TTC concedes too many Presto readers are failing
Five to six per cent of the devices on Toronto transit aren’t working at any given time - far more than previously reported. Officials say the wrinkles will be ironed out soon.

thestar.com
By Ben Spurr
Sept. 26, 2016

The TTC’s Presto problems are more widespread than previously thought.

The transit agency has stated publiclythat fewer than 1 per cent of its new Presto fare card readers are out of service at any given time. But an audit the TTC conducted last week revealed that at least 5 to 6 per cent of the devices on its streetcar fleet aren’t working, and the real number could be higher.

According to TTC chief customer officer Chris Upfold, it’s difficult to know how many devices are misfiring, because the cellular system that is supposed to automatically detect when they malfunction isn’t working properly.

“Frankly, it might be higher (than 5 to 6 per cent). I wouldn’t be surprised if it was,” Upfold said in an interview.

Because the automatic detection system isn’t always reliable, the TTC had workers check the readers in person last week, and plans to test readers on buses as well. According to Upfold, it’s not clear what’s wrong with the devices, which allow customers to pay their fare by tapping a prepaid card. But he said it’s probably a software problem.

Upfold described the rate of glitches as “frustrating” but said the TTC expected some hiccups as it implemented the new system. He stressed that these are still early days for the fare-card program.

“We’re still a long way away from saying this is mature and ready for our customers to wholeheartedly endorse. These are the teething pains that happen,” he said. But he conceded that “we’d like to see a higher reliability rate than this.”

TTC has been rolling out Presto across its network bit by bit, starting with its streetcars, all of which have had readers since the end of last year. There are about 170 streetcars in service each day, Upfold said, and depending on the model, each has between two and six card readers.

More than 1,270 of the agency’s 1,900 buses now have the devices, as do 38 of 69 subway stations. Eleven stations have Presto-equipped fare gates. The TTC plans to make the readers available on all vehicles and stations by the end of this year, and to phase out tokens, tickets and passes sometime in 2017.

Although the devices are installed on TTC vehicles, the fare-card system is an initiative of Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency responsible for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

Robert Hollis, Metrolinx’s executive vice-president for Presto, said he’s “absolutely not happy” with how many of the readers on streetcars appear to have bugs. “My aspiration would be a hundred per cent. I would expect the readers to be up all the time,” he said.

Metrolinx has installed Presto on 10other transit agencies in the GTHA, including GO Transit, but Hollis said the unique properties of Toronto’s streetcars have posed unexpected problems for the card readers. The vehicles operate using a different type of power supply than buses, he said, and the rails can cause “vibration issues.”

Hollis said Presto is still in “beta mode,” and that the piecemeal rollout will allow the agency to deal with any problems before the TTC’s 1.7 million daily customers have to switch to the fare card. He argued the risk of widespread technical failures would have been greater if the TTC had installed Presto system-wide and then switched to it overnight.

“By the time we’re fully deployed, we believe we’ll be in better shape,” he said.

But transit watcher Steve Munro argued that Presto deployment has been “poorly thought out.” He said out-of-service readers are just one problem — users have also complained of the devices charging them the wrong amount.

Munro asserted that the decision not to make Presto available across the whole system at the same time, coupled with the glitches, are undermining public confidence in the fare card and discouraging people from using it.

“It’s a deterrent, in that the fact that it doesn’t work all the time is no secret,” he said.

Roughly 5.4 per cent of the 38 million trips taken on the TTC last month were paid for using the fare card.

Malfunctioning fare readers aren’t the only recent sign that the TTC’s adoption of Presto isn’t going as planned. The transit agency had pledged to stop accepting all other fare media by “mid-2017,” but last week announced it wouldn’t make the conversion until sometime later next year.

Although the delay will save the cash-strapped TTC an estimated $16 million, agency executives said it wasn’t their doing. The transit commission blamed Metrolinx, saying the provincial agency has been slow to install software that would allow the TTC to sell monthly passes on Presto, and wouldn’t be able to provide automatic Presto vending machines on time.

But Metrolinx told the Star on Friday that Presto already has the capability to sell monthly passes. “It’s really up to the TTC when they turn it on,” Hollis said.

Metrolinx also said there had been no change to the timeline for delivering the vending machines.