Quick — fix this system
It appears as if “Presto” might not have been the most fitting name for the smart-card system being installed on Toronto’s transit network.
The word, Italian for “quick” or “quickly,” derived from the Latin praesto, is used in music as a direction for quick tempo, and by wizards and the occasional do-it-yourselfer to describe something difficult that was accomplished so easily it appears to have been done by magic.
There has been nothing easy or magical about the Toronto Transit Commission’s fare gates.
As the Star’s transportation writer Ben Spurr reported on Friday, the TTC has suspended installation of fare gates at subway stations (except for Union Station) due to persistent mechanical and software problems with the machines.
Apparently, the exact nature of these failings is being investigated by the German company that makes the gates.
As with delivery problems of new TTC streetcars by Bombardier, this is an issue where contractors, not public agencies, have failed. But distinctions about who is to blame will be of little comfort to commuters apt to be muttering dark oaths rather than magical incantations.
It is small consolation as well to a riding public that learned last year that installing Presto on the TTC would cost $385 million — $130 million more than estimated in 2012.
Back then, Ontario’s auditor general reported that development costs of the system had already ballooned from $250 million to more than $700 million – putting it on track to be the most expensive fare-card system in the world.
As Spurr reported, the TTC – which owns and operates the fare gates on its properties, while Metrolinx owns and runs the overall Presto system – has contracted for 1,000 gates. About 800 are already in service. They have been installed at about 115 entrances across 65 of the TTC’s 75 subway stations.
Manufacturer Scheidt & Bachmann – on the hook for parts and labour associated with repairs – is expected to replace the motors on all machines.
TTC chair Josh Colle told the Star that he’s “unbelievably frustrated,” understands how “annoyed” passengers must be, and is concerned by the “level of ineffectiveness” from a company billed as an industry leader. Mr. Chairman, the city feels your pain. In the meantime, Metrolinx and the TTC continue to bicker about who is responsible for fare revenue lost due to misfiring Presto readers.
The industrious Ben Spurr revealed last week that an internal TTC report on the hand-held readers, used by fare inspectors to check whether riders had paid, found they performed at only about half the rate of 40 inspections a minute that had been promised.
The report warned that processing delays might increase as more customers switch to Presto and it “may be difficult to get customers to comply with inspections.”
Fare evasion is estimated, depending on the study, to cost the TTC between $20 million and $49 million a year.
Until the new system is securely up and running, it would seem unwise to proceed with the planned elimination of tickets, tokens and Metropasses – a step originally planned for mid-2017 and now expected to be completed this year.
As the Star has argued in the past, implementing an up-todate, efficient and flexible fare card is vital to the long-overdue modernizing of Toronto’s creaky transit system.
No one expected such a large project to be without “teething pains,” as transit officials have previously put it. Certainly, no one expected the effortless magic that Presto’s name might have implied.
But, at $350 million, and so long after similar systems have been in place around the world, it was not unreasonable to have expected something better than the costly and trouble-strewn experience the project has been so far.