BurlOak
Senior Member
Sometimes I go by memory and my memory fails me.
http://www.citynews.ca/2011/11/09/ford-mcguinty-tour-ttcs-eglinton-crosstown-site/
It looks like this was not one of those times.
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Sometimes I go by memory and my memory fails me.
http://www.citynews.ca/2011/11/09/ford-mcguinty-tour-ttcs-eglinton-crosstown-site/
It looks like this was not one of those times.
rbt
Senior Member
Kinda. That's an incomplete timeline. Also, that particular agreement was never ratified by council (Ford seemed to missed this step, it would have easily passed at the time) and never had a legal standing.
There were additional influences in the background prior to that which nfitz mentioned such as Presto agreeing to match the specifications and pricing of the TTC OpenPayment card tender.
TTC did not buy the system Presto was selling at the price Presto expected them to pay. Similarly, Ottawa was also unhappy with Presto's original offering.
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1overcosc
Active Member
Yes, it will be a big improvement. The ticket machines, in addition to spitting out one-time tickets, will also be able to reload PRESTO cards, and issue new PRESTO cards as well.
The Confederation Line's fare system will work as follows:
-If you have a Presto card, tap it at the fare gate and it will let you through. You can use the machine to load up your card or get a card in the first place
-If you don't have a Presto card, and came from a bus, you can send your bus transfer through the machine and it will let you through. They're going to add QR codes to bus transfers to make this work
-If you don't have a Presto card, and started your trip at the station, you can use the machine to buy a one-time ticket with either cash, credit, or debit. That one time ticket will be valid for boarding a bus.
Ottawa will be installing this system of fare gates & machines on the O-Train line in 2016 to get customers familiar with it & test it out before the Confederation Line opens with them in 2018.
OC Transpo is also taking a page from the TTC book and putting bus bays inside the fare-paid zone of the stations to allow easy transfers.
The Confederation Line will be the first LRT line in Canada to use fare gates. Calgary, Edmonton, and the O-Train line all currently use proof-of-payment like GO.
For Ottawa, the absolutely vital thing wrong with Presto's original offer was the lack of period passes. OC Transpo's fare system is set up to heavily encourage riders to buy monthly passes instead of one-time tickets/cash, you only have to take 35 trips before a monthly pass becomes worth it. Once Metrolinx agreed to period passes, Ottawa was happy. It was only when the rollout ran into serious technical problems in 2012, delaying the launch by 10 months, that Ottawa started to get very irritated. In the summer of 2012, Ottawa demanded that Metrolinx pay OC Transpo $20 million in compensation payments for the delay or it would abandon Presto, which they agreed to. (If the only the TTC had that kind of balls...)
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nfitz
Superstar
If only TTC had that kind of balls? Are you kidding me? This grass is always greener attitude baffles me.
TTC delayed accepting Presto for years, tendering cards out themselves in order to prove they could do it cheaper, and beat down the TTC shares of costs from about $270 million to $70 million saving $200 million.
If $20 million is balls, what is the $200 million game of chicken that TTC won?
rbt
Senior Member
Thanks for that. I knew they requested substantial changes but I wasn't certain what those changes were.
nfitz
Superstar
If the monthly (or period) fare capping is less than or equal to a pass, I'm not sure why period passes would ever be preferred. Does anyone miss monthly GO passes?
Still, period passes were always part of Presto's plan. They didn't suddenly "agree" to them. Finally get them working would be closer to the truth ...
BMO
Senior Member
The contract is being deployed by Accenture which should be enough said to realize why this entire thing is so messed up, but having said that, it does pique my interest that the deployment of said PRESTO system didn't seem to have any delays or issues in the numerous other transit agencies around Toronto including GO. The only agencies that seem to have issues with the deployment are Ottawa and Toronto. Not sure if it's an issue with the scale/ scope or if there's some politics going on behind the scenes that are holding things up.
nfitz
Superstar
I think it's been quite clear that Ottawa was a failure on Presto's part (they installed next generation equipment, etc. in Ottawa that wasn't in use elsewhere, and it was that different equipment that caused the problem)
While the Toronto delay has been primarily political. With Presto implementation costing about double what the original (very old) estimates were, the question was, who was going to pick up the extra $200 million in cost.
cplchanb
Senior Member
Ill bet that it's 80% politics 15% laziness and 5% difficulty
Ttc has always been hesitant on this project as part of their profits for sure will be leached by metrolinx and/or lost to gta tas
On the flip side to add one a few presto gates at subway stations each year is just plain insanity. There was a post a couple pages back on them testing new gates but still... How much testing do you need in the first place to make 20yr old tech work?!!!
