Fares & Fare Collection

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TTC Announces The End for Tokens, Tickets, Transfers

The TTC has announced that the use of traditional fare media will be phased out starting in 2017 with the goal of complete conversion to smart card technology by the middle of that year.

A presentation by Deputy CEO Chris Upfold at the June 22, 2015 TTC Board meeting outlined the project.

Current plans for migration to Presto will see all streetcars and subway stations equipped with readers by the end of 2015, and the bus fleet by the end of 2016. This will lead to all-door loading and proof-of-payment operation on the entire streetcar system by the end of 2015.

Presto (part of Metrolinx) is responsible for the entire fare collection system with only a few exceptions, notably the gates in subway stations. In return, they will receive 5.25% of fares collected through their system, a lower cost to the TTC than its estimated 7% on the existing system.

As riders on the new streetcars already know, the procedure for obtaining a paper “transfer” or fare receipt is cumbersome for Presto users as this is handled by a completely separate device which is not beside the Presto reader. This will be a major disincentive for riders who must transfer to a route where Presto is not in use. (Moreover, given the TTC’s chronic inability to reliably schedule its fleet, I fully expect non-Presto buses to show up on “Presto” routes.)

Riders who now use tokens would still require them up to the point where their travel is all in “Presto” territory. A pass user whose travel involves non-Presto routes has no incentive to change to Presto because they would have to revert to the standard fares rather than the pass-based discounts. The transitional year, 2016, will be a challenge.

TTC management will propose, in November 2015, a scheme for the new fare structure. Among major decisions the TTC and City Council (because of subsidy implications) must consider will be:

  • How much transit usage will one “fare” purchase? There has been talk of a time-based fare (two hours, say), but this has been opposed in some quarters, including the Mayor’s office. With luck, he will reconsider.
  • If the TTC moves to a zonal system, this will require “tap off” at vehicle and station exits to ensure that the appropriate fare is paid. This would be a major change for the TTC, and could produce severe congestion for passenger handling on surface vehicles.
  • The handling of transfers between surface and subway is now designed in most locations to be barrier-free. Riders do not necessarily “leave” the system on the route where they started.
  • Through services into other jurisdictions (e.g. Toronto to York Region by bus or subway) raise the questions of zones and revenue sharing. Does York Region collect a YRT/VIVA fare for the inbound trip and TTC a fare for outbound? At stations like Vaughan Centre, the process is simple – set up a fare barrier – but for routes crossing the boundary, the situation is not as straightforward. Gone are the days when an operator could walk through a bus with a hand-held farebox at the zone boundary.

These are just some of the issues facing the TTC for its own system, and another whole layer is added for “integration” with other transit networks, notably GO and the future SmartTrack which will share GO facilities, but operate with TTC fares and transfer privileges. Metrolinx plans to produce its own study on fare integration in September 2015, and this will probably set the stage for the options available to the TTC.

Although initially the system will accept only Presto cards, support for credit/debit cards and smart phones will follow in 2018. This entails a major change in the Presto architecture, work that is now underway for an implementation in Washington DC. Instead of storing your account balance on the card, this information will be kept by the “back end” systems and your card (or smart phone app) will only be used as an identifier. (A good analogy is a phone bill where the record of calls and billing are handled by the carrier, not by equipment where the phone is used nor by the phone itself.)

In subway stations, new fare gates will be installed at both the primary and “secondary” entrances which are now only available for token and pass users. These gates will initially be set up with readers only on the “entry” side, but will have the capability of “exit” readers if a fare scheme requiring “tap out” functionality is implemented. The need for new gates, and to move away from some existing equipment such as “high gate” turnstiles, comes from limitations of the current setup, especially at “automatic” entrances which cannot  be used by many people. With Presto and the move away from fare inspection by a collector at entry, the distinction of an “automatic” entrance disappears.

It may be possible to wean everyone onto new fare media fairly quickly once the bus system is converted, but there are many issues related to casual users and a variety of concession fares notably free rides for children, family/group passes, and the distribution of fares for low income riders by social agencies.

The TTC seems very “gung ho” to get on with this migration, but in the absence of details, people will inevitably pepper them with “how will you do this” questions. Waiting for the November report is, I believe, a poor strategy and at least a preliminary discussion of options and implications should be published now if only to frame the debate.

