Presto Card

Calls from within Canada/United States: 1-8-PRESTO-123 (1-877-378-6123)

Calls from outside Canada/United States: 905-397-2034 (long distance charges may apply)

The Presto Card is available and in use across practically all of the GTA (and Ottawa!) but the Toronto Transit Commission moves with glacial speed into anything resembling customer service and as far as I know has implemented Presto only at about half a dozen selected TTC subway stations, no buses or streetcars EXCEPT for the three new streetcars out of a batch of which the remaining 67 or so are delayed by virtue of their non-arrival from the manufacturer Bombardier. A Canadian Company.

Obtaining Presto Card is not difficult and I shall obtain one; it makes no sense for a resident of Toronto to get a Presto card unless one plans to travel outside Toronto on a regular basis.

Questions in my mind include:-

(1) Am I better off in Barrie buying a 10-ride card or using a Presto Card?

(2) Am I better off on York Regional Transit buying a 10-ride card or using a Presto Card?

(3) Am I better off on Durham Regional Transit buying a 10-ride card or using a Presto Card?

On a whim I decided to walk through my local subway station (College) this evening to ask the ticket-wicket guy where I could use to Presto card. While I was waiting I noticed a Presto swipe-station.

Clearly I can enter the system by a subway train at my local station.

The nearest two Presto-equipped stations to me are Bloor-Yonge (two stops to the north) and Dundas (one stop to the south.

So now I have another question:-

(4) Am I better off in Toronto using my Seniors Tickers or using a Presto Card?

And now I have another question:-

(5) How do these various systems get to know that I wan a senior’s rate whenever I swipe the card?

(6) can one buy a Monthly Presto card? And if so is it valid for the entire system or only for a specified route of travel?

Transilien/Navigo vs. Metrolinx/Presto

This is not a fair comparison in part because in France I was on vacation for two weeks, with objectives of traveling to the end-of-the-line each day, whereas in Toronto I live here and want to make occasional trips.

That said, I can still compare aspects of the systems as if I were a visitor to Toronto from Paris.

Thursday, July 02, 2015

In anticipation of my trip around Hamilton I have added $50 to my Presto card.

Very Strange!

The receipt shows that $50 has been ADDED to my card, so the card has been loaded magnetically, but the receipt doesn’t tell me the new balance as a courtesy.

I have not registered my card, so it is in effect a chunk of cash; lost if I lose it. This attitude is part of my pushback from all those bodies who would like to have my email address and other details so that they can “better serve me” with products.

First they should learn to print my balance on the receipt!

Sunday, August 30, 2015

I posed a hypothetical question to the ticket agent: Suppose I mistakenly swiped my card at a fare terminal when I’d meant to swipe it at a checking (yellow) station. How do I get off the hook for being charged the maximum fare (presumably in my case the GO Train Lakeshore corridor)?

“Press Cancel” said the clerk.

But what if, say, ten minutes have elapsed, or what if three other people have swiped transactions while I wondered what to do?

“Press Cancel” said the clerk.

But how will the system know that the transaction to be cancelled isn’t the most recent transaction, I asked.

“Press Cancel,” said the clerk, “THEN swipe your card. Do you want to give it a try?”

I thanked her, said “No”, and retreated.

Monday, October 12, 2015

“Two matters” I said calmly to the nice man at the ticket wicket. “Please add twenty dollars to my Presto card and tell me the new balance”, which he did, sliding my card and the receipt back across to me. “Your new balance is forty-three dollars and seventy-two cents”.

I studied the receipt; “How do you know the balance? I don’t see it printed anywhere”.

“Oh, it’s on the display; here let me write it down for you” (so he needs my Presto Card again).

(Innocently) “Gee, wouldn’t you think they’d print the new balance on the slip, like the banks give you the new balance when you withdraw cash?”.

Yes, he agreed. “A lot of people have made that suggestion”.

So we know it won’t happen soon.

How can you roll out a modern system like this and not think to tell people their new balance?

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

So I called 1-877-378-6123 to confirm my reasoning as to why it cost me less than $10 to travel from Long Branch to Hamilton and back last Friday.

(1) It took me several minutes to wander through their awful “press 1, press 2” menu system; pressing zero did NOT give me a shortcut to an operator, and I needed a dialogue with an operator, not a monologue statement from Presto

(2) I was on hold for five minutes and my aggravation level increased the more I had to listen to the loud heavy/metal/rock cacophony. (Why not soothe me while I drum my fingers impatiently?)

(3) Debbie (again!) was very helpful; she listens and responds appropriately.

