No magic solution on Presto card

Re: Province-TTC spat will hurt GTA transit commuters, July 27

Integrating the various GTA public transit systems merely encourages the type of urban sprawl that is eating our farmlands and other green spaces while making efficient public transit too expensive. The province should be looking, like the City of Toronto is, at ways of making local transit better.

Funding an expanded subway system within Toronto’s borders would go a long way toward stopping the steady disappearance of Canada’s best farmland beneath low-density suburbs.

Having tackled the wrong problem, it’s no wonder that the wrong solution, Presto, is so expensive. The $200 million already spent, and the hundreds of millions still to be spent, would have done far more good if directed toward reducing ticket costs or improving service on existing public transit systems.

The amazing thing is that Wynne seems totally oblivious to the massive waste of public money that is Presto. Rather than attacking the TTC for pursuing a more reasonable system, she should rethink the province’s entire public transportation strategy.

The Star provided us with a very short comment from Open Payment advocate and consultant Paul Korczak about the superiority of his approach to modernizing the TTC’s painfully archaic ticketing system. Yet nobody from the city’s media has asked a more basic question of Mr. Korczak, alderman Adam Giambrone (his apparent patron at the TTC), or the TTC board who approved this apparently sole-source contract to a two-person consultancy: What are we getting for $1.3 million from this New York city company?

Has everyone in this city so quickly forgotten the multimillion dollar legacy of such contracts that led to city hall’s computer scandal of the ’90s? This contract may have different consequences, but I find the lack of any details about a million dollar contract hard to understand, the least as to how two consultants can justify such an amount for a few months’ work. Make the details of this contract public!

Presto fare cards were supposed to be the beginning of the ability to link fare systems of all the regional transit systems. As usual, the TTC thinks they are better and different than everybody else. The bad news is if the TTC makes it more inconvenient for regional riders to use its service, it is shooting itself in the foot.

This is just another example of the TTC wasting millions of dollars just to do something different. There is an easy answer to all of this. Get the province to legislate the amalgamation of the TTC into Metrolinx and, by default, they will be implementing the Presto fare system that will make riding regional transit systems in southern Ontario seamless.

Adoption of the Presto card may only be the first of an unknown number of steps that the TTC may take in modernizing the way it collects fares. But at least it is a “shovel in the ground.” This “novelty” (for Toronto) will help ease the way for more efficient systems down the road as well as for their acceptance by transit riders. Besides, on a crowded bus I would feel more comfortable fumbling with a Presto than a debit or credit card.

Presto is obsolete! Merely giving a new name to a decades-old payment system that is disappearing in many cities solves no problems. Whether it was Betty Stephenson’s Ontario school computers, eHealth software or Presto, it should be obvious it is much easier and far cheaper to buy proven state-of-the art systems than build your own.