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Metropass Turns 35: Time To Talk About Fare Options

May 1, 1980, saw the introduction of Toronto’s Metropass and the beginning of a shift away from pay-as-you-ride travel on the TTC.

May1980Pass

The pass did not come without some political battles, and the stock TTC line was that this just wouldn’t work in Toronto. What they really worried about, of course, was lost revenue, a topic that comes up every chance TTC management gets to cry in their beer about the good old days when people actually paid full fares to ride.

The fare multiple in 1980 was 52 – the price of the pass at $26 was the equivalent of 52 tokens at, wait for it, fifty cents each. Over the years it was wrestled down to 46, but has been drifting up again in an attempt to make those pesky pass holders pay more. The ratio stands at 50.5 today for a regular pass with no discounts.

In fact, passholders now represent over half of all TTC rides. In 2014, out of a total 534.8-million rides, 290.7m were paid for with transit passes. It is long past time that we should think of pass users as if they are some small privileged group, but rather that they take the majority of trips on the TTC. It is their fares which are the “standard”, not the higher priced token users nor the real cash cows, those who pay the full cash fare. The chart below shows the evolution of fare media usage over the past three decades.

1985-2014 Analysis of ridership

At its April 29, 2015 board meeting the TTC approved a request that staff report on various fare options including:

  • fare by time of day
  • 2 hour transfer
  • Seniors fares by time of day, including $1.00 seniors fare during off-peak hours
  • Fare by distance
  • Concession policy overall as informed by Fare Equity Strategy
  • Monthly pass versus daily / weekly / monthly capping
  • Free regular transit fares for Wheel-Trans qualified passengers in addition to the visually impaired

This report is expected to arrive on the October 2015 board agenda.

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Should Seniors Get Even Cheaper Transit Fares? (Updated)

Updated April 30, 2015 at 12:40 pm:

The text of motions passed regarding this item have been added at the end of the update below.

Updated April 30, 2015 at 9:30 am:

The debate on the motion asking for a report on a pilot project for a $1 off peak seniors’ fare went on at great length at the April 29 TTC board meeting and provided some political theatre along the way.

At its heart, there are interlocking issues in any debate about fares:

  • Should seniors as a class of riders receive discounted fares, and how generous should this discount be?
  • Are other groups of riders equally or more deserving of discounts?
  • Should a “pool”of subsidy related to discounts be allocated to various groups based on needs, or should the scope of such subsidies be increased?
  • How will eligibility for any subsidy be administered?
  • How should any fare subsidies be funded, and what is their priority relative to other transit needs such as improved service and maintenance?
  • Should the standard fare structure be revised to provide benefits to all riders rather than targeted groups?

The proposal for a $1 off peak seniors’ fare came from Commissioner Vince Crisanti, a member of the Ford faction in the previous administration who was not noted for his generosity on the subject of social programs. Moreover, when he did sit on the TTC board (before the coup d’état that ousted many of the Ford crew), his knowledge of transit matters could not be described as encyclopaedic. To be fair, at this point the proposal was only a report request – tell me whether it would be feasible to have a pilot program to test the lower fare – and one might expect the whole thing to disappear if the result proved impractical, especially from a financial standpoint.

The problem, of course, is that everyone wants cheaper fares for one or more deserving groups, or even for all riders as Mayoral candidate Tory advocated, without getting into the questions of whether this is the best use of transit dollars or how a net new subsidy would fit into the allegedly tight city budget situation.

Public deputations on the issue, of which there were few despite the large crowd of seniors in the audience who arrived as a group, concentrated on support for the lower fare. In one case, the presentation by TTCRiders ran into a basic problem that their primary desire is to help low-income riders, but they have been pulled into the $1 fare issue as a jumping off point for their larger cause.

Questions from board members were generally civil, although there was a common thread of “how should we pay for this”. One deputant tartly replied that if the city can afford to eat the sunk costs of cancelled LRT projects and build the Scarborough Subway Extension, then availability of revenue is not the issue.

Toronto Councillors love to pretend that any discussion of new services or expenditures must be a zero-sum game with higher costs in one area balanced by reductions in others. This ignores the considerable taxing powers of the City that go unused thanks to pandering to motorists (the vehicle registration tax) and to the no-new-taxes philosophy that hobbles modern political debate.