(4) I had chosen to take part in the survey and had to “Press 1 to 5” as the sole means of response. This meant that I rated today’s call as a ONE – distinctly awful while rating the response to my call as a FIVE – Wonderful Debbie. God alone knows what Presto will make out of that. Probably that I am an old codger who has forgotten the difference between 1 and 5.

(5) The survey provided no opportunity for me to explain WHY the call was bloody awful (see the first two items on my list!)

Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Today I decided to use my Presto Card for the #6 bus down Bay street, as well as my trip out to Clarkson, and then Mississauga bus to Southdown Mall.

Boarded the bus – the Presto m/c shows bright red, out of order. What to do?

I could, should, tell the driver that I’ll tap at the rear door and then swipe a piece of nothing, or just stand by the door where he can’t see me.

I can’t be the only passenger who decides to scam the system because the system is near-useless. I would guess that the genuine fare-cheats (said to be 2.5% of passengers) are outnumbered by the frustrated honest passengers.

I go by GO train from Union Station to Clarkson, $3.74 which is par for the course, then boarded a Mississauga Transit bus and was charged a mere $0.80 because I was connecting from the GO train.

Nice!

I spent an hour in the library, then boarded a bus for the trip back to Clarkson GO station. Charge Nil.

Nice, but puzzling.

I understand that Mississauga Transit has a two-hour free transfer system, so my trip from the library back to the station was well within the two hour limit, but I had easily exceeded the two-hour limit from Union Station, on which the trip was based.

Of course I dial the Presto number 1-877-378-6123 and am swamped by the menu system. Every option (it seems to me) deals only with responses that can be answered mechanically. There is no option to ask a question not covered by the menu system. In desperation I tap “zero”, a common facility. Nope.

I pressed the zero too quickly. I had to wait for the entire mechanical menu system before the zero-key was made available by the system.

This means that Presto does not really care for my time, and thinks nothing of forcing me to listen to the menu system again before I can get on with my life.

I’ve called the 877-number before, and I know that there is a zero-option; you just have to drum your fingers to listen to the same information repeated.

Anyway: Here’s what I learned.

By tapping ON at Union station at 9:00 and riding the 9:13-9:43 GO train to Clarkson and THEN Transferring to a Mississauga bus, I was eligible for the reduced fare – eighty cents – when I hopped aboard the Mississauga bus.

The Presto system links the GO Train with the Mississauga bus and applies the reduced rate.

So far so good.

However, the Presto system treats my boarding the Mississauga Bus as the start of a new trip, so my one hour in the library comes well within the two-hour transfer rate, hence the “free” trip back to Clarkson GO station.

When I tapped to board the GO Train back to Union, I was charged the full fare, $3.74, and my understanding is that this will always be so. The discounts apply only to connecting BUS systems.

I am glad that there is a reduction, but find that the Presto system appears to be un-necessarily complicated, with rules layered upon rules.

How much simpler is the Navigo pass system, where you buy the ticket and are done with it. Unlimited travel for the week, or the month.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

The Presto Card

I continue to be baffled but not surprised at just how badly Metrolinx/Presto/Toronto Transit Commission can screw up the implementation of a system.

Bad enough that the card readers on surface vehicles are so frequently out of action. I have limited experience with Presto in other cities, but on the times I have wanted to use it, I’ve been able to use it.

I learned this week that what I had thought was a slip of my mind is not.

Swipe/Tap your Presto card at the Toronto Transit Commission turnstiles entering Union Station and you will NOT see your balance displayed.

This for a card system that operates on a reducing balance.

You put fifty dollars on your card, and every trip you take, the balance reduces from fifty dollars until there is none left.

With such a system it ought to be mandatory (as in legal, Trade Practices Act etc) that the balance be displayed as part of the contract between the transit authority and the passenger.

More to the point: Who in their right mind opts for EITHER two different types of hardware terminals (and hence two different sets of maintenance supplies and skills) OR pays an over-fed programmer to set up two chunks of programming code, one chunk being to HIDE data from the consumer?

Strange Costs

I have been using my Presto Card to travel by GO Train between Clarkson and Union stations for over a year now.

I have grown accustomed to the cost being $3.74 each way, even when an auxiliary trip is taken on Mississauga Transit (please see “Tuesday, January 03, 2017”).

I ride the GO train from Union to Clarkson: $3.74.

I ride the GO train from Clarkson to Union: $3.74.

Got it!

Then on February 28th I arranged a lunch with a colleague out in Pickering. I rode the GO Train from Union to Pickering, and then rode from Pickering right through to Clarkson to meet my other friend, and then rode back to Union.

