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Metrolinx: Presto Fare Card

unimaginative2 said:
Those ideas make a lot of sense, though I agree that GO should absolutely not have some kind of premium. Not only is it difficult to collect, but none of the European systems we should be emulating do it.
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I don't agree with a premium for GO either, especially if we want to become part of the transit system (ie another rapid transit tool in the arsenal of express buses, BRT, real LRT, ICTS, GO regional rail, subway, swan boats).

Though Montreal and Vancouver have their commuter lines integrated, but at a premium fare (ie the TRAM pass in Montreal vs. a regular CAM pass) At least it does allow for inclusions of local transit connections in the fare, something we don't even have now.
 
I remember Chuck complaining about the Steeles double-fare boundary, but now he wants a system that would still do that.
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Excellent memory! But this is different because the increment is much smaller. Doubling your fare from 25 to 50 cents doesn't pack the same punch as going from $2 to $4, which is about what it was when I lived up there. And furthermore, a two zone system is much different from an integrated two dimensional fare block system.

Either way, the Steeles days are done for me. I live in the city now, and can instead complain about paying $2.10 to travel 2 subway stops, which is about what my typical public transit trip would be if I didn't use other means of travel.
 
I agree it should be the same fare system. However, maybe it should be based on distance, like London, or many other cities.
 
I think the main advantage of the Presto card (for transit authorities, at least) is flexibility. They don't have to decide yet what fare system they want to implement; we can have that discussion as citizens and if we don't like the new way, they can just as easily change it back. As long as the card readers are on the ground and the cards are in our pockets, all the rest is just variables in a computer that can be manipulated with the click of a button.

So why don't they use the flexibility? Screw zones, why not a pure distance based fare system? Fares could also be adjusted real-time based on demand. Presto allows decision-makers to collect precise user data and then fine tune fares.

For example, a fare system could be put in place where it costs:
$1.80 for journeys of up to 10km, and then a surcharge of $0.10 for every kilometre after that.
A peak usage surcharge of $0.05 per kilometre could be added if the vehicle is over a certain threshold of capacity (ie if there are no more vacant seats, which can be determined by the card reader and technology in the bus)

Examples:

Journey from Hamilton GO Station to Pape TTC Station during rush hour
$1.80 base fare covers the first 10km.
$5.70 for the roughly 67km between Hamilton GO and Union
$0.65 for the 6.5km trip through the subway from Union to Pape
$0.71 because the GO train filled up at Burlington and the subway was full as well
Total: $8.12

That trip would have cost $11.10 today, or $12.85 if you were to have taken the HSR to the GO station.

Trip from River & Dundas to Christie Station on a Saturday
$1.80 base fare covers all 7.8km.
$0.10 because the subway was over the capacity threshold for the 2.0km between Yonge-Bloor and Bathurst
Total: $1.90

Here's a trip that would cause some problems today:

Trip from a home near Dixie & Burnhamthorpe to Islington and Rutherford in Vaughan
$1.80 base fare (covers the first 10km)
$0.00 for the 7.9km MT trip from Dixie to Islington Station
$1.19 for 14.0km on TTC from Islington & Bloor to Islington & Steeles
$0.69 for 6.9km on YRT from Islington & Steeles to Islington & Rutherford
Total: $3.68 or $5.12 in rush hour vs. $6.60 today.

Trip from Lawrence TTC station to Union Station in rush hour
$1.80 base fare
$0.00 for the 8.7km
$0.46 peak surcharge
Total: $2.26, roughly equivalent to a ticket today, which means that under this system, during peak usage, there would effectively be a fare zone with Union at one end and Lawrence at the other. During off Peak, the zone would extend from Union to Thornhill. But the bottom line is that it wouldn't discriminate whether you're travelling suburb-to-downtown or suburb-to-suburb. No enforcement is necessary. You tap to get in to the fare paid zone, and if you don't tap out as you leave, you pay however much it would have costed to ride to the end of that line.
Downtown folks aren't subsidizing transit in the suburbs, everyone's paying their way.

Instead of monthly passes and discounts and stuff like that, there would just be different caps for different periods, kind of like what they're proposing.

My basic point is that the GTTA should not be afraid to get creative with the fare structures. They can even do fun stuff like have a weekend fare cap that's way lower than the weekday one to encourage tourism. The card reader could play a happy little tune when the rider reaches their yearly cap, etc, etc. . .
 
canrocks said:
Long post about fare systems
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That actually seems like a brilliant system you have right there. The only thing I would change would be removing the charge for using a vehicle that's at or over capacity. I can't think of any good reason for that, and it would just penalize people for taking buses that happen to be overcapacity due to many others taking the same bus. Isn't that what we want to promote? Lots of people taking transit, I mean?

Other than that, it's a solid system. Too bad we probably won't see anything like it for a long while.
 