The best moment came in a testy exchange between an old Chinese lady, speaking through an interpreter, who was harangued by Commissioner Denzil Minnan-Wong with a series of questions ending up with, to paraphrase, how can we pay for fuel if we let people ride for free? After a short pause, the reply came back: “that’s a stupid question”.

For far too long DMW and others have grandstanded at the expense of citizens who just want to exercise their right to speak on public issues, and chairs of meetings (including the TTC’s Chair Josh Colle) have failed to rein in such abuse. That one response burst DMW’s balloon, and will long be remembered.

Colle himself noted that he had come to the TTC a few years ago with a similar incentive – helping seniors with lower fares – but has since learned that as a group, seniors are rather well off. The real issue is to identify those who are in need regardless of their age.

Commissioner Alan Heisey proposed a motion asking for a report on a variety of fare options to come forward in October 2015 as input to the 2016 budget process. This would allow TTC staff to explore a range of new or revised fares, and in particular whether technical capabilities or limitations of the Presto fare card would affect the implementation.

The decision on future subsidy levels will be up to Toronto Council, but the TTC board should already have taken a position on the matter rather than simply inheriting a campaign promise as they did with the free rides for children in the 2015 budget.

Voting on the items took a bit of diplomacy as nobody wanted to actually vote against Vince Crisanti’s proposal. In the end, it was amended to request a “briefing note” by June, and then Heisey’s much broader motion was passed. A briefing note does not come back to the TTC agenda and simply updates members on information from staff. A report becomes the subject of future debate.

The motions as they were passed are:

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Those Pesky Metropasses

The TTC Board has approved fare hikes in most categories effective March 1, 2015. [Scroll down in the press release for the details.]

This round included certain changes that attracted debate:

  • Children (age 12 and under) will ride free.
  • Adult Metropasses will change from the equivalent of 49.5 tokens to 50.5 tokens.
  • Cash fares remain at their 2014 level.

Although the “average” increase is advertised as 3.7%, the Metropass holders (who are 40% of the TTC’s customers and account for 53% of all riding) will see an increase of 5.8%.

TTC management has never liked the Metropass and fought hard against its introduction in 1980. Over the years, to encourage use, the TTC reduced the fare multiple (the token equivalent of the pass price) from the original 52 and it eventually dropped to about 48.

Management pushes back, and treats pass holders as people who get too good a deal, also as a captive market who will put up with a larger-than-average fare increase leaving money to offset other fare policies such as free rides for kiddies. They argue that passholders don’t pay their way:

  • Since 2010, the price of a pass has gone up by 17%.
  • During the same period, based on surveys of pass users, the trips taken per pass have gone up from 70 to 75 per month, on average, or 6%.
  • Therefore the price per ride (on average) has stayed at roughly the same level as inflation in Toronto.
  • The effective after tax price of the pass is only 43 fares.

From 2010 to 2015, the cost of a token has gone up from $2.50 to $2.80, or 12%, roughly equal to the imputed increase for pass holders, but this assumes that every pass holder actually is making five more rides a month to offset the higher price. As for the tax rebate, this assumes that a buyer has taxable income against which to offset the transit credit, and passes actually cost the poor more than they do those with taxable income.

Management claims that it is “not economically sustainable to carry an ever-increasing number of trips without the associated revenue to cover the cost of providing those trips” [Budget Presentation, Feb. 2, 2015, page 25] What this statement completely misses is the fact that pass holders make many “trips” that they would not take on a pay-as-you-play basis, or they would creatively cheat on their transfers. Those 75 trips/month do not all represent “lost” revenue, nor do they necessarily push up operating costs through a need for increased capacity. Indeed, pass holders get no credit in this calculation for the much lower cost/trip of fare collection — one monthly transaction, an electronic one for the Monthly Discount Program, no handling of cash (other than one monthly payment for in-person transactions), no tokens to distribute and collect, and no transfers.

There has never been an accounting of the so-called cost of Metropass users to the TTC, and especially not one weighed against the benefits in simplified operations and the social benefit of a fixed, monthly fare.

Oddly enough, management has no worries about “sustainability” when it comes to the inevitable demand that free rides for children will bring, but instead spins this as a way to get future customers into a transit habit early in life.

