The Presto report card
The transit payment card system is finally working well in Ottawa, but it still doesn’t meet all expectations, DAVID REEVELY reports.
After an ugly, slow start, OC Transpo’s heavily promoted Presto farecard system is just about up to full speed, the city’s general manager of transit, John Manconi, reported to the city’s transit commission this week. But a lot of niggles remain. David Reevely takes a look at how Presto is performing.
THE HARD NUMBERS
A+ Number of cards given out
OC Transpo has distributed 190,900 of the 200,000 free cards it intended to give out to kick-start the program. The remainder are being held back for targeted handouts to groups of people who need a little extra attention, such as seniors and people with disabilities. Many of them are entitled to discount fares but their cards have to be set up in person so they’re programmed with the discounts. OC Transpo has distributed another 17,000 cards to people who’ve paid $6 for them, the standard price from here on. Giving out cards has been an inarguable success.
B Number of cards used
Of the cards given out, only 69 per cent have been used, according to OC Transpo’s figures. That number is a little low, considering that the agency expected the free cards to be snapped up quickly by regular transit users.
B Replacing Eco-passes with Presto cards
Eco-pass holders used to pay for annual passes by payroll deduction. OC Transpo cancelled the program with the advent of Presto. Only 63 per cent of the 23,000 cards reserved for Eco-pass holders have been taken up, though OC Transpo puts the shortfall down to eager users getting Presto cards along with the general public instead of waiting for specific distributions set up at workplaces where employees used to get Eco-passes. But Presto fares are also more expensive than Eco-pass fares were, which may have kept some Eco-pass users from switching.
C- Card registration OC Transpo touts “registering” a Presto card, signing up for a Presto account attached to your identity, as an advantage for users. They’ll replace a lost or stolen card if you’re a registered user, it’s the only way to claim a tax credit for being a regular transit user if you’re using a Presto card, and registering is necessary to set up the features that are among the most significant for OC Transpo: auto-loading cards online so users don’t have to stand in lines at transit kiosks. Only 46 per cent of the cards OC Transpo has given out have been registered.
F Setting up auto-reload features
Not even 10 per cent of Presto users have set up those auto-reloading features. OC Transpo doesn’t know why, though transit GM John Manconi acknowledges that the website for doing it is confusing.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
A Working for most of the people nearly all the time
The catastrophic bugs that delayed the launch of the Presto system from July 2012 to the beginning of 2013 have been squished. OC Transpo wanted its cards and readers to “just work,” with the reliability and uptime of a bank machine. With 1,000 buses on the streets, many with multiple readers, a certain number of failures is inevitable, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
B+ Interoperability with Gatineau transit
This works the way it’s supposed to, which is to say in a somewhat limited way. A monthly pass loaded on a Presto card works; “e-purse” payments don’t.
C Edge cases
Complaints persist about problems that arise in circumstances that are just a bit out of the ordinary: inability to clear the small overdrafts OC Transpo allows on Presto e-purse accounts with online payments; poor synchronization with buses’ GPS devices so riders get charged for more-expensive express trips when they should be charged regular fares; cards that get confused between epurse fares and passes and don’t do what their users are expecting.
D Working on Para Transpo
Ottawa has given up on installing Presto readers on Para Transpo vehicles and is going with a completely different system, called Trapeze, instead. But Para Transpo users who load monthly passes on Presto will be able to use them on Para Transpo beginning Dec. 1 as long as they also carry around a paper receipt they can show the driver.
D Activation lag
Activating a new Presto card on the Presto website means filling out online forms and then waiting at least a day, and as many as three to be completely safe, before tapping it on a bus-mounted reader to complete the process. There’s a technical reason for it, to do with how frequently information is passed from Presto’s big central brain to the readers that make up its outlying tentacles, but the average rider has no way of intuiting how the system fits together and the result is just annoying. OC Transpo is still investigating a fix.
D Interaction between OC Transpo and Metrolinx
The whole Presto system is a joint project of OC Transpo and the provincial transit agency Metrolinx and each agency is responsible for helping customers resolve different sorts of problems (generally speaking, Metrolinx’s responsibilities are to do with technology and OC Transpo’s are to do with customer service). It’s not obvious to outsiders which is responsible for what.
F Interoperability with Toronto transit systems
Adopting Presto was supposed to let Ottawa Presto users pay for trips on Torontoarea transit systems with and vice-versa. But they use different versions of the Presto software. Someday Ottawa’s and Toronto’s systems are supposed to end up in sync but they aren’t yet. So you can’t use an Ottawa Presto card in Toronto and a Toronto Presto card doesn’t work here.