Better TTC

Known to be one of the alpha cities in the world, Toronto holds the distinction of being not only the capital of Canada but is also known for its cultural diversity. It is the center of financial market of Canada as well as entertainment center of the country.

Work life is busy and the population is always on the move. Thus easy transportation is a must. The third largest transportation system in the continent, TTC provides with the facility of transit within Toronto city. GO Transit is used to travel across Greater Toronto Area through bus systems and train lines. Subway and Regional trains are the backbone of the TTC transportation system that carry heavy rail lines along with rapid transit lines.

Passengers can simply buy a single transfer ticket for 90 minutes. This ticket is valid for the entire day for the period of 90 minutes of travel. It can be a one way non stop trip or as specified in the ticket. The only execption to this is 512 St. Clair route whereby the ticket is stamped for upto two hours.

Toronto Transit Corporation has decided to make the lives easier of people by planning to adopt Presto smart card system for TTC payment services. Go transit has been using Presto services for a while now and has been quite popular. York and Durham transit regions plan to go online with the system as well. For a common man, this is good news since smart card are easy to use.

With the help of the smart card system, the passengers on transit simply need to go to the console and tap the smart card. That is all it takes to access the transit. What happens is, when the card is tapped against the console, the fare for the transit is automatically charged from the card.

It is a good step taken by TTC when it comes to TTC payment services since the passengers will save time and won't have to carry tokens in their pocket. One can go from one transit system to the other with the help of this Presto smart card.

Talks had taken place earlier as well with regards to adoption of the smart card sytem. However the previous management of TTC rejected the idea. The reason given was more accessibility of usage of debit and credit cards for the passengers as opposed to only smart cards.

Today the talks have begun again with Presto offering open system whereby debit and credit cards will be a part of the TTC payment services along with Presto smart card. Toronto Tranit System plans to adopt the goal where all the buses, trains and metro rails as well as light rapid transit systems will have Presto payment sytem by 2015.