[URBAN NOTE] "Metrolinx wrestles with what fare is fair"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Ben Spurr reports on discussions about the future flat fare of Metrolinx's systems. I do have to again voice my opposite to getting rid of the TTC flat rate: I depend on it.

It’s a small task that millions of people perform every day, by dropping coins in a fare box, flashing a transfer to a bus operator, or tapping a Presto card at the subway turnstile.

But with plans afoot to change how, and how much, transit riders in the Toronto region pay for public transit, the fate of that simple gesture is looking very complicated.

For more than a year and a half, Metrolinx, the Ontario government’s regional transit agency, has been working on a plan to merge the fare systems of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area’s nine municipal transit operators, as well as GO Transit.

It’s a project that could transform the daily routines of millions of transit riders from Hamilton to Oshawa, and the Ministry of Transportation says it’s key to the success its plans to increase mobility in the GTHA.

[. . .]

The goal of integration is to enable transit users to go to their nearest transit stop, pay their fare using the new Presto fare card, and never notice if they transfer onto another municipality’s system.

Integration is necessary, Metrolinx says, because more than 22 per cent of the GTHA’s nearly 2 million daily transit riders cross a municipal boundary, and thousands of them pay a penalty for it.