Mayor Chow announced that as part of her 2026 Toronto Budget, fare capping will be introduced on the TTC starting in September 2026.
The cap will be set at 47 rides per calendar month and will apply to all fare classes including adults, seniors and youth. This will bring the senior’s and youth monthly fares down to the same multiple as adults. Chow also proposes that the TTC budget for a 40 ride cap in 2027.
The caps will apply to fares paid by Presto, debit or credit card provided that the same card is used for all rides. This is enabled by changes in Presto’s “back end” system that will keep track of rides used and charge accordingly. Monthly passes will disappear, but frequent riders will get the equivalent benefit without buying a pass up front. This is important for those on tight budgets who do not know what their travel habits will be in advance.
The anticipated cost in 2026 will be $2.9-million less TTC farebox revenue, and a further $0.6-million for the City due to the reduced effective price of their “Fair Pass” for low income riders.
This is a long-overdue change to the fare structure that was first approved in principle by the TTC Board many years ago. Now finally it will be implemented because of the Mayor’s willingness to fund it, and Presto’s ability to support it for all types of payment.
No details of how this scheme will interact with regional fare deals such as 905+416 trips and GO+TTC trips have been announced.
The proposal will first go to the TTC Board’s budget meeting in January, and then through the City’s budget process to Council on February 10, 2026.
Steve Munro 
Now that it is capped and risk is reduced, the city should add a benefit to all FTEs at the city of free transit rides (150$/mt 1800$/yr) but since a lot would only use it partially this number would be significantly less.
Having a benefit like this would force other large employers to have a similar benefit. And it would encourage more transit use for commuting, and for occasional trips. Basically you would get 6x the benefit just from the banks alone, and likely another huge chunk from other employers.
This could behave like any other benefit where you submit your rides through a portal on the presto site…or its managed transparently once you opt in to the employers plan…which would lower the risk of misuse…
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I like my pass. I subscribe and get it automatically loaded for $143 per month. I give the convenience value of not having to manage reloads at about $10 per month. In the end this will cost me more and inconvenience me.
Steve: It is hard to see how it will cost you more. Either you have a single $143 payment every month, or occasional payments of a lesser amount depending on how you set up the auto-reload.
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But will the TTC still accept cash on the buses and streetcars in the near future? Still see tourists, elderly, immigrants, and poor paying by coin. Can see some them reaching the 47 or 40 ride threshold.
Steve: TTC still accepts cash, and is working with Presto on machine readable transfers as fare receipts. As for a discount, the elderly and immigrants, assuming they are “banked” can set up a Presto card and get the capping if they ride enough. Tourists are another matter. Once the new Presto system is in place, we can start to talk about short-term passes / or capped fares. Frankly for them, the ability to use a credit card rather than buying a Presto card, but still get a tourist discount (e.g. with a weekly capped value) is probably most important. The key change is the new Presto system which can track usage without storing data on the card.
And finally, there are mechanisms for providing cheap/free rides for the very poor, although they are spotty with limited access as the City has not fully rolled them out yet. That said, you still need to be able to load value onto a card, with the only City benefit being a discounted fare.
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About time! The Metropass has always been more about convenience. I never thought it was a good value, requiring a lot use beyond simply commuting to and from work to get your money’s worth out of it. It did give hop-on/hop-off freedom, but I always resented that I wasn’t saving anything despite being a subscriber. Hop-on/Hop-off is now taken care of with the two-hour transfer, meaning it’s even harder to hit that 47 trip “goal” where you break even. When I heard TTC was going to force us to go to a fare card I was excited about the possibility of fare capping, which I knew was a feature on other transit systems. But, of course, no. A long time coming. Now let’s see how they f**k it up.
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Hi Steve great blog as always!
I just wanted to ask what would happen to the student discount? I’m a university student and will I still have to pay the 3.30$ single fare or will it be 2.35$ single fare until tap limit?
Steve: My understanding is that the discounted fares (seniors, youth, etc) will remain, but will be capped at 47 like the adult passes rather than the higher multiple now in place on monthly passes.
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How will the current University student discount where you get a youth monthly pass discount but have to pay adult single fares translate? Will you have to pay the 3.30$ adult fare just at 39 taps to reach the current discount rate of 128.15$ or will you receive the cheaper high school youth discount?
Steve: This is a detail that has not been explained. I look forward to more info in the TTC budget report in January. There are other issues such as how this will interact with 905+416 cross-border and GO+TTC fare arrangements.
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Why not have weekly and daily caps as well while we’re at it?
Steve: One thing at a time. There are limits within Presto on how many types of fare scheme it can handle, and it’s not clear what headroom there is for multiple discount periods. Get capping established within its capabilities. “The computer can’t do it” is always a handy excuse when management wants to delay/block something. Don’t give them the chance. We have waited since Andy Byford’s era for this to be implemented.
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I’m curious for your take, Steve, but my impression is that the TTC has no idea what it wants from this program. Obviously, capping is better than passes, but it doesn’t seem to me like there’s a clear goal for what this effort is supposed to achieve.
Maybe this is genuinely about providing a discount for TTC’s most frequent customers, in which case I suppose it makes sense. But, if it’s actually about people not being able to afford passes, while not wanting to use a means-tested program, why not implement it as something like “your fifth ride is free” to help everyone TTC fares might impact, not just those who have 24+ TTC RTs a month? If it’s about helping the most disadvantaged in a targeted way, why not expand reduced fare programs? If it’s about incentivizing TTC commuters to choose TTC for more journeys where they’d otherwise take the car, why not make it a weekly fare cap after 3-4 RTs?
While I agree that capping is better than monthly passes, it just seems to me like capping is only a solution you’d invent when you’re locked-in to the momentum of “the solution must be a monthly pass or monthly pass like thing,” rather than actually defining the problem you’re trying to solve + developing the best solution for it.
Steve: Your mistake is to assume that it is the “TTC” which has a goal here. Their management has fought every attempt to provide better fare discounts right back to the introduction of the Metropass in 1980. Their primary concern is revenue protection, or to put it another way, to minimize the call for city and provincial subsidies.
The desire for cheaper fares and for making transit more affordable lies at the political level. Both the 2026 fare freeze and fare capping were announced by the Mayor, not by the TTC, as she is responsible for the City’s budget and hence the amount of subsidy the TTC will get. The question then is how to structure the tariff with a proposal that can actually be implemented (technically, considering constraints of the Presto system) and financially. What we get is a move from the existing monthly pass system to a monthly cap at 47 fares. Note that this is actually a fare reduction for youth and seniors who now must pay a higher multiple for a pass. The next proposed step is to drop to a 40 multiple in 2027.
All of this is possible with Presto, but moving to the equivalent of a weekly pass or an “every nth ride free” model, is quite another matter. Also the monthly capping scheme puts the TTC in line with other regional agencies and so it can hardly be described as some sort of outrageous Toronto-only benefit. So to say that capping is based on a monthly pass model is correct because that’s what is built into the provincial fare collection system. You may prefer a different model, but such a change needs regional and provincial support for the technical changes. The proposal aims at what can be done today.
Regarding the very poor, the City already has a subsidized fare program for them, but has not expanded it as far as originally proposed for budgetary reasons. One might ask why not and the issue is that doing so would considerably increase the number of riders receiving the extra City subsidy.
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