Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) chair Adam Giambrone announced this week that the commission will award a contract for an open-payments fare system by November 30 setting some sort of record for an agency that is better known for taking years to do a day's work.
"The Toronto Transit Commission intends to award a contract for a multimillion-dollar “open payments” fare system by Nov. 30, 2010, the last day in office for the current council, including chair Adam Giambrone, the leading booster of a plan to allow riders to pay with credit, bank and generic reloadable fare cards.
According to a 226-page “request for pre-qualifications” obtained by The Globe and Mail, the TTC will seek bids from private partners to build and operate the system, which will compete with Ontario’s Presto smart card, now being rolled out on GO Transit and York Region’s Viva buses."1
link: TTC plan to award contract for new fare system attacked - The Globe and Mail
After years of opposition to a new fare collection system, the TTC begrudgingly signed on to the Presto system under pressure from the provincial government and Metrolinx, the regional transit planning agency and GO Transit manager. It was a case of accept the regional system, along with hundreds of millions of dollars for implementation, or give up provincial shared financing for Toronto's planned transit expansion. Presto will work as a pass to use trains, subways, buses and streetcars and without the need to carry separate tickets and tokens for each system. Anyone who has used the Oyster Card in London or the Octopus Card in Honk Kong knows how it will work and marvels at how antiquated is the TTC's fare collection system, dating from before WWII. Fare cards like these are already in operation throughout the world and the only reason it's so expensive to install them on the TTC is that Toronto is still using an obsolete fare system on its buses and streetcars.
About a month ago, the TTC announced that will it would continue to support Presto - it needs those provincial grants - but that it would call for tenders for a separate system of its own, probably to be operated by MasterCard as it has the technology that is most near ready. Visa is also working on the technology but is unlikely to be able to meet a November deadline.
It's ironic that a former national president of the NDP has leaped at an initiative that could do so much to enhance the profits of the banking industry. That's not an earth-quake you feel, it's Tommy Douglas rolling in his grave.
That a system based on credit cards would have to be supplemented for use by those who do not have credit cards (more likely among transit users than the general public, I would expect) seems lost on the TTC. Also that the system would be enormously more complicated than a transit specific system, would present more opportunities for users' privacy to be compromised, etc. have also been overlooked. So too, the advantages of integrating regional transit fares to encourage ridership; will MasterCard be interested in day passes and specials that get riders out of their cars?
Aside from the money that will be wasted so that Giambrone can have one kick at the provincial government that, because of the recession, thwarted a part of his and Mayor David Miller's Transit City dream - money that could be spent on a few more miles of light rapid transit - it's particularly galling that the TTC wants to award this contract on Giambrone's last day in office. A friend of mine suggests the rush smells of someone looking for a post-poltics career as a consultant in urban transportation. Or maybe banking. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
So the TTC, which hasn't been able to use the data it collects from real-time computer monitoring to keep buses and streetcars from bunching-up and travelling in packs, which takes years to build an elevator travelling one floor, which hasn't been able to repair 1/3 of the broken doors at my local subway station for over a year, which can't sweep the floors, now is going to re-invent its fare payment system in less than 2 months! Why the rush?
Giambrone's plan doesn't smell. It stinks.
- This is somewhat misleading; the Presto Card will be used on all transit services across the GTA, including the TTC and GO Transit. Card readers are already in place at some GO Transit and TTC stations and with commpletion outside Toronto by spring of 2011.↩
