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If transfers were intended as one-time use, both the old system and the new system have ways of enforcing it.

In the old system, bus drivers could require passengers to discard their transfers.

In the new system, multiple uses of the transfer could be rejected. If you try to use the same transfer card multiple times on the same bus within a 5-minute window, they are rejected.

Using one transfer for multiple fares at the same stop is clearly a violation of the system. I don't have an old paper transfer around to check the conditions on the back, but the only condition on the new transfers is the expiry time, and according to the GRT's site, as long as a transfer is within its timeframe, using it is valid. There are no exceptions posted in any of the pages I can find on the GRT site.

http://www.grt.ca/en/fares-passes/paying-your-fare.aspx
http://www.grt.ca/en/fares-passes/learn-...rebox.aspx

I appreciate what you're saying, that the "spirit" of the transfer is to start a trip and reach a destination. I just don't see any indication that the GRT issues transfers with that spirit. Until I do, I'll continue to think that multiple uses are ethical. In my mind, the spirit of public transit is to enable people to live and function without personal vehicles, and this use of transfers supports that very nicely.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hi Iain, we don't guarantee a return trip, but if you're able to complete a round trip within 90 minutes, that's fine.</p>&mdash; Grand River Transit (@GRT_ROW) <a href="https://twitter.com/GRT_ROW/status/892040400986411008">July 31, 2017</a></blockquote>

There you have it - official policy.

That's great - good on them!
Heh. I just had a similar conversation. Poor GRT Twitter person.
(07-31-2017, 10:43 AM)Canard Wrote: [ -> ]For your fare, you get one entry to the system. One use. One ride. Period. Anything beyond that is abuse of the system and is stealing, in my mind.

...UNLESS they say your fare is good for "90 minutes of system use", then sure, I could agree with you.

I got my wrist slapped in Kobe for riding the Portliner in a circle. The faregate wouldn't let me exit when I tried to tap my Suica out at the same station I entered at for my ~40 minute ride. I had to go to the counter and she got all apologetic (Japan!), and then charged me an additional fare (ie, round trip). I smiled. Smile

In some systems, this is indeed how it is spelled out. Here, it is not. Like a carshare/bikeshare or large pre-planned route multi-high-capacity-vehicle system share (e.g. GRT), we have spelled out a valid time for a fare to be valid. I have definitely had short trips where I'll use just one ticket (e.g. going to run a quick pickup, or a quick workout at a gym) and stay within every letter of system policy.

Your Japanese example sounds more akin to how GO operates, where it is fare by distance. It would be against the rules, say, to have a delivery business where riders picked up and dropped off at GO stations, but only ever tapped on and off at two adjacent stations, once per day, while riding the system to its fullest extents.

We could move towards a system where we considered boardings a per-use cost (punishing those who don't live on direct routes based on their transportation needs), on a distance cost (punishing those who live farther from their destinations), on a time cost (punishing those who aren't able to use express buses and have to take milk run routes), on a space constraint use (punishing those who weight more, who do use the bus to grocery shop and put a bag of groceries under their seat, or who go to school on the bus and put a backpack on their lap, or the mother whose child is too big to ride her lap rather than the mother whose child is small enough to share one seat). Inevitably, the system will create weird incentives based on its fare system. Similar, in a way, to how some have put forth the idea on this forum that gas taxes fund road use, even as we build the road system to accommodate peak commuting patterns but expect to see very different gas tax revenues from the parent only able to afford a less-fuel-efficient van for their family, compared to the individual able to afford a hybrid or even electric car, like a wealthy friend of mine in their no-gas-tax-paying Tesla.

In the end, I think most societies discover that a system with less friction (in this case, rules being friction) is the more effective system, and so we get very simple rules, even seeing some systems avoid heavy policing of fare evasion due to benefits often being negative.


To get back to an earlier point about whether people will jam the ticket machine at the last moment as ION arrives, to avoid wasting transfer time waiting on a platform, you could have ION ticket dispensers dispense transfer times at 90 minutes AFTER the next scheduled ION train arrival, so that we don't have a mad dash as the train pulls in. You could even have the transfer barcode indicate where the transfer originated, so that you couldn't print a transfer at an ION station right after a train departs during a 30-minute headway time, only to hop onto a bus with ~120 minutes of transfer time. Or, for the direction vs time transfer rules people, you could have a transfer invalidate if an individual tried to use it twice on the same route, or twice in opposite directions on the same route. But once you start making the system this complicated, its use will go down.
As it's been for years and years with GRT
Back in ye olde Kitchener Transit days, you can see that they did TTC-style "no stopovers or returns":
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/GRT_ROW">@GRT_ROW</a> Grand River Transit, you may find this interesting: a circa 1981 (?) bus transfer I used as a bookmark. <a href="https://t.co/hfs7jDqKDH">pic.twitter.com/hfs7jDqKDH</a></p>&mdash; James Davis Nicoll (@jamesdnicoll) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamesdnicoll/status/854030247930548225">April 17, 2017</a></blockquote>

But thankfully that hasn't been the law of the land for a long time.  I moved to town in 2003, and the policy has been unlimited travel within the timed window for the entire time I've lived here.

