In 2005 I was in Washington DC for a conference and had occasion to take their Metro. What a contrast between Toronto’s filthy subway system: light-years cleaner and with features our subway would only receive much later (such as a display giving the ETA of the next train). What I also noticed was that every Metro station was unmanned. Every single one. No ticket takers in sight.
What each Metro station has instead is an automat that dispenses magnetic-stripe cards, with the amount of money you deposit into the machine electronically recorded on the card. When you go through the turnstile and swipe your card, the fare is subtracted from your total. If your card runs low, you stick it in the machine and top it up using cash or a credit card; if you want to minimize this ritual, you load up your card; if you lose your card, you buy another one. Dead simple and absolutely convenient.
In Toronto, in contrast, you have to buy a ticket or a token from the guy in the booth, you drop the ticket into a slot under his watchful eye. Needless to say, being a ticket taker for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is not a minimum wage job, not by a long shot (and that’s not counting their generous benefits). And to add insult to injury, even though the booth is manned by a person, I don’t think he can even take credit or debit cards! (At least I have never seen it done.)
When I saw the Washington setup, I thought: my God! our system hasn’t changed since I was a kid. I recalled taking the subway with my mother in the late 1960’s when the arrangement was exactly the same. Since that time, the only significant ‘improvement’ is that tokens these days are bimetallic, like the toonie. Back then they were a simple aluminium stamping, but that changed when it was discovered that they were being counterfeited en mass in China. With all the advances that have been made in recent decades in access control technology, there must be a thousand ways to improve and automate this antiquated process, the Washington DC solution being just one of the ‘better ways’.
Why doesn’t the TTC management suggest one to help deal with Mayor Rob Ford’s TTC cuts?
Answer: I think, because they can see with perfect clarity that it would work all too well in cutting costs and improving customer convenience. And we can’t have that now, can we?
I don't remember what we had to do in San Francisco, but New York and Montreal are the same way - kiosks to dispense transit cards and very little human contact. I would have assumed that Toronto's system would have been the same.
Posted by: oxygentax | December 21, 2011 at 11:35 AM
...Hong Kong not only had this, they had pay-by-distance...in...1989.
Posted by: Diet Of Worms | January 07, 2012 at 02:54 PM