Dan416
Senior Member
Here's an article from the Star today:
First of all, I'm against a name change. But the other points brought up by the article are on-point. The fare media is ancient, the customer service is terrible, and the arrogance of TTC commissioners and staff is embarrassing.
Rebranding TTC as a service would be a truly Better Way
Published On Sun Jan 24 2010
Toronto can trace the six weeks before the Toronto Transit Commission's fare increase came into play as the time customer service broke down completely on the public transit system. TTC management was not prepared for its own fare hike.
Boxed in by its resistance to smart cards and obsessed with stopping customers from delaying the fare increase even a week or two longer by stocking up on tokens, TTC management had no choice but to suspend tokens and reintroduce pre-subway technology: paper tickets.
Soon, the Better Way became the Longer Wait with customers lining up at subway entrances to buy or drop tickets in the fare box during the busy holiday season. Now that it's over, the TTC doesn't want its paper tickets back.
Tickets were always intended as a use 'em or lose 'em business transaction set to expire on Jan. 31, with no refund or exchange. As of Feb. 1, the TTC will refuse to honour paper tickets. The commission will argue that the value of expired tickets will be nominal, but that is hardly the point. Whether it is 100 or 100,000, these tickets were purchased in good faith, many by low-income families who can barely afford a fare increase let alone the cost of a dishonoured ticket. It is an odd position to take for an organization that went to such lengths to prevent riders from pocketing a few extra tokens because the transit system could not afford it.
Store gift cards by law do not carry an expiration date. How does the TTC get away with it? Whether it can or not, the episode is an unsettling sign of the contempt TTC commissioners have for their customers.
In the past, the commission has gone to court – twice – to prevent the most basic of transit service courtesies: instructing drivers to call out street names en route (a function since taken over by automation). Subways shut down half an hour before bars do. Management has a tin ear when it comes to complaints and doesn't even have a system in place to alert riders to service disruptions or when trains stop running.
While transit systems around the world have raced forward with innovative smart cards and other electronic payment options, the TTC plods along with a fare purchase and collection system that has not changed much since the ribbon was cut on the Yonge subway in 1954. Debit and credit payments are available only for a Metropass and not at all stations. Those bulky Soviet-era token dispensers are out of service as often as they are in. Need a receipt for tokens? It's handwritten, resulting in longer lines.
City Councillor and mayoral hopeful Joe Pantalone recently criticized the TTC for failing to jump on the automated bus (although, he was strangely silent on the subject over the past four years). Not so fast, counters fellow Councillor Howard Moscoe. Today's technology will be obsolete by the time the TTC gets around to implementing it. Besides, according to the former chair, the TTC does not do innovation well, citing the hybrid bus fiasco. Remember, this is the same gang charged with delivering the multi-billion-dollar Transit City light rail expansion.
How do we return a rusting windup toy back to the award-winning transit service it once was? A financial and service audit would be a good start, but council is reluctant to order one because commissioners don't want it. Clearly smaller steps are necessary.
There has been debate without agreement since the last TTC walkout whether transit should be designated an essential service. Why not split the difference? Drop "essential" and rebrand the TTC the Toronto Transit Service (TTS).
The Toronto Police was renamed the Toronto Police Service in 1995 to reflect its community mandate. More recently, fire followed suit. As TTC management likes to remind us, approximately 80 per cent of its operating costs are funded through the fare box. That should give riders more not less say in how the system is operated. A new name won't change the TTC overnight. But it should jump-start a long overdue culture change. And finally remind commissioners and managers that they are in the service industry.
David Carr is a transport writer, columnist and former editor of Wings Magazine.
First of all, I'm against a name change. But the other points brought up by the article are on-point. The fare media is ancient, the customer service is terrible, and the arrogance of TTC commissioners and staff is embarrassing.