Tomorrow may bring another TTC fare hike, but you can win some of that money back by using your Metropass to bring you discounts. How? Just show your Metropass at places like Grass Roots on the Danforth and on Bloor, or Eco Cleaners up on Mount Pleasant, and you’ll receive a discount. The Metropass Affinity Program (MAP) is an initiative of the Ontario Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada and Car Free Day.
MAP believes that we can vastly increase transit usage by rewarding people for a good action (choosing transit over private automobile), rather than punishing people for a bad action (choosing their car over transit). In addition, we can do this by helping Toronto business. A healthy business environment equals a healthy Toronto.
Participating businesses give discounts/incentives to anyone that shows a current Metropass. It gives people more incentive to buy a Metropass, knowing that they’ll get discounts at stores and businesses — although the purchase price of a Metropass wouldn’t change, the “real cost” does… since people will save money they wouldn’t otherwise.
6 comments
The interface for looking at what business support the plan is horrible. What’s wrong with a simple LIST?
The map isn’t very user-friendly, agreed. Though the idea was probably that by using a map it might entice people to use transit to get to the businesses. Of course, for that to work, what would have been required is a map of the TTC showing how to get to the various businesses. Not everybody runs with javascript turned on it their browsers. A list, even as a second point of reference, would make sense.
It would also be nice to know what discount or incentive each store is offering.
Want a list of stores in addition to a map? Done. Want discounts listed? Done. Your wish is my command. Keep the feedback coming – we want MAP to be as useful and practical as possible.
This is a wonderful idea – I hope it takes off in a huge way! (I’ll be mentioning it to local businesses that I patronize, too!)
Maybe rational pricing would encourage people to buy a metro pass. The vast majority of the people I know commute by TTC almost every day. No one buys a MetroPass since you need 48 rides a month to break even. A few weekend days where you only walk, or maybe a few latenights at work where you take a cab home and there goes the value in your metropass.
Give us a card at a price that encourages people to buy it and people might actually use transit more and there might actually be broad support for building a real network like London’s.