Mayor Tory, TTC Chair Josh Colle and TTC Commissioner Mary Fragedakis have requested that TTC staff report later this month on the “costs and any other implications for the introduction of time-based transfers for PRESTO users” in 2018. This would make the single fare a payment for a limited-time pass rather than for an unbroken trip subject to transfer rules that predate the TTC’s origin nearly a century ago.
This proposal is pitched both as a way of assisting low-income riders (for whom multiple short trips by transit can be quite expensive) and local businesses (who would benefit from the hop-off, hop-on behaviour), as well as a way to reduce fare evasion whose cost is pegged at about $15 million annually. The more cynical among us would note that the change simply makes “legal” a behaviour TTC riders have engaged in since the dawn of time – maximizing the amount of travel possible for one fare.
The Presto smart card’s operation would be greatly simplified with the elimination of the byzantine logic required to validate transfers between vehicles, and it would also remove the source of many disputes about overcharges when Presto does not recognize a change of vehicles as a legitimate part of a continuous trip.
This would also make fare integration across the 416-905 border simpler by unifying TTC transfer policies with those of the local 905 systems. What remains is the need for a funding mechanism to provide a co-fare arrangement between operators.
This is a surprising reversal for Tory and Colle who, in past years, treated the time-based fare as “too expensive” despite its many advantages. Previous estimates pegged this at a $20 million annual cost.
With CEO Andy Byford showing strong support for this policy as part of a Ridership Growth Strategy, the move is clearly on to make this change. The timing for the election year is an extra benefit for politicians looking for a transit improvement.
Now if only they would fund better service.
Postscript:
This should be the final nail in the coffin for the ill-conceived Metrolinx proposal to shift transit fares to a distance-based charge. With all of the GTA operating on a time-based system, and zones vanishing internally (York) and between regions (cross border fare sharing), there is zero justification for a wholesale upheaval in a flat fare arrangement. Metrolinx should wake up and drop this from its policy proposals.
Steve Munro 
The cynic in me does not see that, in and of itself, as being cynical. Though the cynic in me would be quick to highlight any “cost” of implementing a time-based transfer is not likely to take into account how much of the $15 million in fare evasion would no longer be fare evasion under a time-based transfer system.
Steve: And just look at all the hassles saved with arguments about valid vs invalid transfers!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had favoured a distance-based universal fare system to enable integration and choice of best mode and system of travel across the GTHA, but with this move, the logical basis of it has changed.
So is this just in time for Christmas, or just in time for elections? Ho, ho, ho…
LikeLike
I’m in disbelief. This is fantastic. Maybe my letter to the Mayor made a difference 😛
LikeLike
Wow, this happened a lot sooner than I had imagined it would. I guess common sense sometimes does shine through.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Using the TTC trip planner, from Long Branch Loop to West Hill Collegiate Institute, it would take 2 hours 3 minutes to 2 hours 18 minutes. Therefore, even the 2-hour timed transfer may not be enough, should there be accidents, detours, or other incidents along the way.
Steve: The intent is not to make every conceivable trip on the TTC a single fare, only most of them. I might add that if someone wanted to make that trip, they should use the GO RER service with the new “SmartTrack” inside Toronto fares Mayor Tory keeps talking about.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In my experience, most electronic time-based fare systems use the latter. That is, if I make the last transfer 1 hour and 55 minutes after the start of my trip (which is legal in whichever system), I do not expect to be booted off the bus 5 minutes later. I can ride that bus as far as possible (to the last stop), but would no longer be able to transfer.
Considering the traffic in Toronto and the unreliable nature of TTC service (subways included! in fact, especially on the subways), the latter would be the sensible option. This means that wklis’ example above would probably be covered by a single fare.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, this is certainly an 11th hour conversion. The big question is will the city put the required money up to make it happen. Regardless of the political motivations for deciding that a timed transfer is a good idea so late in the day, I do hope it happens for many reasons.
