a dumbass for following the rules?

 

[Jonny5]

Wait a sec. You are assuming the reader is broken but it's somehow the rider's fault? Or is he just a dumbass for following the rules?

There were two issues poorly combined into one. Even when working, people still have problems swiping the pass the right way.

This should actually deserve a thread of it's own. Imagine at Dundas and Spadina everyone getting on the streetcar having to swipe their pass? The pitifully slow loading will take even longer. What about Queen Street? Is the POP policy going away?

This idea is shockingly stupid, even for the TTC. It ranks up there as one of the all time dumbest TTC initiatives ever made and will certainly cripple the network.

The only justification could be if fake passes and tokes have become so pervasive that they need to take some kind of emergency action like this.

 

[Platform 27]

If anything, making metropass users swipe their cards on buses will make it easier, not harder, to pass off fakes.

For the moderately well-equipped counterfeiter, it's a piece of cake to simply grab the data encoded on one metropass's magnetic strip and then "write" that magnetically onto hundreds of blank cards. It's getting the exterior face of the metropass to look identical to a real one where the trouble kicks in--that was the whole idea behind adding the hologram.

On surface vehicles right now, folks are theoretically showing the card's face to the driver, who ought to be able to spot the lack of a hologram in an instant. But if you're burying a card in your hand and just running an edge through a slot, it's a piece of cake to use a phony card that doesn't have a hologram.

The only type of counterfeit card that gets blocked by this step are fakes that are visually perfect (ie, those that have moderately convincing holograms) but lack the correct data on their magnetic strip. And I'd be shocked if there were many cards like that in circulation out there right now... they'd be useless for subway turnstiles, and require the counterfeiter to be quite the pro in the fake hologram department but embarrassingly amateur in the magnetic writing department.

 

[kEiThZ]

Good way around all this. Allow swiping of Metropasses, implement POP and then have fare inspectors catch those with bad passes.