The first leg, Union to Pickering appears to have cost me $3.95. Could be. I have no idea how much that trip costs on a regular basis. I am unhappy that transit in the region is so expensive, but I can see that $3.95 is within the ballpark for this system. So I’ll go with $3.95.

The second leg, Pickering to Clarkson cost me $3.41, significantly less than my regular travel between Union and Pickering. How can a longer (time and distance) trip cost more? I could understand if the cost were the same. I’d think then that “travel within a zone around Union is a fixed price”, but I know already that that isn’t so.

The third leg, my regular “going home from Clarkson” trip cost $3.95, significantly more than the common-place $3.74. Why should that be?

Bottom Line: No matter how well you think you know the cost of using a Presto Card on the GO system, you don’t really know it.

This to my mind presents two problems:-

(1) When an electronic fare system is in use, passengers are at the mercy of whatever the transit authority chooses to do with the fares. They can alter the fares and adjust your magnetic strip without you knowing about it.

Compare that with, say, a paper ticket of metallic token system. In that case, if you have paid $2.10 for your paper ticket, or $3.25 for your metallic token, you know how much each trip will cost you.

(2) When a depreciating balance system like Presto is implemented (as distinct from a flat weekly or monthly system like the Transilean’s Navigo System).

When you have a ticket that is being reduced in value each time you use it, it is all the more important that you can predict the cost of each use of the system.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A bit more practical stuff about using the Presto card.

Today I had reason to travel from Union to Clarkson, and then travel back again.

Now, $23.02 minus $17.82 is $5.20, so I need to have at least $5.20 balance on my card when I enter Union Station.

But $23.02 minus $19.26 is only $3.76, so I use only $3.76 of that $5.20 balance.

Similar logic applies for the trip home:

$19.26 minus $13.96 is $5.30, so I need to have a balance of at least $5.30 on my card to get home, but $19.26 minus $15.40 is only (!) $3.86, so I don’t use all of that $5.30.

Clear now?

Of course not.

The bottom line is that you need to have eleven dollars or more on your Presto card before you go out-and-back for the day by GO Train. If you don’t have enough cash to load $11 on your Presto card, then you are better off buying a paper ticket from the ticket wickets, because then you pay only for your stated trip. That is, “Please may I have a return ticket to Clarkson” does not require the over-abundant layout of cash that the use of the Presto card does.

Note too that I paid an extra ten cents to come home. Probably because they dropped me off on platform 24 whereas I left from platform 9.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

10:40:54 The old press1/press2 menu is in place. It offers no straight-up item to tell you the cost. Instead you are encouraged to go to the web site. Right. That’s why I am using the telephone. I gave up wandering the menu after three minutes of 1-1-2-*-1-*-2 etc.

At no point did they use the opportunity to tell of the cost of activating a Presto card.

Another way for Presto and GO Transit to rip you off:-

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Christmas Day I set off from Union to Clarkson by train. Tapped ON my card at Union and saw the balance drop from $24.98 to $19.68, which looks about right for me. A difference of $5.30 which is I believe the maximum fare on that line, which is of course the only GO Train line running that day. When I tap off the actual fare is computed which will turn out to be somewhere around $3.80, and my balance will go up by $1.50. Happens every time I forget to tap OFF at Clarkson

Now back when I began using Presto I would arrive early at Union, wait for the train, and forget to tap ON. After sitting in the station for thirty minutes I was so alleager to get on the train and meet my friend! I’d sweat out the trip in fear of being caught and hop off at Clarkson having ripped off the GO Train network of some $3.80.

Just as often I’d be so eager to meet my friend that I’d forget to tap OFF, and then GO Transit would have a little windfall, and I didn’t write “unearned windfall”, because FWIW they had carried me for free on an earlier trip.

So on balance I figure that as business partners we are just about equal. The difference isn’t going to break me financially and it certainly will not bankrupt Go Transit.

Back in late October 2016 I wrote How GO Transit Plots and Schemes and Rips Off Its Customers and showed how, if you are not keeping a close watch on your Presto Card balance, you can have money vacumned out of your bank account. Or get stranded at Port Credit.

Christmas Day 2017 of course I am chanting a mantra “Turn left when you get off; Turn left when you get off; Turn left when you get off; ...” to ensure that I head to the car park, northern side, where I am being collected by car, instead of my robotic path to the right through the bus terminal.

I turn left.

I forget to tap my Presto card on exiting the station.

Later that day I shrug. So GO Transit will get an extra $1.50 off me. I am not concerned. Chances are I am still ahead of the game, and as I indicated before, we do business together, and so it should continue. $1.50 is a mere hiccough, not partway through a Cortado at Café M on Yonge Street.