LikeLike
This reads like a concession in return for the Metrolinx funded GO/TTC discount and for making SmartTrack trips more practical.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is certainly good news but I must wonder why the Chair of the TTC Board or Commissioner Mary Fragedakis or even the Mayor’s Delegate the Deputy Mayor Minnan-Wong or Deputy Mayor De Baeremaeker did not simply propose a motion at the last TTC Board meeting. It certainly looks like grandstanding to me. If it gets the job done, I suppose that’s fine but …
LikeLike
Andre: In my past experience with time-based transfers in Vancouver and York Region, you didn’t have to complete your trip in two hours, only begin the last leg of your journey within the two hours — after all, there’s no tap off to charge you on the exit (yet). This may lead to disputes with enforcement officers who find you with an expired fare near the end of a journey on the 501, but most reasonable officers will see that your fare only expired a few minutes ago, and understand. Of course, if your fare is expired, and you were planning to go much further, your next transfer will be charged anyway,
LikeLiked by 1 person
120 minutes fare is nice, but keep this point in mind. One can board a bus with 5 minutes remaining on clock and go all the way to the final stop with no consequences. It will not work well with the GO co fare. The GO co fare operates on this logic. If the difference between GO tap in time and first tap in on local transit is greater than 120 minutes, it will not apply the discount. If I tap in on Mississauga Transit 121 minutes ago at a GO bus/station, I pay full fare for MT. If I tap in less than 120 minutes ago, I pay the $0.80 to take MT to a GO bus/station.
Once everyone is on Presto and 120 minutes fare is applied, there will be no more fare disputes. It is either a red or green light on the Presto reader.
LikeLike
Let’s be fair now! These problems were not foreseeable.
Steve: I assume that this remark is made tongue-in-cheek!
To put things in context, there was a point fairly early in the Presto rollout where it looked like TTC staff would recommend time-based transfer rules. It was part of a package of recommendations in summer 2014, but was not implemented. It is quite conceivable that Presto (and TTC staff) thought that by the time the rollout actually happened, transfers as we know them would no longer be around.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In Metro Vancouver Translink has “exit gates” on their mass transit lines. You have to buy another fare if you are not within the 90 minute window. The exit gates are just the fare gates coming from the opposite directions. Again, they only have exit gates on the 3 skytrain lines, Canada line & the Seabus. They don’t use them on buses.
LikeLike
I wonder how much the Presto vendor will charge to reprogram the system to make this change.
LikeLike
Amen, the reality is that we need to appreciate that the fares need to be simple and affordable if we want people to use the service, which most of us should want transit use to be the first choice of the vast majority of our neighbors. The city and region are now well past the point of any hope of being able to address serious congestion with roads directly, so modes that require less space to move more people will be essential to make the region work. Distance based fares often discourage ridership, especially if there is no way of reasonably making a multiple stop trip in a more affordable way, like you would in a car.
LikeLike
Amazing! The TTC will finally arrive at the fare/fair arrangements that most European cities had in the 1970’s, if my memory is not playing tricks: you would buy a paper ticket from one of the every-handy electro-mechanical ticket vending machines at most major transit stops (even in cold winter Zurich, they never seemed to break down), the ticket was imprinted with the issuing time, and you had 2 hours in which to complete your travels. In some cities they had reduced price 5 stop tickets (in addition to all the child, senior, 24-, 48-, 72-hour ticket variants), and of course the larger transit systems certainly did practice zone-based tariffs. But there was almost always some kind of time limit.
Now, I imagine that this TTC change will require a vote on the TTC committee, a vote on the City Exec committee, several reports at various stages, and then a vote by City Council, no? So let’s pencil in the change around 1Q 2019… and not get our hopes up too much!
LikeLike
Maybe there should be a 30-minute, 60-minute, 90-minute, 120-minute and 150-minute payments based on the time one taps on and when they tap off the system. The time continues for transfers taping on until they tap off, but waiting for the transfer would not count to the time.
Failure to tap off results in the full 150-minute charge.
Steve: Let’s keep it simple. The two hour fare is already used across the 905. I really get tired of trying to wring every last nickel out of the relatively few riders who would take very long trips, while making things more complex for everyone else, not to mention placing extra work on Presto.
LikeLike
Especially since those people taking very long trips on the TTC are hardly doing it because they’re having fun with the flat fare; they are riding this distance because they have to.
For a while I was taking the TTC between Long Branch loop and Seneca College at Finch/404, almost a 40km trip one-way. Early in the morning it always took under two hours; coming back in the afternoon, two and a half hours was not unusual. Nothing like spending at least twenty hours every week on the TTC, but it was my best choice.
