Ask any commuter student at U of T and they will complain endlessly about the myriad problems encountered daily on the TTC or any of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) transit systems. If you’ve been abroad to Paris, London, or Hong Kong, you know how efficient, wide-spanning, and modern their trains and buses are. The TTC is frankly an embarrassment compared to Paris’s Metro or London’s Tube.
Toronto is playing catch up with the rest of these global cities in the modernization of our transit systems. Still, in spite of the recent push towards improving the state of transit in the GTHA, our elected leaders are incapable of bringing this vision to life. Bureaucratic incompetence and intergovernmental squabbling have resulted in delays to projects essential to modernizing our transit system.
In an update presented to the Metrolinx Board of Directors at the end of last month, full PRESTO card integration with the TTC has been pushed back from its previously scheduled completion window of 2015–2016 to an unspecified date. Instead, PRESTO integration will proceed in a phased rollout. The first phase, beginning in fall 2014, will see 12 more TTC stations and four streetcar lines equipped with PRESTO; the time frame and scope of the second phase remain undefined. Some speculate that Toronto may not have complete PRESTO integration until 2019, when the TTC plans to retire the current fleet of streetcars.
PRESTO cards are smart cards used by transit systems throughout the GTHA and the Ottawa region. Electronic fare card technology is already in use around the world. They allow you to load your card with money and then pay for your fare by simply tapping your card at a console. If your card runs empty, there is still an option to pay with change. The goal is to eliminate separate fare media like coins and tickets. Think of how many times you may have mistaken a TTC token for a dime, or lost that token in your pocket. With PRESTO, you no longer have to wait in line to exchange cash for tokens. Transferring between cities and transit systems is also easy: if you’re going from GO Transit to the TTC, for example, you simply tap again.
Toronto is already late in implementing fare card technology. Fourteen TTC subway stations have PRESTO already, including Union, St. George, and Queen’s Park stations. An agreement was signed in November 2012 stipulating that the TTC would implement PRESTO technology by 2016 as a condition for provincial funding of three LRT lines. Now, we might have to wait an extra three years to see PRESTO throughout the city. In comparison, all of the surrounding GTHA cities and Ottawa have fully integrated PRESTO on all of their buses and GO Transit. Vancouver will be putting the final touches on its fare card system in the coming months.
What does this mean for U of T commuters? PRESTO cardholders can’t explore the city beyond a few stations, forcing commuters to purchase extra tokens or a Metropass, rendering the PRESTO card virtually useless in many areas of the city. The longer the wait for TTC to fully implement PRESTO, the longer the status quo persists, the longer commuters’ frustrations endure, and the longer our city’s public transit remains an embarrassment.
If you’ve been following the mess that is transit development in this city, none of this will come as a surprise. Only a few weeks ago, reports began surfacing about delays in the renovation of Union Station. The construction is months late in schedule and millions of dollars over budget. Meanwhile, commuters have to wade through constantly changing mazes of construction materials and hazard signs, as we have for years now.
Metrolinx and the rest of the province is ready to move forward, but Toronto lags behind. These major projects lack direction and focus. They are dragged down by the antics of City Council and the blame game between the city, the province, and the federal government. If Toronto wants to become a world-class city and move on to more ambitious projects like a future downtown relief subway line, the city needs to finish implementing long overdue technologies and renovations to bring our transit into the twenty-first century.
Angelo Mateo is a fourth-year student at Trinity College studying international relations and history. He commutes daily from Mississauga to campus.
