Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

So, while I understand your frustration, this has been explained many times by GRT and by people on many social media platforms, including WRC.

The buses do not have internet connections. How do you expect the loading to go from you using the website and end up at the bus?

When a  bus gets back to the barn at the end of the day, the mechanic giving it the once over sets the farebox to a WiFi AP at the barn. At that point in time it uploads a record of all transactions it did, and downloads a bundle of updates, such as you adding funds to your daughter's card.

The next day when the bus is out on the road and your daughter taps on, the farebox will apply the update to her card and set a flag. The flag is for if your daughter tapos on a second bus so that farebox can see the updated has already been apply and doesn't erroneously add the stored value a second time.

From then on, your daughter can tap her card and have deductions made like normal.

Of course, this obviously only works if you go to the website and add the funds before the bus gets back to the barn.

If you added the funds in the afternoon, but the bus she tries to tap on the next day had been returned to the barn at noon, then it will not have the update for her card. It would need to go back to the barn on more time to get the updates.

That's why GRT says 24 to 48 hours.

It is a technical limitation you cannot solve without having internet connections on the buses and the fareboxes updating constantly. Plus, because of the batch nature of financial processes, even with an internet connection out on the road, the update needsto be formatted and bunded into an update and sent to the farebox. So even then it wouldn't be available right away.

Customer Service can't do bugger all about this, and it is unfair of you to be angry at them for it. YTA, full stop, for that behaviour.

They were exactly right to tell you only "that's how it works" and no manager or supervisor would have been able to do a damn thing about it for you. Did you expect them to reach out with a magic wand and enchant either your daughter's card with the stored value, or the farebox of the next bus with the update for it?

I'm going to hazard a guess that you work in some sort of engineering related profession, and not anything product or customer related, because this post sounds like how the majority of my coworkers think. Yes, we understand how it works and why it works that way (but the general public at larger never will). Yes, once you understand there is a potential 48 hour delay it's not terribly stifling and can be worked around.

But for at least the last decade people think of a "payment cards" of any kind as an instantaneous and usable anywhere. I'd wager over 80% of the population doesn't know and doesn't care to know that payment terminals in shops are internet connected, and so the thought that payment terminals on busses aren't connected but would need to be isn't a logical train of thought for them. Today it's even expected for mobile/popup shops, food trucks, etc. to accept credit and debit payments backed by mobile connections, and most cash only places obviously take a hit.

If you build a product that goes against consumer expectations for technical reasons, that's fine, but you need to be sympathetic to the position you've put your customer in. Have some humility and shame, not anger towards the confused customer (and customer service should reflect that, short of accepting abuse whether verbal or of the system).

You're right but you're wrong. Yes, there are certain expectations, but bravado is right the limitations of our payment card here is EXTREMELY well advertised especially in this forum. It's totally possible to forget it (especially because it is inconsistent--going to a machine is instantaneous). And being angry at customer service is entirely unwarranted.

And yet it works today for millions of people and the status quo here doesn’t…

Well, we don't have millions of people here so you aren't wrong.

But I don't agree that the status quo here (EasyGO) isn't working. It would be nice to have the up to 48 hour delay go away and gain credit card payments, but does that really mean the system isn't working? The only major problem I've experienced was the absolute garbage state that the ION fare machines launched in, but I've been using them lately and they actually seem to work quite well now.

The only complaints are ever see are on this forums, specifically about the delay. Am I missing some major problem everyone is dealing with?

Edit: I should clarify, I replied to to dtkvictim because I wanted to include the earlier comment, but this following is a broad reply generally and not directed at any one specific person.

This part I do not get. There are MANY problems with EasyGO--even if we leave aside the IMMENSE teething problems it had (remember when they wiped their entire database and started again? FFS!), and leave aside that it was late to deploy, and even after they were deployed the equipment broke constantly.

