JayBeeGooner
Active Member
Somewhere, Adam Giambrone is laughing.
|
|
|
crs1026
Superstar
I don't know what the life cycle of the hardware would be, but this isn't the only cost. The system sits on any number of levels of operating system that will inevitably be upgraded. All large enterprise systems are at the mercy of the vendor in terms of having to upgrade the system whenever the vendor decides to upgrade. The older versions cease to be supported, so saying "No thanks" isn't an option. And new versions may require any amount of testing or validation. And eventually the newer versions won't support the oldest hardware.
Bottom line - there is no reason to believe that Presto is a better deal in terms of life cycle for either hardware or software.
- Paul
drum118
Superstar
He is in Milwaukee running that transit system and building the first LRT for it.
GenerationW
Senior Member
......while cheating on his girlfriend.
rbt
Senior Member
Cheating assumes she didn't know or approve; open relationships aren't exactly uncommon.
Also, it's wife now, not girlfriend.
GenerationW
Senior Member
She reportedly did not approve or know about his office couch enterprise in 2010. Otherwise, I doubt he would have dropped out of the race so quickly. And the way he botched that press conference only confirmed how embarrassed and ashamed he was.
Must have been quite the apology tour he went through for her to become his wife.
Jonny5
Senior Member
Or maybe he's a genuinely good guy, and he really was remorseful? And maybe being mayor of Toronto isn't actually a job one would give a shit about when there's more important things you could do?
drum118
Superstar
Metrolinx Celebrates Two Million PRESTO Customers
TORONTO: May 24, 2016 – Metrolinx has reached a major milestone with over two million transit riders now using the PRESTO electronic fare card across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and Ottawa.
PRESTO makes it easier to get around the GTHA and Ottawa by allowing customers to tap on to transit with a smart card preloaded with funds or a transit pass. Customers can also arrange to have funds automatically topped up or set up their monthly passes to automatically renew on their PRESTO cards. Over the last 12 months alone, approximately 500,000 transit users joined PRESTO and can now travel across multiple transit agencies and regions using one modern, convenient payment card.
“PRESTO is helping us modernize, integrate and strengthen our transit network so that it’s easier for people to move around the GTHA and Ottawa,” said Bruce McCuaig, Metrolinx President & CEO. “We are committed to working with our regional and municipal partners to get more people onto transit, and PRESTO plays a key role in that work.”
The electronic fare system is now fully available on GO Transit, Union Pearson Express, Hamilton Street Railway, Burlington Transit, Brampton Transit, Oakville Transit, MiWay (Mississauga), York Region Transit, Durham Region Transit and OC Transpo (Ottawa). In addition, PRESTO is available on all Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) streetcars and a growing number of subway stations and buses. By the end of this year, PRESTO will be available across the entire TTC network, with more than 10,000 electronic fare payment devices on buses, streetcars and in subway stations.
“PRESTO makes the travel and commuting experience as easy as possible and based on the uptake of PRESTO, customers agree,” said Steven Del Duca, Minister of Transportation. “Our government will continue to support initiatives that improve the quality of life for all Ontarians.”
To celebrate reaching more than two million customers, PRESTO is holding a customer appreciation contest running from May 24 to June 19, with over 40 winning card holders receiving $150 on their PRESTO card. The contest will be followed by a two-week awareness campaign to help customers learn more about the benefits of PRESTO and its self-serve options. Visit prestotaphappy.ca for more information.
Metrolinx is planning, building and delivering hundreds of projects and services across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to move the region forward. Bringing PRESTO’s convenient, modern fare payment system to more transit riders throughout the region is making it easier and faster for people to get where they need to be, when they need to be there. Learn more about Metrolinx and its Regional Transportation Plan.
TORONTO: May 24, 2016 – Metrolinx has reached a major milestone with over two million transit riders now using the PRESTO electronic fare card across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and Ottawa.
PRESTO makes it easier to get around the GTHA and Ottawa by allowing customers to tap on to transit with a smart card preloaded with funds or a transit pass. Customers can also arrange to have funds automatically topped up or set up their monthly passes to automatically renew on their PRESTO cards. Over the last 12 months alone, approximately 500,000 transit users joined PRESTO and can now travel across multiple transit agencies and regions using one modern, convenient payment card.