LikeLike
I hope the TTC never implements “tap-off” exit gates. I recently spent 2 weeks in Japan and almost all of the fares there are by distance, which means you have to validate your ticket upon entry and exit. It’s quite a pain in the behind and noticeably slows down the flow of people exiting. On buses, it’s solved by making you pay for your fare as you exit instead of as you enter (but when you enter you must take a ticket which indicates which stop you got on from) so it’s slightly less annoying. I agree 100% with Steve, let’s keep it simple.
LikeLike
As others have said, this is a really bad idea and, frankly, the kind of idea to be expected from one of the ‘gravy seekers’ rather than a transit advocate/aficianado. One of the great advantages of time tickets (apart from allowing short return trips, avoiding endless arguments etc) is that it will make programing PRESTO far easier. In short: it’s a VERY bad idea!
LikeLike
Amen.
There are so many transit fans who think distance based fares are the holy grail of fare systems, and short trips need to be as cheap as possible while dinging riders not lucky/rich enough to live downtown.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exit gates in subways seem to work just fine in many cities, e.g. London. They can certainly be used to calculate the fare in ‘fare by distance’ places but surely in all kinds of places they also act as a check that someone has actually GOT a ticket (or paid a fare) when they started their trip? You can easily get into a subway fare-paid area by entering on a vehicle which you entered without paying (there really cannot be much fare inspection on surface vehicles, certainly at rush hour). If you have not paid you will (maybe) be caught when you arrive at your destination and can’t get out of the gates there. Tapping out is certainly essential with fare by distance but it is also an ‘enforcement’ in all systems.
Steve: But a related issue for which London is a perfect example is that FBD was an integral part of their tariff back in the days when conductors issued paper tickets based on where someone claimed they were going. The London surface routes do NOT use FBD, but have no free transfers between buses.
LikeLike
How about the Soknacki proposal? Different tap in times cost different amounts (e.g. his campaign promise of free transit if you board before 6am). For example peak times (730am to 930am) a tap would cost 3.25 while off peak times would cost 2.75 per tap. Same 2 hour transfer window. A financial incentive for employers and employees to change work hours to prevent overcrowding.
Steve: In theory, an interesting idea. In practice, this will tend to penalize those who have long trips and cannot easily adjust the travel hours, in effect a penalty against the suburbs and those in jobs where a “soft” start time would be possible. It’s a question of unintended consequences.
LikeLike
London does not routinely offer free transfers, but recently they introduced the Hopper fare (from the TFL website):
I also noticed that TFL offers free bus, tram, tube and DRL rides (and more) for London residents over 60. This is only for residents – not visitors.
LikeLike
Yes, and in Paris as well. They are just annoying, that’s all. Especially when you pay with a single use ticket which you must save until exiting. I prefer keeping things simple. Btw, London does not use the type of FBD that is in use in Tokyo (where the price of the ticket depends on the number of stops essentially that you will travel from your starting point, as much as I could figure out anyway), instead it uses a classic zone system (at least that’s what it was when I was last there). I remember the blank stare of the ticket attendant when I said I wanted a weekly ticket for all zones and the stark “are you sure???” reply in a heavy London accent. I bought instead a weekly ticket for zones 1-3 and I think I ventured into a zone 3 station only once, and I think only because I made a point of it. I was staying in Kensington, which is zone 2. We gotta remember that London is huuuge.
LikeLike
Amen, I think we need to start considering that these are also the riders that would otherwise either be unable to work, which means they would be on welfare (more expensive for the public purse) or would be driving a car that trip, hence be occupying that many more lane miles which are generally in shorter supply and harder to create than seat miles in transit.
LikeLike
We’ll have to wait and see how it’s implemented, but in the rest of the GTA it’s a two-hour transfer. So, so long as you get on the 116 before 120 minutes have passed, you can complete the trip. That gives you about half an hour padding for traffic, construction, and short-turns.
Why should there be consequences? Most TTC riders already have monthly passes and those that don’t are currently getting a flat fare. Are you concerned that a large amount of people will be trying to get 3-4 hours of transit riding for a single fare?
Steve: One clarification here. Most TTC rides are taken with passes, but this does not represent the majority of riders, many of whom do not use the system enough to warrant buying a pass.
