A Presto self-serve reload kiosk (SSK) has been installed in the
north concourse of Queen station, labelled coming soon. I went through the South-West concourse later on and didn't notice one there, but I was in a rush and didn't look too closely.
The rollout progress with these has been spectacularly quick. Just a couple of months ago they were only at UPX Pearson/Weston/Bloor, Union York Concourse, and Union TTC; now they are in all of the Line 1 downtown U subway stations except Wellesley (which lacks presto altogether), as well as College and St. George (which are curious omissions, especially StG, as I would assume they're presto-heavy stations due to UofT/Ryerson students who commute on GO). I believe they are functional/online in all of those stations except this new addition at Queen--if the recent deployments are any indication, this one should go live in just a few days. They're also at Dundas West, Bathurst, Spadina, and Broadview on Line 2, for anyone not keeping close track.
Very happy to see these rolling out--I've sung their praises repeatedly, but again, it's a tremendously well-designed machine, especially compared to the old pilot kiosk in the Bay Concourse at Union...it's much smaller and more visually appealing, functionality-wise it is far easier to navigate/use, much faster, and the addition of tap-to-pay debit/credit is great.
So, besides this one being turned on (and hopefully some installed in the South concourses of Queen), College is the only downtown presto-enabled station lacking one. I believe presto/metrolinx/the TTC have stated the machines are currently exclusively slated for deployment in TTC stations that have presto right now (in addition to the existing UPX stations and the York Concourse). I seem to recall that once the TTC switches to presto fully, these are supposed to be installed in varying quantities in every single station--it certainly makes sense, given that all stations generally have at least one token vending machine or pass vending machine right now, and those will be torn out once tokens and passes are no longer offered; I'm sure it's not
quite that easy, but I would imagine that as the pass vending machines certainly require a network connection as they process debit/credit, the power+network connections from those could be repurposed for the SSKs...and they are comparable in size and shape.
The unfortunate thing is that metrolinx has indicated that is the extent to which they plan to deploy
any of these--they have said none are planned to go to Ottawa, or to any other transit system in the GTA, or in fact even to any GO stations other than Union. I think the omission of them from GO stations is hugely illogical--most GO stations, in my experience, have fairly large lines every morning filled with commuters reloading their cards; with presto being the main way to pay for travel on GO, it seems very logical to have every single GO Train station have
at least 2 of the kiosks installed, and deploy them in select highly-used transit terminals namely at Square One, and potentially put a few in Ottawa (not necessarily every transitway station, that seems like overkill, but perhaps the 3 downtown stations on the Confederation LRT line).
I also recall hearing a rumour that the UPX ticket vending machines are going to be upgraded to both vend preloaded Presto cards and do Presto reloads via the small RFID reader/card holder visible on the front of those machines (which is currently unused), which would certainly be a good idea especially given the lack of an SSK at UPX Union; if they do so, given that the GO TVMs seem very similar bordering on identical, hopefully that Presto vending+reloading functionality, or at least the reloading, would come to all of those as well...that's the only logical explanation I can think of regarding why they're resisting putting the SSKs at GO stations.