[rbt]

Uh ... it's been a few decades since I took history class, but my recollection is that there were no war reparation payments after World War 2, because of the economic damage caused by the ones after World War 1. And the World War 1 payments stopped sometime after Hitler was elected.

Sorry, it was a bit of tongue-in-cheek because some residents of Greece seem to think Germany owes them due to this (WWI payments not made or some-such).

You are correct, no funds were transferred from Germany for WWII (ignoring the issues of slave labour from POWs, etc.).

 

[ssiguy2]

It's not just a matter of will or even money but attitude.
The TTC refuses to look at alternative tech, continues to tunnel in low density suburbs, and has rail lines all over the damn place but doesn't use them for subways or even LRT like CTrain.
Most cities would have wet dreams about having such a large rail network but Toronto doesn't use even one for subways. They can be built at a fraction of the price of tunneling but aparently that just doesn't result in "great city building" even though every other city in the world does it.

 

[Dan416]

Remember this is the same TTC that refuses to adopt Presto and would rather use an unproven open technology because some "consultant" (my brother is a consultant, so I know the kind of bullshit is involved in that profession) said it was a good idea.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The TTC is inept. Dysfunctional. Myopic. Really should be dismantled and merged into Metrolinx. I don't think anyone will miss their mismanagement.

 

[nfitz]

Remember this is the same TTC that refuses to adopt Presto ...

Why do you say that. The TTC has voted several times to adopt Presto, and the Chair has stated several times this week that TTC will adopt Presto.

 

[Paleo]

Remember this is the same TTC that refuses to adopt Presto and would rather use an unproven open technology because some "consultant" (my brother is a consultant, so I know the kind of bullshit is involved in that profession) said it was a good idea.

The consultants at Accenture still haven't designed a system that supports all of the needed features of the GTA transit systems and it's been well over half a decade. I've had to work alongside those talented consultants at Accenture once so I know the kind of bullshit involved with that company.

Presto still isn't feature complete, a big sign of the incompetence of this company so I find it puzzling why so many people have the Presto-blinders on.

If the card companies end up putting up more money for a payment system than Queen's Park has for Presto, can you really blame the city for wanting to take them up on the offer?

 

[gweed123]

Why do you say that. The TTC has voted several times to adopt Presto, and the Chair has stated several times this week that TTC will adopt Presto.

The chair also said last week that Presto was "unproven" and had not been adopted by the TTC yet. I would trust his opinion and his view more if he could actually get the basic facts straight. To be frank, I would trust him more as a wingman at a bar to pick up college-age girls than I do him running the TTC.

 

[nfitz]

The chair also said last week that Presto was "unproven" and had not been adopted by the TTC yet.

All true. It is unproven (though I expect full implementation in Mississauga, Hamilton, and Ottawa will shake out many bugs). And has not been adopted yet ... how does that conflict with his statements that TTC will adopt PRESTO.

 

[rbt]

The chair also said last week that Presto was "unproven" and had not been adopted by the TTC yet. I would trust his opinion and his view more if he could actually get the basic facts straight. To be frank, I would trust him more as a wingman at a bar to pick up college-age girls than I do him running the TTC.

Well, there is zero proof that Presto can handle the 250,000 transactions per hour that the TTC will require during peak periods. There is also zero proof that the network infrastructure behind it is scalable to deal with this. 4200 transactions per second is actually pretty difficult for finance because it needs to occur on primary, secondary, and often tertiary and log machines which are geographically distributed in a visibly synchronous manner.

There is a very good chance that Presto, which is a brand new implementation and not a purchased implementation from another transit agency, will have serious scaling issues when deployed to the TTC that take a few years to fix.


Unproven is exactly the wording I would use to describe Presto if TTC management asked me about it. They certainly do not have a production implementation that large and there is zero evidence that they have simulated loads of that size; the current customer service issues (negative balance handling) demonstrate a lack of business analyst oversight.

 

[EnviroTO]

Exactly. It is unproven because it isn't an off the shelf industry standard product. It is cobbled together by Accenture on contract to the province and hasn't been proven to be able to handle volume, handle negative balances, handle monthly passes of varying prices (year plan, volume plan), handle the speed required to keep people from crashing into a turnstile that is still locked because the payment wasn't accepted fast enough, might not have been tested to handle more than a single free transfer on trip, routes requiring additional fares for crossing borders, etc. The open payment system is being tested in New York... that is a real test, and it is the same system which will be on every single credit card VISA and MasterCard sends out in the next year running at thousands upon thousands of retailers. Normally I would be critical of the TTC trying to do things their own way and trying to reinvent the wheel... however in this case it is the province inventing a technology that doesn't need to be built from scratch and invented.

 

[Dan416]

Exactly. It is unproven because it isn't an off the shelf industry standard product. It is cobbled together by Accenture on contract to the province and hasn't been proven to be able to handle volume, handle negative balances, handle monthly passes of varying prices (year plan, volume plan), handle the speed required to keep people from crashing into a turnstile that is still locked because the payment wasn't accepted fast enough, might not have been tested to handle more than a single free transfer on trip, routes requiring additional fares for crossing borders, etc. The open payment system is being tested in New York... that is a real test, and it is the same system which will be on every single credit card VISA and MasterCard sends out in the next year running at thousands upon thousands of retailers. Normally I would be critical of the TTC trying to do things their own way and trying to reinvent the wheel... however in this case it is the province inventing a technology that doesn't need to be built from scratch and invented.

Personally I don't want a system based on VISA or MasterCard. Credit card companies are such crooks.

 

[nfitz]

Personally I don't want a system based on VISA or MasterCard. Credit card companies are such crooks.

Fair enough ...

... but perhaps you can tell us how they are worse than Accenture? At least Visa and Mastercard, don't have divisions devoted entirely to warfare. Have you seen the tagline on part of their site?

Accenture - Supporting the Global Warfighter with High Performance at Speed

 

[Dan416]

Fair enough ...

... but perhaps you can tell us how they are worse than Accenture? At least Visa and Mastercard, don't have divisions devoted entirely to warfare. Have you seen the tagline on part of their site?

Accenture - Supporting the Global Warfighter with High Performance at Speed

Somehow that doesn't bother me as much.

 

[nfitz]

Why is one big corporation okay, but the other bothersome?

 

[kettal]

A quick wikipedia shows that no line in Vienna is longer than 18-20 km while Toronto's main lines are ~26 to 30 km in length. You could argue that the lines split at the midway point of the system (Yonge-Bloor, Union) since that is how riders treat them, however operationally they run as two lines (not counting Sheppard). So maybe Vienna is doing more in it's inner core subway wise while Toronto expanded out into the burbs, or maybe Vienna is more "compact" than Toronto is.

Exactly. Toronto complainers can only see subway maps for the number of different colours, not the utility.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Exactly. Toronto complainers can only see subway maps for the number of different colours, not the utility.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or what, but:

It's not about how many colours are on the map (and which of those colours jive with our definition of "subway"). It is about the utility of the system, would a more compact system of the same size (in terms of track kms) serve the city better than the rather spread out system that we have today?

Either you've completely missed my point re the comparison of the two systems or you've agreed with me in a very strange way. In my view at least.