On my trip home on December 26th I was dropped off at Clarkson station where I tapped ON my card and realized that I couldn’t see the balance. There’s half an hour before the next train so I asked Nice Guy (not his real name) at the ticket wicket to write out by hand the new balance. Two dollars or so, it was.

How does my card sink from $24 to $2 overnight?

I explained that I had forgotten to tap off the day before, so I anticipate and accept a penalty. It’s been two or three years, enough time for me to know the rules. But Seventeen Dollars?

“Well” he explains, You get dinged for the maximum trip which, he continues, is Kitchener.

Kitchener? There is a Kitchener Line but last time I looked there was one train to Kitchener each weekday, and yesterday and today are Sunday, according to Go Transit.

(1) When I have tapped my Presto Card at Union Station any time in the past twelve months, the balance has been reduced by $5.30, supposedly the maxim fare from Union at that time of day, usually mid-morning or early-afternoon. Why suddenly am I short seventeen dollar? Is this a drive for funds for Christmas Bonuses for GO Transit Executives? Is Metro Lynx preparing for another Golden Handshake? Another UPExpress fiasco?

(2) How can I be dinged for the maximum fare on a trip that doesn’t exist on that day, let alone at that time?

(3) The GO Transit web site shows the fare for a trip Union to Kitchener as $8.37 for a senior like me, although $15.72 if the Presto Card system was not paying attention.

How then do they justify taking seventeen dollars off my card?

I suspect that the Presto System is once again on the blink, and it pretended that Christmas day was a business day, calculated the longest trip as Kitchener (for the first time in two years of trips to Clarkson!), ignored the fact that I was a Senior, and dinged me for the $15.72 fare. That would reduce my balance to $3.96. Take away the $1.50 it should have taken anyway and I am left with $2.46 which is close to what the Clerk at Clarkson told me.

Let me guess: Presto puts in a patch to ignore Monday being a business day but somehow doesn’t zeroize the lngResult being returned from the Function.

I protested loudly in the lobby at Clarkson. After all, I had still about twenty-seven minutes before the train leaves, so time is on my side.

Nice Guy and I do some back and forth and to his credit, he reverses out a whole lot of transactions (The Presto Card has details going back to about June 1956 when my family emigrated to Western Australia on the Shaw Saville Line’s “New Australia”) and then re-transacted my trip as I should have done it had I not focused so much on being collected by Nancy in her car instead of walking to Norma’s place.

The new balance of $21.18 dropped to $17.32 after I tapped off at Union, so everything now is tickety, in a manner of speaking,-boo.

Until the next time Go Transit decides on a whim to extract all but a couple of dollars of my Presto Card because it can.

And now you see why I refuse to register the Presto Card online and authorize automatic topping-up of Go Transit’s Coffers when my attention wanders for a few seconds.

Only the 407ETR is a bigger bandit at sucking money out of personal bank accounts.

And I wonder how many dollars are being handed over unwittingly by people who trust the Presto card system.

Another way for Presto and GO Transit to rip you off:-

2018-01-03 Wed

So I spent another pleasant fifteen minutes down at Union Station yesterday, chatting with a nice clerk. By and large ALL ground Staff in transit organizations are nice people. Over the past sixty years or so I’ve met the occasional rogue. It’s fair to say that ALL the problems can be traced back to Management of the Organization, not The Workers.

According to the smart clerk, the Bottom Line is that Metrolynx, Go Transit, Presto etc. (good for them!) found that modifications are expensive. So generally modifications are not called for and of course are not made.

Bear that in mind next time you purchase a $10,000 Lamborghini or Ferrari.

(1) With a single exception, (at the GO Bus Station at Union) when you tap ON your Presto card at one of those waist-high green pillars, $5.30 is deducted from your card. Tap on at the Bus Station or in York Concourse (or, after 2032, the new Bay Concourse) and $5.30 disappears from your card. I get that. I have forgotten to tap off often enough and always seen the $5.30 penalty kick in. I think “Fair enough; this helps to make up for the times I’ve forgotten to tap ON at Union Station (or at Clarkson)

(2) The maximum possible fare from Union is to Kitchener, and that is $15.72 for an adult , $8.37 for a Senior. (It is saddening to realise that I am no longer Adult)

(3) At the Close of Business (let’s call that “midnight”) on any day, any open transaction (that is, any transaction where I have tapped ON but failed to tap OFF) is detected by a piece of program code I shall call “CloseOfBusiness” which has been hard-wired to make a cash-register noise that sounds like “Kitchener”, that is, $15.72.

(4) But at the next tap ON event (for example, when I tap ON at Clarkson after a hearty meal but had failed to tap OFF on arrival in eager anticipation of a hearty meal), why, that is detected by a piece of program code I shall call “TapOn” which has been hard-wired to make a cash-register noise that sounds like “Outstanding”, that is, $5.30.