This is a simple grab for $7-million in extra revenue in the guise of better equity.

In fact, Toronto should encourage more people to use passes as an incentive to ride transit. Being able to take “another trip free” is an important change in how a user views transit, and is similar to a motorist’s view of car use — it’s paid for, I might as well drive.

Unfortunately, the 2015 budget was assembled entirely out of view of the Commissioners who nominally should debate and approve these things. Mayor Tory and TTC Chair Colle simply assembled the media in a schoolyard one brisk morning and announced the new fares with no input from the board nominally in charge. The new fares were not even a campaign promise, quite the opposite.

One ray of sunshine in this procedural murk is that the Commission voted that management should bring back a report in May 2015 on a “vigourous” (later amended to “rigourous”) process for future budgets so that the policy issues affecting them can actually be debated. This is a welcome change, but it should not have been necessary in the first place if the Commission had been doing its job and actively developing policies in public view.

Next year, the TTC and Council will have to address key issues such as:

  • Whether to implement a “two-hour fare”, in effect a limited time pass in place of the current transfers.
  • Whether to implement discounted fares for recipients of social welfare programs.
  • What, exactly, “fare integration” with GO and the 905 transit systems would look like, and who will pay for it.
  • What will a “monthly pass” be in a regional context, and how should it be priced.
  • How will the additional, net, cost of opening the Spadina Extension to Vaughan be absorbed in the budget (an estimated $10m that will have its full effect in 2017).
  • The next round of “customer service improvements” beyond those planned for 2015 are off in remote 2019. Is this acceptable, or should Toronto continue to budget for even better service by, for example, fully restoring the crowding standards to the Miller era?
  • What does “reliable” service look like, and what steps are required from management and staff to make this a reality.

This is much more complex than the smiling, simplistic, good news, bright-yellow-flower world of the previous administration. Is the TTC, is Toronto up to this challenge, or will the major debates be on the choice of tiles for new subway stations?

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New Fares and Service Improvements Coming to the TTC (Updated)

On January 19, 2015, Mayor John Tory, TTC Chair Josh Colle and TTC CEO Andy Byford held a press conference to announce major changes for TTC riders in 2015.

  • Adult fares will rise by 10 cents (from $2.70 to $2.80, or 3.7%) with proportionate increases for passes, senior and student fares.
    • Children under 12 will ride free (the current fare is $0.75 cash or a ticket for $0.60).
    • The cash fare will remain at $3.00.
  • All day, every day services that were cut in 2011 will be restored.
  • A network of key bus and streetcar routes will have 10 minute service except overnight (after 1:00 am).
  • Crowding and wait times off peak will be reduced by modifying the loading standards.
  • Proof-of-payment and all-door loading will be extended throughout the streetcar network.
  • Twelve new Blue Night routes will be added to the 22 now in operation.
  • Fifty new buses will be acquired for service improvements.
    • Crowding and wait times during the peak periods for 21 busy routes will be improved.
    • Four new express bus routes will be added.
    • The pool of buses available for maintenance will be increased.
    • Temporary storage will be obtained to house the buses pending new garage construction.
  • Trains on the YUS and BD subways that are now held on standby for emergencies will be scheduled into the regular service.
  • Route management will be improved for streetcar routes to provide more reliable service and better utilize the capacity of vehicles in service.
  • The reliability of signals, track and communication systems will be improved with more resources for maintenance.

Updated Jan. 19, 2015 at 4:00 pm: One sour note in the announcement is the fact that the Metropass multiple will go up from 49 to 50 giving a new price of $141.50 vs the existing $133.75, an increase of 5.8%. In the midst of an otherwise upbeat, positive set of recommendations, it was a poor choice not to mention that frequent users would pay a higher increase for TTC fares. This continues TTC management’s desire to bump the pass pricing up on the basis that frequent users are getting too high a subsidy. If that’s the official position of the Mayor and TTC Chair, they should have said so in the press release.

FareIncrease2015

Much of this program arose from the August 2014 “Opportunities” report from TTC management.