They DO NOT work well now. The 24-48 hour delay is ONE problem. I also was unable to pay for the train, because for some reason the fare machine will not accept my TD debit card, nor my TD Visa, nor my Wise Visa, nor my ING (Dutch) Visa. I have FOUR payment cards and not one would work...what kind of bullshit is that. I was able to use three of the cards in every previous part of my trip including boarding multiple transit systems in the GTA.

And of course, Presto has already moved onto supporting visa and debit cards directly for boarding, something that is, if not world leading, is at least a stand out feature...and something that EasyGO doesn't even have on the radar (I'd be shocked if council even knows it's a thing...since I doubt any of them are remotely interested in transit), and who the fuck knows how much it will cost us to pay our incredibly incompetent contractor to build.

Honestly, I don't understand the hatred of presto. Yes, they didn't bid, because that's not what they do. If we were going to choose presto it wouldn't have been through the bidding process. I don't know why people here find that so inconceivable. A dozen other transit agencies have done so, why the fuck are we so special?! This is nothing more than a shitty excuse for not choosing presto.

By the way, accepting cash fares and transit passes isn't hard. London (who also chose to implement their own stupidly incompatible, but yet exactly the same transit fare card) accepts both cards and cash (and tickets too for that matter). They do it by having two boxes on the bus...it isn't complicated.

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

[Acitta]

Well, once upon a time, you had to carry tickets for the GRT and tokens for the TTC, not to mention Greyhound or any other transit system you might have to use. I don't find it difficult to carry two transit cards. I bought a two-card wallet just for that purpose. In a world where so many people are dealing with life and death problems, having to have two transit cards seems like a rather trivial problem.

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

[bravado]

But for at least the last decade people think of a "payment cards" of any kind as an instantaneous and usable anywhere. I'd wager over 80% of the population doesn't know and doesn't care to know that payment terminals in shops are internet connected, and so the thought that payment terminals on busses aren't connected but would need to be isn't a logical train of thought for them. Today it's even expected for mobile/popup shops, food trucks, etc. to accept credit and debit payments backed by mobile connections, and most cash only places obviously take a hit.

If you build a product that goes against consumer expectations for technical reasons, that's fine, but you need to be sympathetic to the position you've put your customer in. Have some humility and shame, not anger towards the confused customer (and customer service should reflect that, short of accepting abuse whether verbal or of the system).

The point I was trying to make with a short pithy comment is that we deserve services that work together. A transit pass that adds speedbumps and arbitrary limitations and doesn't work with neighbours just isn't a compelling product. A functioning transit pass lets you use all transit whenever and wherever you want, but little municipal fiefdoms and small-mindedness have very different ideas of what they think a good system is. The "customer" actually is always right, regardless of how hard it is to set up a payment system or deploy it...

When I spent $ on transit, I don't care which government is getting my money and which borders I am crossing - I want that money to work on all transit for my benefit as a customer. Anything else is a pointless inconvenience. A GRT manager or councillor that picks our own homegrown solution is deliberately making their users' experience worse, because the customer experience isn't actually something that's high on their list of priorities.

[danbrotherston]

Well, once upon a time, you had to carry tickets for the GRT and tokens for the TTC, not to mention Greyhound or any other transit system you might have to use. I don't find it difficult to carry two transit cards. I bought a two-card wallet just for that purpose. In a world where so many people are dealing with life and death problems, having to have two transit cards seems like a rather trivial problem.

Yes, we have made constant improvements to the ease of use of transit...that's a good thing...but the fact that it was harder before is not a reason that we shouldn't make it easier than it is now.

And that's a really weak argument...the existence of serious problems does not mean our problems don't matter. It wasn't trivial to me when I was unable to get on the train for an hour getting to Kitchener, or when Rainrider's daughter was unable to get on her bus to work.

If there was a GOOD reason not to use presto...if our system was better in some way, then you could say "well, it's worth the trade off carrying two cards, and putting up with some difficulties"...but it isn't. Our system, isn't good, on it's best days it's merely equal to presto, and it's only unique feature is we get to be a special flower with our own farecard. But those days are well in the past, now it is equal or worse in every way, and it will cost us a fortune to meet (and keep meeting) presto's featureset.