This is in its rural aspect quite good. The benevolent Presto card system says “You tapped ON at Union and now are tapping ON at Clarkson. I bet you came to Clarkson on a train from Union. I bet you never went to Kitchener today. So, I’ll just ding you for the blanket $5.30 fee”. Sort-of.

(5) That is, an Open transaction can be closed by different pieces of program code, one that costs (me) $15.72 and one that cost (me) 5.30.

(6) I have stayed overnight in Clarkson twice in my life, but only last week’s trip saw me fail to tap OFF. Which is why only last week did the evil “CloseOfBusiness” get to pounce on me. That is why I have never before seen the system ding my $15.72 when I have failed to tap off.

(7) As noted above, all of this comes true whether I walk down University Avenue to York Concourse and tap ON at York Concourse, or whether I stroll down Bay Street and tap on in the Bus terminal and then go for fruitless exercise by climbing the stairs to Platform Three and finding I still have to go downstairs to the Concourse to get back up to platforms 4/5.

(8) Why doesn’t Presto recognize that I am a senior? Because these people purchased a low-cost off-the-shelf system that isn’t smart enough to inspect the account that it is billing. Either that or else Metrolynx, Go Transit, Presto are a bunch of evil-minded people who rub their avaricious greasy little palms with glee every time that they can squeeze another ten dollars off a tax-paying citizen.

(9) Why doesn’t Presto recognize that December 25th is Christmas Day and that there are no trains from Union to Kitchener, even though this day is a weekday? Because these people purchased a low-cost off-the-shelf system that isn’t smart enough to inspect the account that it is billing. Either that or else Metrolynx, Go Transit, Presto are a bunch of evil-minded people who rub their avaricious greasy little palms with glee every time that they can squeeze another ten dollars off a tax-paying citizen.

What is left for me to do?

(a) Walk back down to Union and try to find Mister Nice Clerk and confirm my reasoning

(b) Take a trip to Clarkson mid-day, mid-week. Tap ON at Union and purposely fail to tap OFF at Clarkson. Walk straight to the ticket-wicket and purchase a cash fare home, not using my Presto card. Wait twenty-four hours and then check my balance. It should have been reduced by $15.72.

And when I say “Should have” I really mean “Should NOT have”

And now you see why I refuse to register the Presto Card online and authorize automatic topping-up of Go Transit’s Coffers when my attention wanders for a few seconds.

Only the 407ETR is a bigger bandit at sucking money out of personal bank accounts.

And I wonder how many dollars are being handed over unwittingly by people who trust the Presto card system.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

The Presto System fails again!

This month the local news announce that two-hour fares are available – but only if you use your Presto card. Today I have to travel to Bayview Avenue and John Street in York region, a trip I have made previously by using a Senior’s ticket on the Toronto Transit Commission subway to Finch, then my Presto card to travel by York Region #91 bus to John Street. Today is a good day to start using my Presto card on the Toronto Transit Commission!

Problem is, I have only $7.11 on my Presto card. Solution is that the pension is in today, so shortly after 6 a.m. I head off to the bank, withdraw a twenty-dollar banknote, then enter College Subway Station. There are two types of Presto payment machines; we’ll call them “Large” and “Small”.

“Apart from size, what is the difference?” I ask the ticket man in his cramped wicket. The large machine delivers actual cards. If you don’t yet have a Presto card you can buy one at the Large machine, otherwise you can add money to your Presto card at either the Large or either of the two Small machines.

But you can no longer add cash. Banknotes are out. “Banknotes are out?”. Yep. Too many people were breaking into the machines and stealing the cash.

So now you can use only your credit card or bank card at the machines. Too bad if you don’t have a credit card or a bank account. Presto doesn’t want disadvantaged people to use the public transit system. Let ‘em take a taxi.

I cannot understand this.

(1) Why does Presto produce machines that can be broken into by street thieves?

(2) Why has Metrolynx/TTC installed vulnerable machines?

(3) Note that BOTH the Large and Small types are vulnerable, otherwise one or the other would still accept cash in the form of banknotes.

(4) Unless Metrolynx/TTC Is more interested in tracking personal data by linking my Credit or Debit-Card number to my currently Anonymous Presto Card, but isn’t brave enough to say so.

Instead of hopping on the subway and heading North, I shall hop on a southbound #6 bus to Union Station, pay cash in the York Concourse, then hop on a second train to head to Finch as planned.

I shall, today, be a contributing cause to “Overcrowding on the Toronto Transit Commission”

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