Wednesday’s Headlines

20 comments

1. So typical of the TTC to go with a half-assed and frankly class-ist solution to a contact-less fare system. I’m sure Mr. Munro will correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t limiting a fare system to those with credit or debit cards create a multi-tier system where only some can take advantage of this new technology.

   I see it as essential that someone should be able to purchase a fare card with cash and thus be able to access any cost savings associated with the new fare system, assuming of course that there’s an incentive to using the new debit/credit card vs. buying a traditional metropass.

   It all seems terribly unfair and lacking in a critical understanding of the financial diversity of the citizenry. 

   Also, is anyone else wondering how much revenue the city will be surrendering to the banks and credit card companies in transaction fees??

2. The TTC’s wave-the-card idea sounds lame, not to mention fraught with security problems. Can we please redirect this money into a proven electronic fare system? You know, like the kind every other city in the world has had for the last 20 years.

3. Metrolinx’s logic, or lack of in terms of diesel is now being exposed by people who actually know what they are talking about. The reality is that Dalton is forcing a bad idea in a rush to satisfy the Pan Am games which will last 2 weeks instead of technology that will benefit people for decades to come. Off the record most Metrolinx/GO engineers think it is a professional scandal not to go electric and it is nice to see some of them have the courage to speak publicly.

4. Just to clarify a point raised in “All Aboard the Electric Train”. Cities like New York did not electrify because they were trying to raise capacity, they did it because they had invested in major tunnnels and railroad ROW development that did not work with coal or diesel exhaust. Had Penn Station never been built, or Park Avenue never covered over, New York might still be running on diesel. (Many NJ Transit lines and Metro North and LIRR lines are in fact still diesel once outside the city).

   Don’t get me wrong, I love electric trains as much as anyone, but all I care about is getting the damned airport link built, period. Means of propulsion and even exact kind of transport (subway, commuter, express) are not so important to me as the boondock, third-tier status of a city that cannot even get a rail laid to its enormous airport. Get. It. Done.

5. Iskyscraper has posted many interesting links and made many good points here over the years but this is not one of them.

   Respectfully the reason for stopping diesel was pollution and safety, its in the public record, and led directly to the Kaufman act.

   Getting things built just to get them built is reckless public policy especially when it needlessly harms peoples health, wastes money that could be spent on other green initiatives, and in the case of the airport link, will not be public transit but a 407 style private for profit enterprise of which the public has never seen one word of documentation.

   I politely that you research more about the issue as it relates to the situation in Toronto.

6. sorry but to take out your credit or debit cards in the middle of a busy subway station at peak time is not something I would recommend to anyone. Better to use an electronic card that can only be used to put fare on.

7. Having just endured a rush-hour drive from the airport, I wholeheartedly agree with iskyskraper. The lack of a high-speed rail link to the airport is a civic embarrassment for a city like Toronto.

   I travel a lot, so just off the top of my head here’s a list of cities I’ve visited with rail to the airport: London, Paris, Rome, Zurich, Frankfurt, Vienna, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney, Vancouver. (Many of these are privately operated premium services.) And here’s a list of cities I’ve visited recently without rail to the airport: Nice, Budapest, Edmonton.

   On which of these two lists should Toronto be?

   Get it done!

8. I fail to see how turning payment over to Mastercard or VISA is more “open” and less “proprietary” than Presto.

9. Hello nobody is against an airport link. Lets build it right and in a way that benefits ALL people not just people going to the airport.

   I can solve the electricity problem in Toronto easily by building 25 reactors all over the city. But would that be good policy? Nope.

   BTW I fly A LOT for work and have a station a few feet from my house. That doesnt mean I want to waste tax money on an obsolete system and pollute the schools and parks and Railpath and homes of all of the West End.

   Did you two even read the story?

10. Ok, I stand corrected for speaking so generally and not specifically. Although I suppose if you want to get into NYC specifics, the Kaufman Act was really about the elimination of surface crossings and steam (very dirty due to coal) and was later amended to explicitly allow diesel engines in the city. To this day diesel trains operate within the 5 boroughs at times. I rode one just last weekend from my station, Marble Hill. I probably should have only mentioned Penn Station, which really spurred electrification via its electric-only river tunnels.

    Pollution is kind of a non-starter for me — you get pollution from cars and buses that currently are the only way to the airport, you get pollution from diesel trains, you get pollution at the power plant to power electric trains (Ontario is not exactly ramping up the nukes). And all of that pales compared to what the jets pour into the skies. Yes, those living directly next to a rail line or the 401 or the Island Airport (which benefits from the lack of a rail link) will have a strong opinion and as property owners/renters they are entitled to it, but overall I value the many benefits of a rail link over citywide pollution issues.