“PRESTO is helping us modernize, integrate and strengthen our transit network so that it’s easier for people to move around the GTHA and Ottawa,” said Bruce McCuaig, Metrolinx President & CEO. “We are committed to working with our regional and municipal partners to get more people onto transit, and PRESTO plays a key role in that work.”
The electronic fare system is now fully available on GO Transit, Union Pearson Express, Hamilton Street Railway, Burlington Transit, Brampton Transit, Oakville Transit, MiWay (Mississauga), York Region Transit, Durham Region Transit and OC Transpo (Ottawa). In addition, PRESTO is available on all Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) streetcars and a growing number of subway stations and buses. By the end of this year, PRESTO will be available across the entire TTC network, with more than 10,000 electronic fare payment devices on buses, streetcars and in subway stations.
“PRESTO makes the travel and commuting experience as easy as possible and based on the uptake of PRESTO, customers agree,” said Steven Del Duca, Minister of Transportation. “Our government will continue to support initiatives that improve the quality of life for all Ontarians.”
To celebrate reaching more than two million customers, PRESTO is holding a customer appreciation contest running from May 24 to June 19, with over 40 winning card holders receiving $150 on their PRESTO card. The contest will be followed by a two-week awareness campaign to help customers learn more about the benefits of PRESTO and its self-serve options. Visit prestotaphappy.ca for more information.
Metrolinx is planning, building and delivering hundreds of projects and services across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to move the region forward. Bringing PRESTO’s convenient, modern fare payment system to more transit riders throughout the region is making it easier and faster for people to get where they need to be, when they need to be there. Learn more about Metrolinx and its Regional Transportation Plan.
Steve X
Senior Member
In the meanwhile in the backroom: What to do with 2 million customers tapping and overloading the central server. Let's raise the price cause too much processing power is needed to update all the transactions and bandwidth is spend uploading everyone's load values. I mean someone loading $20 on their card in Ottawa needs that info updated on every TTC bus. That's a lot of data.
drum118
Superstar
This was know as far back as 2007/8 that the servers were going to be an issue.
With the Province pushing 2017 year end time frame for all systems to use the Presto, are we going to see systems crash and data lost once completed??
We are talking about 5 million users by 2018, but close to 10 million come 2035 and what will that do to this small back end, then??
rbt
Senior Member
This type of volume was a huge deal 15 years ago; and still a major pain even 10 years ago when GO started rolling out the Presto project.
Today, however, even open-source PostgreSQL (with geographically distributed fallback nodes) can handle 500,000 transactions per second of this nature on commonly available hardware (64 core, 1 TB ram) in a a safe and transactional manner.
Any technical challenges in the central system in this regard have been fully solved by companies looking to support web and finance (Pg is used by many discount brokerages) loads well beyond what Presto will produce.
Pretty trivial today given it's over hours (not minutes) and by 2035 a typical cell phone will probably be able to deal with that backend load. Also, even at 50 bytes per tap (massive; shouldn't need more than about 16 bytes before compression) we're still only hitting 1GB of data per month per vehicle.
Last edited:
many7695
New Member
Does anyone know why presto still doesn't offer a virtual card for smartphones
Jonny5
Senior Member
Probably a lack of confidence in people using it.
We're talking about a customer base who still can't handel even physical ticket purchases. There can be 5 wickets open at the York concourse for customer service but the mouthbreathers still stand at the front of the line staring right in front of them while the agents are literally yelling "NEXT HERE! HERE! OVER HERE!" GO now actually pays someone to stand there for hours and shake people awake and point to the next available agent because the customer base is so dumb. Now you want them to try and use their phones for PRESTO?
I don't care about them, but I sure wish I could
NotMathematical
Active Member
Its going to happen anyway, by the end of the 2017 you can use your phone as a PRESTO card through an app, NFC capabilities will be required in order to do this. Apple doesn't want 3rd parties to use the iPhone's NFC capabilities, so most likely it will be Android use exclusively. Apple Pay will be supported however. (Hopefully Android Pay arrives in Canada as well.)