Northern Light
Superstar
Why would you want to maintain a fairly high % of cash fares? Cash is expensive to handle and, frankly, annoying for everyone. The cost of the monthly pass was (and is) set to being x rides/month - around 40. You can certainly argue about what the 'correct' cost ratio should be but to say that the TTC should have set fares to keep the % of cash-payers constant sounds pretty silly to me.
Actually at $146.25 vs the multi-fare price of $3 per ride, you get a multiple of 48.75 rides per pass.
That number has always been high w/the TTC.
I strongly argued that rather than have a low-income pass, they should simply reduce the pass price to a multiple of 40 which would be $120, the current price for a low-income pass is $115.50
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I concur the cash fare at this point is wasteful.
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I would actually like to see the concession fares for seniors and teens scrapped too.
Many are from wealthy homes, I'd prefer to see a simplified lower fare for all; the savings from administering that can be plowed back into the more attractive price point.
The teen/seniors pass is actually $116.75 which is an absurd 56.95 fares per pass.
If we merged everything, I think a cash fare of $3.25, a multi-fare of $2.75 and a pass (40 rides) would only be $110
This allows you to scrap ID cards all together, low-income passes, MDP, it would require modestly more subsidy, but the savings and higher ridership would cover a good chunk.
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