    In any case, my main point is that the important thing is to get the rails laid. The traction and operation can be adjusted over time, even if the process is painful and ultimately more expensive. Wasn’t it wise to build the lower level on the Don Bridge even though subways were decades away instead? They could have argued the future subway net to death (streetcar! subway!) and just left it off and where would that have left us? Don’t you wish that the 1990s Eglinton subway tunnel had been completed and left empty for reuse now by Transit City? Toronto has a lot of inertia, so if you can just get something built it will be a starting point for later optimization.

    Operationally, depending on your particular personal experience or bias or business model, one could make a case for any of: Blue22 (Heathrow Express), extending LINK to Georgetown GO line (Newark Airtrain), running LRT to the airport (Portland TriMet), connecting GO directly to the airport (Philly Regional Rail), extending the subway directly (Chicago MTA) — all of these could work in some important way to close the airport-rail gap.

    I understand if you see Blue-22 as elitist and expensive and not of any help to student travellers from Brampton or airport workers living in North York. No one model is going to work for everyone. My own preference is that the Pearson airport LINK be extended to tie directly to the subway, like SFO-AirTrain-BART or JFK-Airtrain-NYCTA. (The former is publicly funded, by the way, and the latter is private and more expensive) But I always lived in central Toronto and that is probably not a great solution for business or suburban travel. I have no ideological problem with private premium transit vs local or regional public transit – each serves a need and gets people off the road and adds a vital feather to Toronto’s international cap.

    In the end, whatever service is started can either succeed or fail, and if it fails it can be adapted. Add a station, switch to electric, change pricing, expand outwards – all of this is less difficult than establishing the starter route in the first place. After a decade of thought and planning, it is hardly “reckless” to now be eager to see some shovels hit the ground.

11. 1. Anyone with a bank account (which is pretty much everyone) has access to a debit card.

    2. Chip technology is far more secure than magnetic strips.

12. They can use diesels temporarily while they’re installing the infrastructure for electrics trains. The airport trains will travel down a corridor that will have so much train traffic that it really makes sense to make the investment.

13. Without the specific drive to get the rail link built, it will never get built. There will always be one more improvement to make, one more interest group to placate. A.R. and iskyscraper are on the money.

    As long as we’re in full disclosure mode, I live within 500m of an active rail line, and I’ve somehow managed to avoid cancer and asthma. Not incidentally, this is the same rail line that passes through the Annex and Forest Hill, which don’t strike me as the kind of devastated, unlivable neighborhoods that rail link opponents would have us fear.

14. shouldn’t the ttc start by getting debit/credit card infrastructure into stations? it would be a pleasure to use plastic to buy tickets, tokens and passes in stations.

    (it would be an even greater pleasure to buy those tickets, tokens and passes from machines, like the rest of the world, but that’s another story.)

    am i right in thinking that the ttc will charge the cash fare to debit/credit card users on vehicles, as opposed to the token price? same for presto?

    as for the rail link to the airport, i’m with iskyscraper!

15. I am really not understanding the hate for the open payment system. It seems sensible to go with a technology that’s used everywhere from tim hortons to gas pumps. The point-of-sale technology appears to be basically a commodity at this point, which offers huge advantages for procurement and maintenance costs.

    Who is Presto, exactly? What firm is building the system and getting paid to maintain it? Look at Accenture and the ODSP system for the risks inherent in custom solutions.

    As long as it’s not overly expensive to implement I can’t see the problem in giving transit users another payment option.

    (p.s. I found this procurement document suggesting that Singapore is looking to make it’s farecard into a multi-puropose, tap-to-pay open payment card: http://www.ida.gov.sg/doc/News%20and%20Events/News_and_Events_Level2/20050712135559/Annex3.pdf)

16. Ha, I didn’t even realize when I posted the comment above that in fact Accenture is developing the Presto service. What could possibly go wrong?

    http://www.citizensforpublicpower.ca/files/uploads/accenture.pdf

17. Paul – “open payment” is a brilliant idea of credit card companies. It’s their system we would be buying into. Several US transit firms are rolling out variants but unlike the TTC, they don’t have a publicly-run alternative with their State (province) offering funds in exchange for participation.

18. Wanted to add that open-payment and smart cards can, and should, go hand in hand. If I recall, when I went to NYC 5 years ago you could purchase your smart card from a terminal in the subway station with debit/credit. You could load the card up with a single ride, discount multi-fare, and/or unlimited travel for a specific time period.

    If the TTC snubs Presto while GO and surrounding GTA transit agencies adopt it, it will go down as one of the top 5 blunders on the Miller regime.

19. I think we can safety say that Mayor Miller has checked out. I know “on the job retirement” when I see it and…

20. The province basically hasn’t lived up to any of their other transit funding promises. Why would we trust that they’d come through for this one?

    I would like to see some in-depth investigative reporting on this Presto thing. Maybe the eHealth scandal just makes me suspicious but it’s troubling that so few details of the contract are public.