Toronto has made it to the 20th century. Yes, that wasn’t a typo. Other countries like Singapore and HK have long had the concept of a payment card for almost as long as I’ve been alive and yes, I am old. Although the post might seem a bit snarky, I actually am quite excited about the Presto Card and hope that it will be successful.
As a Torontonian, there are some things to like. By default, it makes the cost of transit automatically the same as a token. Based on your usage, the cost is supposedly designed to cost as much as a Metropass once you get to a certain threshold. The same goes for travelling using the GO Transit. Another big plus is that you become eligible for tax deductions after using it for 32 one-way trips which is great! I also like the convenience of being able to top up on the Internet and auto top up which os rather convenient because I never have cash on me. Some plusses for Toronto in particular is that it will perhaps be able to finally get to a fare-by-distance model which will hopefully be financially beneficial to itself and hopefully to general citizens. While I will be impacted negatively in some ways because I commute from Finch Station to Osgoode Station daily, I hope that the cost of riding within the city will be decreased. I suspect that this will be another source of rich revenue that is currently being lost.
Some downsides is that the roll out on the transit systems that I typically take have been quite slow. I was hoping that more of the TTC and YRT would have been covered by now. So far, I have only been able to use it at Union Station on the TTC although roll out supposedly covers St. Patrick and Finch Station already.
It means "They are in the mail". Goods in transit are going to their
destination and payment in transit means the payment is on its way to
its destination.
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