A "transfer" has exactly the rules that the operator sets for it.  No more, no less.
(07-31-2017, 11:20 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: [ -> ]We could move towards a system where we considered boardings a per-use cost (punishing those who don't live on direct routes based on their transportation needs), on a distance cost (punishing those who live farther from their destinations), on a time cost (punishing those who aren't able to use express buses and have to take milk run routes), (...)
Punishing?  Based on this argument, the current system punishes those who live on direct routes, and those who don't make stopovers, and those who only take the bus (or LRT) for a short distance.

Seriously, in my mind a distance-based cost is the most fair (you are effectively paying by distance when you drive (gas/wear and tear), bicycle (effort/wear and tear) or walk (effort/shoes).

Or make the entire system free of charge.  But I don't think there is much support for that.
(07-31-2017, 08:30 AM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]Agreed.  In addition to the loss of revenue, it makes ridership numbers look lower as that return trip is not counted as a new passenger.

All boardings are counted. GRT has data for every boarding, and what kind of fare (or transfer) was used. The drivers are punching buttons for everyone who gets on the bus. I believe they also have per-stop granularity of this information, though they don't share that publicly.

A few years ago, GRT published "per boarding" cost recovery rates for each of their fare types. I really wish I had saved that document. I do recall that the university U-Passes were so heavily used that the per-boarding average revenue was somewhere around 35¢.
(07-31-2017, 09:49 AM)KevinL Wrote: [ -> ]Only if you let its name inform its purpose. If you look at it as a 'ticket for unfettered travel, 90 minute limit' then it works fine. We only still call it a 'transfer' because we always have.
When you look at speed limit signs as a painting on a pole then it's much easier to save time on your travels.
(07-31-2017, 11:49 AM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]
(07-31-2017, 11:20 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: [ -> ]We could move towards a system where we considered boardings a per-use cost (punishing those who don't live on direct routes based on their transportation needs), on a distance cost (punishing those who live farther from their destinations), on a time cost (punishing those who aren't able to use express buses and have to take milk run routes), (...)
Punishing?  Based on this argument, the current system punishes those who live on direct routes, and those who don't make stopovers, and those who only take the bus (or LRT) for a short distance.

Seriously, in my mind a distance-based cost is the most fair (you are effectively paying by distance when you drive (gas/wear and tear), bicycle (effort/wear and tear) or walk (effort/shoes).

Or make the entire system free of charge.  But I don't think there is much support for that.

In my example, "punishing" would mean that the "punished" situation involved having to use more fares than someone else (e.g. if you couldn't transfer and needed 4 buses to make a return trip to work, you would pay 4 times for potentially a shorter commute than someone who lived and worked on opposite ends of a long route and only needed to pay 2 fares to get to and from work). Indeed, few people do short hop bus jaunts because they are paying a full fare for a very short distance/time savings, whereas these are extremely popular for U-pass holders since there is no disincentive to hop on a bus and ride 1 or 2 stops to class to save a tiny bit of time and effort.

Distance-based could be argued to be a less optimal solution in some ways. If I ride a bus from Conestoga to Galt, I've gone ~40km(?), but I've only required one boarding, only taken up one seat on a single route. If my journey requires 3 boardings because I transfer twice, I've slowed down that bus and all its occupants (especially if I'm the only person getting on/off each of the three buses, now it's 6 boarding/disembarcation cycles). Additionally, if the short distance I'm on each bus (let's say 1km) happens to have a very high boarding area right after I get on, I might have displaced 3 people on 3 separate bus routes who each might have wanted to use the full length of the system, but my being on that bus prevented them from getting on. In this case, I would suggest that the "short" 3km jaunt on 3 buses used far more resources and inconvenienced far more people than someone sitting on the 200 end-to-end.

Also, I think you mean to say you are paying by distance when you use a car/bike/walk, but you are not paying a cost of those systems. As we all know, no amount of walking or cycling pays any direct fee into sidewalks or bike infrastructure, and certainly someone using a hybrid for an all-electric trip or an electric car for any trip pays no gas tax (if you believe that to be any kind of fee for road use, which I do not), just as someone using the 401 during rush hour isn't imposing the same cost on our highway system as a trucker who flies through Toronto at 3am, since we built the system to accommodate the commuters of rush hour and have no problem accommodating the users of seldom-used times of day.
In my opinion, the current system of being able to travel as far as you want, on as many buses as is necessary within 90 (or 99 as seems to be the case of late) minutes works very well.
Demolition has begun at the Fairway Crabby Joe's, to make room for the new terminal.
Service Changes effective September 2017: http://www.grt.ca/en/service-updates/ser...dates.aspx

No surprises (everything on the list has been previously announced).
I was curious about how well the 204 has been doing so I requested the monthly ridership from GRT a while ago. They finally got back to me today.
[attachment=4057]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that is about 1/2 of what the 200 (3,200 in 2005), 201 (3,600 in 2013), and 202 (3,400 in 2013) were each their first few years.
That's a pretty misleading statistic in the title. A majority of that increase wouldn't be due to lifestyle changes or any approval of the service itself. It would just be people learning that the route started running. I mean, it's increased infinite percentage if we start tracking at August instead. Or only ~35% if you start at October.