At the time, then-candidate Tory argued against these proposals on the grounds that they were unfunded, and behind the scenes, the Tory camp complained that the TTC was supporting another candidate’s platform. To his credit, now-Mayor Tory recognizes the importance of better transit service that can be delivered in the short term, and he has embraced advice from Andy Byford wholeheartedly. Among the lessons he learned was that TTC’s off-peak ridership is higher and growing faster then peak demand, and that investments in off-peak service will benefit a very large number of riders throughout the city. This is an important change from a focus just on peak period, core-oriented capacity.

Tory has reluctantly dropped his proposed fare freeze saying that Toronto cannot do this and get on with improving transit. He now argues that fares will go up a bit more, but that riders will get a lot more service.

During the press conference, the Mayor made pointed, repeated references to “my predecessor” and “the previous administration” saying that the policy of service cuts and subsidy freezes was wrong. One can be gleeful seeing the Ford era openly criticized by the new Mayor, but that’s not the important point. Simply by making the statement, Tory puts allies inherited from the ancien régime on notice. Better TTC funding is not simply a predictable request from the usual activists and left-wing Councillors, but part of the Mayor’s program.

The financial proposal is that the TTC’s budgeted subsidy from Toronto will rise from $440.1-million in 2014 to nearly $479m in 2015. The fare increase plus added ridership (projected at 545m in 2015, up 10m from 2014) will bring in $43m more, net of the elimination of children’s fares ($7m). (The subsidy includes approximately $90m in provincial gas tax revenue which is paid to the City. This amount has not changed in many years.)

Further details will be revealed in the City Budget Launch on January 20, and at the TTC Board’s own budget meeting on February 2. Implementation of this plan is contingent on Council approval, although the new fares (which can be approved by the TTC itself) will take effect March 1. Service changes require lead time for planning, staffing, and in the case of the new buses, acquisition of vehicles and a storage yard. In practice, the changes will likely roll out beginning later this spring with the majority of service improvements coming in September or later. This will also limit the cost of new services to a smaller part of the year, although full-year costs will have to be absorbed in 2016.

The maps in the Opportunties report (linked above) show the range of routes that will likely be affected by the various proposals. I checked with TTC officials at the press conference, and although there may be minor changes, these maps give substantially a good idea of where the improvements will be.

Of the many opportunities proposed in August, the one which is notable by its absence is the two-hour fare. There is only so much money to spend on a new fare structure, and rebuilding service takes priority this year. However, the need for a simpler “transfer” mechanism on the TTC will be forced by the Presto implementation which Andy Byford is pressing Metrolinx to complete by the end of 2016. This will more-or-less force the question as part of next year’s budget planning.

During the scrum, the inevitable question to Mayor Tory was “how will you pay for all of this”. Tory demurred saying all would be revealed at the Budget Launch. An important point, however, is that he plans to keep tax increases to inflation, but the Scarborough Subway tax will be outside of that “inflationary” envelope.

This is a very good start for the Tory/Colle era of TTC policy-making. Rather than cherry-picking a handful of improvements that might benefit only a small segment of Toronto, they have opted for a variety of changes addressing many submarkets within the TTC’s ridership. If this continues in future years, by the time the TTC and Metrolinx open new rapid transit lines, Toronto will have a much improved surface network linking riders to new and improved trunk routes.

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TTC 2015 Budget Preview: Business As Usual or Transit Renaissance?

Toronto will get a sense of where its new Council and TTC Board are headed next week when the City launches its budget for 2015 on Tuesday, January 20. This will be followed by debates at Budget Committee and the TTC’s own budget meeting on Monday February 2.

After months of election campaigns and an early honeymoon, our politicians will have to pick which “Transit City” they really want.

  • Do we face more of the small-minded penny-pinching, the false economies of the Ford era, or a view of Toronto and its transit services where policy is more than drawing fantasy subway maps and stuffing more people in fewer buses?
  • Will Toronto be a city with expanding, attractive transit service for riders on the network as a whole?
  • Will Council spend money on transit today and make real changes, or do we face four more years of making do with inferior service?
  • Will capital spending focus only on megaprojects (ideally ones paid for with other governments’ money), or will Council recognize the needs of the existing system for maintenance and improvement?

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GO Transit Pilots Cut Rate Fare For Short Trips

Today, Metrolinx announced that GO Transit will offer a pilot low-cost fare on its Lake Shore line between Exhibition, Union and Danforth Stations. For $60, riders can buy a monthly sticker that would be added to their Metropass much as the Premium Express stickers for TTC services are today.