That would be the case with any secondary transit operator (say TTC to MiWay). In what case would someone ride the TTC for 2+ hours and then get on a GO train? I could see it being more of a problem the other way (2+ hours on GO to get on TTC), but that can be managed with a Tap-Off or some complex logic (GO train timetables).
I’m very happy with 2-hours as a base transfer. My only extension would be if you tap onto another vehicle after 2-hours, you get charged an extra half fare for a 1-hour transfer extension. Not to wring extra out of long trippers, but to reduce that fare barrier and make it more affordable.
Steve: An excellent idea!
Time-of-day/week charges are a good idea if there is a large difference between peak and off-peak usage and you have a guaranteed minimum service level (TTC’s Blue Night Network). I would suggest shoulder-peak and mid-day shouldn’t get price reductions, but evenings and weekends would be great to expand transit usage without increasing operating costs or crowding.
Steve: An alternative long-used in Vancouver is to leave the fare the same, but get rid of the zones or to issue “transfers” that are valid for more than the daytime allocation (this has not been done in YVR for some time, but is another way to extend the value of a “fare”).
LikeLike
Amen!
It really is quite simple, but there are two “methods” of applying a 2-hour transfer that many seem to get mixed up, and they are both quite simple. Both have one simple rule: one must have a valid fare whenever a valid fare must be presented. If not, one must pay for a new fare.
First, there is “pay upon entry”. This is what we have on buses now, and used to have completely on streetcars before the new fleet began arriving, and we have had this on the subway. The ONLY time one had to present a valid fare was when one entered the vehicle. With a time-based transfer, the transfer will state its expiry time, and the only question is, “Has that time passed yet?”. Even if it expires in one minute, the transfer is valid to allow the passenger on the vehicle.
The other method is “Proof of Payment”, and it is under this method that one’s fare must be valid for the entire trip on the PoP vehicle, right up until they take a few steps away from the vehicle (fare inspections can be done as one gets off the vehicle). Generally speaking, there is some leeway given if one’s fare expires while travelling on a PoP, but a pedantic inspector could write one up if they wanted to.
For the most part, that is correct. However, for bus and tram travel, TfL has the “fare hopper” special. When taps on another bus or tram within one hour of tapping on a first bus or tram, the fare is free. Only one additional boarding is free, so it’s not like a one-hour time-based transfer.
Note, if one only uses buses or trams, the daily fare cap is equivalent to THREE single fares. Once one has paid for three fares, all others are free until 4 am the next morning. To put this into numbers, the single fare is £1.50 (about $2.55) and the cap is £4.50 (about $7.65).
Also note, there is no transferring between buses/trams and the Underground, Overground, or TfL Rail. One must pay a separate fare, but there is still daily capping, but the capping will be determined by the zones one uses the other services in. If one takes the tube for one stop that is within one or two zones, the daily cap rises to £6.60 from £4.50. On the plus side, that single tube ride would normally cost £2.40 (about $4.10) but since it just pushes up the cap by £2.10 (about $3.60), that is all it costs. From that point on until 4 am the next morning, transit is free on buses/trams (anywhere) and on the tube within the zone or zones travelled on that short ride.
I really have been spending too much time in London this year.
Steve: Thanks for all of that clarification. I know London’s new mayor has implemented some important changes, and folks on this side of the pond tend to invoke TfL’s zone structure as “justification” for pursuit of a similar situation here without mentioning fare capping as an integral part of the tariff.
LikeLike
Well, Montreal has the unlimited evening ticket where for $5 you get unlimited travel between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. The idea is to encourage people to use transit for their after work activities, like a night out in the town. Not to mention that this a good idea for safety reasons – less people who have been drinking driving potentially (that’s btw an excellent way to pitch such a scheme to anti-transit people).
The price of a single ticket is the same as in Toronto ($3.25).
Which brings us to the next point – I think when people discuss the prices of single fares, they’ve got the logic backwards. The price of a single fare is fine. The monthly pass is too expensive. That’s why a lot of regular commuters don’t buy a metropass – it’s cheaper to go with single fares only if your principal aim is commuting to work and back 5 times a week. These same people will then not take transit on evenings on weekends since they don’t have the pass, but will drive instead. A monthly pass in Montreal is $83. Both in Toronto and Montreal a week of commuting to work using single fares is $32.50. In Montreal the monthly pass makes sense after 2.5 weeks of commuting, i.e. less than a month. In Toronto it makes sense after 4.5 weeks, i.e. more than a month.