Ttc has always been hesitant on this project as part of their profits for sure will be leached by metrolinx and/or lost to gta tas
On the flip side to add one a few presto gates at subway stations each year is just plain insanity. There was a post a couple pages back on them testing new gates but still... How much testing do you need in the first place to make 20yr old tech work?!!!
TOareaFan
Superstar
Given that the TTC is not profitable, I am gonna make a leap here and assume you meant revenue rather than profits.....now, how does the method of payment "leach" any of that? The TTC themselves have stated that the big benefit to them switching to Presto is that it reduces their cost of charging fares....so they are expecting higher net revenue one they switch to Presto.
nfitz
Superstar
A few Presto gates a year would be insanity. However there is no such plan.
The first test gates get installed this year, and the rest should all be in by 2016. Early 2017 at worst. 6 months ago TTC said only promised that 3 stations would have Presto installed in 2014. So that leaves the remaining 72 TTC stations and 2 years to do them. Presumably the remaining first wave stations. Metrolinx has indicated that the first 26 stations will start this fall, so that's at least 23 stations in 2015.
So that leaves 49 stations in 2016 (possibly pushing into early 2017).
3, then 23, then 49 seems a reasonable staged approach to me. And is not a few gates per year.
Not really, as TTC essentially gave away (for a few years at least) the future cost savings in exchange for only paying about $70 million (I didn't look up the number) to Metrolinx to install Presto.
ehlow
Senior Member
So they are putting in new gates? Not just adding card readers to the existing ones?
nfitz
Superstar
New gates. There's a bit of info at www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20140626/20140626_BoardMtg_PRESTO-TTC_Update_EN.pdf#page=5
The document indicates there'll be 60 new gates for the 26 stations, so presumably a combination of these new gates and retrofits, similar to what is currently in use. However those can't handle tickets.
There was an article a few months ago in the Star while they were still considering their options, indicating that the gates were $20K versus $8K for retrofitting.
Here's an average user:
c
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cplchanb
Senior Member
New gates. There's a bit of info at www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20140626/20140626_BoardMtg_PRESTO-TTC_Update_EN.pdf#page=5
The document indicates there'll be 60 new gates for the 26 stations, so presumably a combination of these new gates and retrofits, similar to what is currently in use. However those can't handle tickets.
There was an article a few months ago in the Star while they were still considering their options, indicating that the gates were $20K versus $8K for retrofitting.
Here's an average user:
c
Is there anyone in this forum who is familiar with these type of gates in a technical aspect and how they are installed.
I do admit that perhaps the outlook in terms of timeline may not be as bleak as I thought and I am curious on how much time it will take for installation of a single gate.
On the flipside why cant they just do retrofits of for the short term which should be faster and give themselves plenty of time (as always) for the longer term gate solution to be "tested"? 8x72 is roughly $580k (since its a short term they dont need multiple ones) which equates to a couple buses. Surely for the sake of the convenience of thousands of presto users they can defer 2 buses to quickly retrofit of all the stations and add more. Remember that they are still "considering" their options so that could mean a couple weeks, a couple months or a couple years in TTC's vocabulary.
TOareaFan
Superstar
^like everything else, I am sure there are many manufacturers of gates and they probably differ slightly but those sure look similar to gates that I have walked through in many other cities.
I would hope that they could do this fairly quickly just by visiting the 2 or 3 leading gates in operation somewhere and then listen to proposals on how they would work in Toronto....then pick the one that they believe offers the best value/cost/benefit.
I would hope that they could do this fairly quickly just by visiting the 2 or 3 leading gates in operation somewhere and then listen to proposals on how they would work in Toronto....then pick the one that they believe offers the best value/cost/benefit.