Should the TTC
be more flexible when it comes to transit passes? Jean Thomas of
Scarborough writes, “In a day there is 24 hours, yet a person cannot
begin to use the day pass before 9:30 a.m. I believe that is wrong.
The TTC should call it a “three-quarters” day pass. Marcia Frost of
Toronto agrees. “If I purchase a ‘day’ pass I should be able to use
it anytime that day!” Ahmed Farooque of Toronto writes that
sometimes the month-long Metropass is not worth buying, especially
if you are out of town for part of the month. “If there were a
weekly pass available, then people who might not be able to purchase
the monthly pass in time could use this one.”
The TTC day
pass was originally aimed at visitors to Toronto, allowing them
unlimited use of the TTC -- without adding to already crowded
transit vehicles during the morning rush hour. The TTC sells close
to 700,000 of these passes yearly, says chief marketing officer Bob
Hughes. He says that if the day pass were valid weekdays before 9:30
a.m., the transit system would lose about a million dollars every
year.
To balance the
inconvenience to solo commuters, the TTC emphasizes that the pass
can be used by up to six people on Sundays -- including two adults.
In the last few years, this family-favourable feature has been
extended to cover every day of March Break and two weeks over the
Christmas holidays.
These are the
same periods when you can actually buy a weekly pass -- but the TTC
is in no rush to sell seven-day tickets the rest of the year. Hughes
says there are several proposals to offer riders a break, including
dropping the price of a monthly Metropass by five dollars. He says
that if new weekly passes were introduced, it would cost the TTC
$3.5 million. Currently, commuters who regularly use more than one
transit system can buy the GTA Weekly Pass -- up to 4,500 are sold
each week at $41.25 a pop.
When it comes
to offering new ways to pay, the TTC has a reputation for being
extremely cautious and risk-averse. This may not necessarily be a
bad thing for a public enterprise -- considering it is other
people’s money that could be lost. Keep in mind that 20% of each
fare is paid for by government subsidy -- that is, from taxpayers.
In the search
for TTC fare options that won’t require more subsidies, Ducharme
says that “there’s no magical bullet out there.” That said, he
believes it may be time to start promoting the Metropass Discount
Plan again -- it’s like a subscription that allows riders to get
their passes by mail, and at a discount. This is different than the
VIP green pass, which is a pilot project that allows companies and
universities to sell reduced-price Metropasses to their employees or
students. It remains to be seen whether the VIP scheme will be
costly to the TTC.
There’s may be
more on the horizon. When the federal and provincial governments
announced a billion dollar funding package for the TTC in late
March, $140 million was promised over five years to pay for a new
fare system. One proposal would allow riders to pay for rides on the
TTC, GO and other transit systems with a single “smart card.”
Ducharme says
fare integration is far from his number one priority. He is much
more concerned about making sure that the system is in good shape,
and what customers are really asking for, he says, is “Service,
service, service.”