TTC vehicles are already packed at rush hour. Who takes the TTC at rush hour unless they have to? When I was a grad student with an ultra-flexible schedule, I sure didn’t. If somebody wants to shift people to off-peak periods, offer a $90 metropass for off-peak travel, and offer it via employers in bulk and allow those companies to claim it off their taxes. This *might* incentivize some employers to change their work hours and move people to off-peak times, but even with this I’m not so sure.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I find that many on this side of the pond have a habit of pointing to things in other cities, especially London, and saying “We should do that” without looking at the bigger picture that it is all connected to. Citing their congestion charge (and the new pollution charge as well) is all well and good, but it comes with higher fares in Zone 1 on the underground during peak times.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some things we could cherry-pick from London, but there are all sorts of things there that people in Toronto would throw a hissy fit over.
LikeLike
Hi Steve, just a quick question. Do you know if there has ever been an assessment by Metrolinx or the TTC of how much it would cost to offer GO service within the 416 at TTC fares? I imagine the additional costs would be largely offset by increased ridership on the GO lines. Naturally you’d run into capacity issues during the peak hours, but with the introduction of RER and the supposed quadrupling of GO trips, it would seem to make sense as a way to get more transit riders in the 416 off of the crowded TTC routes and onto the faster GO routes.
Steve: There has never been a calculation of this, and yet it is fundamental to the whole SmartTrack scheme whereby TTC riders transfer to and from GO within the 416 at no extra cost. As to capacity, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Projections are for considerable growth on the GO network even without adding demand from inside 416, and a lot of the RER planning was done before Queen’s Park changed its mind about carrying people in Toronto at a lower cost. So much of this is pre-election positioning that it is impossible to say what policies and proposals will be in place a year from now.
Self-sustaining from new riders? Not a chance especially if the more expensive GO costs must be carried with little offsetting Toronto revenue. The lion’s share of riders will be existing transit users looking for a faster trip. On the GO side, it is not practical to just run trains to the City boundary and then turn them around. There are also track capacity issues and the matter of added wait times offsetting travel time savings. There will only be 7 trains/hour on the Stouffville corridor (three “SmartTrack” and four “GO”), and that’s during the peak.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also getting people in the habit of riding transit off peak is a way of getting them to see transit as a possibility, get them behind transit funding etc. Generally, most large cities are at a point where more roads and cars are not a viable to moving people. Getting people to have transit on their minds will create more awareness regarding to what is required to make it attractive, and hence viable, even if it is not always for them. If you must drive, you gain from others taking transit, and reducing load on the roadways you must use. There will be trips that cannot be supported readily by transit, but the more aware people are of transit, the greater the likelihood they will support it, and the zoning that increases the number of trips that can be readily supported by transit.
PS. It is clear to make Toronto work, a much better informed public is required as voters, and this means thinking about transit, how it works, and what is required, not just leaping on politicians stupid fantasy projects.
LikeLike
Perhaps it is time to have real debates on this away from elections, really push the point of involvement for the public, start with the idea of money and work out from there. That would mean talking about the actual means we have at our disposal, the real scope of the problem and essentially start with the idea, that these choices will be final. If we start in Scarborough, every other area gets a kick at the cat for their inflation adjusted 4 billion or so, before we can come back to Scarborough. That is inject some hard limits on spending, and mission creep, that is likely part of the underlying expectation.
There is a real need to have an honest discussion, on looking also at the costs of operations of each of these choices, and the costs of general service provision otherwise is in an area, versus the number of people it has living there. Perhaps services should not relate to taxes, but surely they should relate to people not real estate, and the choice of having lower density means you are getting more roads, more sewers, more snow clearance, and that your routes require more drivers and buses for the same frequency of service for the simple reason of being longer. This sort of discussion, and cost of trade off, and killing the idea that you can have it all is something desperately needed in the debate. There is a desperate need to inject the idea, that if you moved to a low service area, you got lower costs, more roads etc, and it was a trade-off, you cannot then act as though those who went with the choice you rejected are better off, when you live in a house, they a condo or apartment..
PS. while I believe in timed based transfers, I think there is a huge need to understand that services levels must be at least in part be determined by realism.
LikeLike