Riders will need to wait until mid-year for all TTC buses, streetcars to accept cashless fares

If you ride the TTC, you may have recently noticed new fare machines on the streetcar or bus.

The black and green Presto machines will one day soon also allow Toronto transit riders to pay by tapping a credit card, debit card or mobile device like a smartphone or smartwatch.Currently, to pay a fare when boarding a streetcar or bus,riders have toeither tapa pre-loaded Presto card or pay with exact change.

Metrolinxsays 98 per cent of TTC streetcars and76 per cent of buses are now equipped with the new machines, with the remainder of the 5,500 devices expected to be installed by theend of March.

But the new digital payment systemwon't be fullyfunctional for at least a couple more months.

"Metrolinx and the TTC are looking forward to delivering credit and debit payment to TTC customers in mid-2023,"Metrolinx said in a statement. "These new payment options give customers more choice and convenience."

The movesignalsthe comingswitch to an "open-loop" payment system where TTC customers will be able to choose among multiple non-cash methods to pay a farefrom a "closed-loop" system that restricts riders to using a Presto card as the only cashless option.

'Frictionless' payment option could boost ridership, advocate says

Many are welcoming the new payment system, including TTCpassenger Deja Pochun, who spoke to CBCToronto at Bathurst station on the weekend.

"I struggle a lot with remembering to fill [up]my Presto every time. So the ability just to put my credit card in or my debit card in will just make it less stressful," Pochun said. "It's a little anxiety inducing if you don't have money in there and then you're scrambling to get change."

Cameron MacLeod, executive director of volunteer-led transit advocacy group CodeRedTO, said moving to an open payment systemhas the potential to help the TTC build back ridership lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It creates a more frictionless option for someone considering transit," MacLeodsaid. "They can just hop on the streetcar, hop on the bus, hop on the subway with whatever they've got in their wallet."

It creates a more frictionless option for someone considering transit.- Cameron MacLeod, Transit advocate with CodeRedTO

Alexander A.J. Wray,a PhD candidate in geography and environmentat Western University, said open payment systems make it easier for all transit riders, but particularly for those who are infrequent users or travelling from out of town.

Wray cited his experience on a trip he took to Edinburgh, Scotland last summer, where thelocal transit system uses an open payment system.

"I hopped right off the plane, walked out the gate, literally 5 minutes later, [I] was on a bus to the centre of Edinburgh," he said.

"That's what I hope, down the road,we'll see with Pearson airport and Billy Bishop [airport], where folks just get right off the plane, walk to the transit station and tap their credit card andoff they are to wherever their destination is in our lovely city."

Credit card payment already available across 905 region

Toronto lags behind other transit systems in Ontario and the worldwhen it comes to expanding payment options.

Credit card and mobile wallet payment options are already available to passengers riding on local transit systems in all of the 905 regions surrounding Toronto and on the GO Transit system. The Union Pearson Express offers those options and the ability to pay with a bank card.

Credit cards were used to pay for more than 800,000passenger trips on GOTransit and local 905 systems between Aug. 11, 2022and March 15, 2023,according to statistics provided by Metrolinx.

Almost 111,000 trips on the Union Pearson Express werepaid for with credit cards since the March 2021 and another 30,000 withdebit cardssince October 2021, the data shows.

Transport for London, the agency responsible for most of the transport network in the U.K. capital, began allowing passengers to use contactless cards to pay fares on buses in December 2012, and expandedthe service across its transport network two years later.

The Chicago Transportation Authority launched the Ventra system in 2013, which allowed passengers to pay using credit or debit cards or a refillable smart card similar to Metrolinx's Presto card.

Vancouver's TransLink became the first major Canadian transit system to allow credit card and mobile device payments across its system in 2018, and introduced debit payments earlier this year.

The TTCsaid last year that fare gates at subway stations will also be replaced with new machines sometime this year.