Panzerfaust said:
That actually seems like a brilliant system you have right there. The only thing I would change would be removing the charge for using a vehicle that's at or over capacity. I can't think of any good reason for that, and it would just penalize people for taking buses that happen to be overcapacity due to many others taking the same bus. Isn't that what we want to promote? Lots of people taking transit, I mean?

Other than that, it's a solid system. Too bad we probably won't see anything like it for a long while.
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The reason for that is to try and more evenly utilize the resources of the TTC. If someone has to pay extra for a bus at rush hour, they're less likely to do their shopping at rush hour. That way the peak buses are less crowded (hopefully reducing the horror stories of buses not stopping because it's full and delays caused by excessive boarding), and the weekend buses are less empty. The money could go towards actually trying to meet the peak demands, and at the same time, be somewhat of a progressive fare increase, in the sense that the people that are travelling at peak times are probably 9-to-5ers, who tend to be able to afford it, and those that are travelling in the middle of the day/night or on weekends are un-employed/shift-workers. As well, the extra charge isn't enough to make someone shift back to a vehicle, but it's just enough to have them walk if it's a small distance or travel at another time.
 
I disagree with a variable congestion charge because there's no way of predicting what conditions you'll encounter, and now way to figure out what a typical trip costs you. I also disagree with making transit less attractive during rush hour by making it cost more.
If someone has to pay extra for a bus at rush hour, they're less likely to do their shopping at rush hour.
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How many people on a packed subway train at 7:30 am would you say are going shopping? You can't just assume that if you charge more money, people are going to be able to shift their rush hour trips to the weekend.

I think that there should be a flat rate of 10 cents per km, and leave it at that. We have to stop looking at transit as though it is a corporation, and instead recognize that if transit is going to lose money anyway, you may as well get as many riders as possible along the way. If the TTC accepted a 65% cost recovery rather than a 75% cost recovery, it would probably be carrying 100 million extra riders a year.
 
I don't necessarily mind the idea of a higher fare at rush hour or something, but measuring it based on how crowded an individual vehicle is would be quite unfair. For example, I often wait 25 minutes on Spadina and then a streetcar arrives jammed full. I don't think it would be fair to make me pay more for that. Likewise, some person just trying to get home at 11 at night might happen to take a streetcar right as a Leafs game lets out.
 
Some routes' frequencies are rigged so that a vehicle begins every trip at capacity. The Steeles East bus' frequency used to be *just* enough to ensure it was literally over-capacity all through rush hour and into the night (they've since increased the frequency, though, I guess because a certain threshold percentage of people left behind on the platform was being reached). I've missed a few Steeles buses at Finch station because the bus was overflowing - at midnight on a weekday (in afternoon rush hour I could usually get on the 'second' bus that came, or the 'third' if I wanted to sit). Paying extra for the privilege of being crushed onto a bus at midnight just isn't going to go over well.
 
Man, what I -- and many -- wouldn't give to be able to have a monthly pass that was valid in two separate cities. In my case, Toronto and Montreal, not Toronto and Ottawa. Heck, pull the whole Windsor-Quebec City corridor's transit systems in there.

And if Presto is as magical as they say, shouldn't they just be able to apportion revenue according to the passholder's proportion of usage of the actual systems each month?
 
Disparishun said:
Man, what I -- and many -- wouldn't give to be able to have a monthly pass that was valid in two separate cities. In my case, Toronto and Montreal, not Toronto and Ottawa. Heck, pull the whole Windsor-Quebec City corridor's transit systems in there.

And if Presto is as magical as they say, shouldn't they just be able to apportion revenue according to the passholder's proportion of usage of the actual systems each month?
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From what I understand, it will work like this:

At the beginning of the month, you can buy a monthly pass if you wish and declare which system you want that pass to be valid for. All trips that aren't covered by the monthly pass drain from a separate pay-as-you-go account.

Personally, I'd like to see "virtual passes." All trips come from a pay-as-you-go account, but the system automatically gives you free trips once you've spent a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. This way, you don't get charged for unused rides if you overestimate, and you still save money if you underestimate.

Either way, it will be better than the system we've got now.
 
That sounds good. Thanks for the information!

It's good to see a little standardization. Hopefully the back office functions can be centralized too.
 
I'd prefer the smart card system be tendered out for operation to a private company altogether. Give them 1% of all the money exchanged on the cards in exchange for them installing the system, marketing it, operating it, and expanding it. Similar to the Octopus in Hong Kong (though they are mostly owned by the subway system there, but that's a different story). If this remains as a Transit Smart Card run by the GTTA, it will remain solely as a Transit Smart Card. If you let an outside firm do it, it will become much more than that, expanding its use, which will benefit transit. How? People who wouldn't normally have the card would have it and have money on it for other purposes, whether it be to pay for stuff at the corner store or for parking or for tolls on the DVP and Gardiner (ha! right)... and when they want to take the subway, they'll already have the card.

Otherwise, I don't see non-transit users really even bothering with Presto...
 
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