This is a substantial discount from the $181.60 that it would cost for the 20 days’ commuting trips based on the fares effective February 1, 2015. ($5.09 for each of rides 1-35, and $0.69 for rides 36-40.) The scheme began with a call for cheaper fares between Liberty Village and downtown Toronto, given that Exhibition Station is at the south end of the neighbourhood. Not to be outdone, east end Councillors jumped on the bandwagon, and Danforth Station was added to the request. GO’s announcement responds to these two “squeaky wheels”, but falls short on a number of other points.

  • Having a Metropass is a pre-requisite to using the lower GO fare. Depending on a rider’s travel pattern, a Metropass may be more expensive than pay-as-you-play token purchases.
  • The further one lives from Exhibition Station, the less attractive a walk to GO will be, especially during off-peak periods when finding space on the King car would be less of an issue.
  • One advantage touted for the scheme is offloading subway demand. In fact, this requires passengers to walk from Main Station to the GO Danforth Station, roughly a seven minute journey from the subway platform, plus the wait time added by the transfer connection. Ironically, many of the peak trains stopping at Danforth will also serve Kennedy Station which would be a much simpler transfer point for many east end riders, but the cheaper fare will not be available there.
  • The fare from Danforth to Union is the same as the fare from Scarborough, Eglinton, Kennedy, Weston, Etobicoke North, Oriole, Old Cummer and York University Stations. It is higher than the fare from Bloor, Long Branch, Mimico and Kipling. However, the cheaper “integrated” fare is offered only to those riders who have the least potential time saving by switching from TTC to GO for their commute trips.

Many peak period trains now run express and skip Danforth and Exhibition Stations. As of January 16, 2015, service is provided only by Lakeshore corridor trains (all Stouffville trains run express).

  • Danforth to Union
    • AM Peak: 6:36, 7:01, 7:16, 7:55, 8:27, 8:55.
  • Union to Danforth
    • PM Peak: 15:43, 16:30, 17:05, 17:20, 17:35, 18:18
  • Exhibition to Union
    • AM Peak: 6:27, 7:00, 7:37, 7:58, 8:24, 8:56, 9:04
  • Union to Exhibition
    • PM Peak: 15:43, 16:13, 16:43, 17:10, 17:43, 18:13

The schedules will change effective February 2:

  • Stouffville line trains will stop inbound at Danforth at: 6:15, 7:36, 7:48, 8:20, 8:46, 9:46
  • Stouffville line trains will stop outbound at Danforth leaving Union at 16:18, 16:48, 18:00

Some counter-peak Lakeshore trips that now run express will stop at Danforth. Details are on the GO website.

No additional trains will stop at Exhibition Station.

At the press conference announcing this pilot project, Metrolinx President & CEO Bruce McCuaig spoke of how this would be a “revenue neutral” undertaking. No additional trains will be operated. Whatever handful of commuters who now pay the full GO fare from Exhibition or Danforth to Union will get a big discount, but any new riders are found money for GO Transit. Whether this would be the case if the arrangement were extended throughout GO’s inner fare zones is another matter.

This is supposed to be a one-year pilot, and riders who originate in, say, Scarborough might reasonably ask why they have been left out in the cold even though there are many GO stations including those in the future SmartTrack corridor. How this pilot will establish much about the actual market for an integrated TTC/GO fare is a mystery, but the announcement provided yet another photo op for the politicians.

As of 1:45 pm on January 16, I await a formal response from Metrolinx to a query about the scope of the pilot and the absence from it of many potential stations.

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The Mythology of GO Transit “Fare By Distance” Pricing

At its recent meeting, the Metrolinx Board approved a GO Transit fare increase taking effect February 1, 2015.

A separate, but important topic, and one noticeably absent from the meeting agenda, is the question of regional fare integration. Another related matter is the relative roles of GO as a regional operator and the TTC as a local one to accommodate demand to the core area. The hybrid SmartTrack proposal is a bit of both — a GO Transit corridor running with station spacings more like a subway in spots, but at TTC fares.

The problem has always been that GO simply does not regard itself, or at least not until quite recently, as having a role as part of a unified network. Critically, the fare structure is rigged against short distance trips, and this has been getting progressively worse for a decade.

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