Riders snub automatic card reloading
Confusing wording may be the reason, GM speculates
OC Transpo is so mystified by how few people have signed up to have their Presto cards automatically loaded with monthly passes that it’s sending people out to the riders lined up at its kiosks for new passes to ask what they’re doing there.
One of the big selling points of the Presto “smart card” from the provincial government’s Metrolinx agency is that it can be set up to bill a user’s credit card each month for the price of a pass, or to automatically reload itself with cash when a user’s account is running low. It’s supposed to mean an end to the monthly lineups to buy new passes.
But 208,000 cards have been distributed in Ottawa and as the end of each month approaches, the lines seem just about as long as ever.
Only 3,700 cards have been set up for automatic pass renewals, plus 4,700 for automatic cash loading, according to figures transit general manager John Manconi presented the city’s transit commission with Wednesday. It continues a dismal trend Manconi first pointed out a month ago.
The discovery alarmed Coun. Keith Egli. “That should be one of the main selling points of the card,” he said. It certainly was for OC Transpo, which expected the Presto system to start saving on administration. What gives? Egli asked.
Manconi said he himself had some trouble setting up his daughter’s Presto card. “Some of the language on the website is not intuitive,” he admitted.
There’s something called “Autoload management,” which is different from “Requested reload,” which is different again from “Pass auto-renew.”
And the whole thing is complicated by the fact that cards aren’t easy to activate in the first place, requiring users to register for Presto accounts (which isn’t the same thing as registering a card), fill out some online forms, and then wait a few days (but not too many) before tapping their cards on a reader on a bus.
But the prestocard.ca website is run by Metrolinx, not OC Transpo, so all Ottawa’s transit agency can do is complain, which it has, Manconi said.
In the meantime, it’s planning a campaign to tell its customers that “autorenew and autoreload should be leveraged,” he said.