So we have an inferior system, that costs us more, and in return we get nothing but our (or at least some bureaucrat's) ego stroked.

Anyway, I can't help but think that there was more to your comment, based on how my reply was broken up in your reply, but I don't see any text.

[ac3r]

Imagine if Costco stores in Toronto only took MBNA Mastercard. The Kitchener one only took Visa Debit. Maybe LCBOs in Burlington only took brim Mastercard but the ones in Waterloo took Scotiabank Visa. Canadian Tire only took BMO Visa...IKEA only took cash...McDonalds made you use American Express etc. You'd have to carry around a fat stack of plastic cards, cash and coins anywhere you went because you'd be stuck relying on all these different payment methods. It would be a huge pain in the ass. The same would be true if instead of Presto, each region relied on their own crappy card like we do so going seamlessly from Waterloo Region to Ottawa would be a bit of a headache. Thankfully, just like payment methods, most of these important regions have simplified and provided an acceptable quality product to their consumers in the form of Presto with the exception of this region.

[dtkvictim]

You're right but you're wrong. Yes, there are certain expectations, but bravado is right the limitations of our payment card here is EXTREMELY well advertised especially in this forum. It's totally possible to forget it (especially because it is inconsistent--going to a machine is instantaneous). And being angry at customer service is entirely unwarranted.

Yes, I would hope someone on this forum paid enough attention to not miss that detail. But frankly when you are designing a product for a mass audience you just have to accept that education and warnings simply don't work. A very large portion of people don't read instructions or details, they just operate on intuition.

I don't condone anger or berating anyone, customer service or not (we are all people regardless of what we're doing...). But I do think GRT customer service and bus operators should understand this common limitation of the system. I would prefer them giving out free rides over potentially losing a customer for life, so long as abuse of the system can be kept in check. Or better yet, give operators the option to force cards without a balance into the negative (perhaps up to a certain limit where it's clear the customer is just trying to be a cheat).

Edit: I should clarify, I replied to to dtkvictim because I wanted to include the earlier comment, but this following is a broad reply generally and not directed at any one specific person.

This part I do not get. There are MANY problems with EasyGO--even if we leave aside the IMMENSE teething problems it had (remember when they wiped their entire database and started again? FFS!), and leave aside that it was late to deploy, and even after they were deployed the equipment broke constantly.

They DO NOT work well now. The 24-48 hour delay is ONE problem. I also was unable to pay for the train, because for some reason the fare machine will not accept my TD debit card, nor my TD Visa, nor my Wise Visa, nor my ING (Dutch) Visa. I have FOUR payment cards and not one would work...what kind of bullshit is that. I was able to use three of the cards in every previous part of my trip including boarding multiple transit systems in the GTA.

And of course, Presto has already moved onto supporting visa and debit cards directly for boarding, something that is, if not world leading, is at least a stand out feature...and something that EasyGO doesn't even have on the radar (I'd be shocked if council even knows it's a thing...since I doubt any of them are remotely interested in transit), and who the fuck knows how much it will cost us to pay our incredibly incompetent contractor to build.

Honestly, I don't understand the hatred of presto. Yes, they didn't bid, because that's not what they do. If we were going to choose presto it wouldn't have been through the bidding process. I don't know why people here find that so inconceivable. A dozen other transit agencies have done so, why the fuck are we so special?! This is nothing more than a shitty excuse for not choosing presto.

By the way, accepting cash fares and transit passes isn't hard. London (who also chose to implement their own stupidly incompatible, but yet exactly the same transit fare card) accepts both cards and cash (and tickets too for that matter). They do it by having two boxes on the bus...it isn't complicated.

And of course, now if you travel to Toronto, you need two separate transit cards with two separate stored dollar value accounts...how much bullshit is that.

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

All because presto wouldn't play by our special rules and bid in the process that we (and we alone) decided was the ONLY way to select a fare payment processor. Why anyone here (hell anyone outside the region's bureaucracy) uses this bullshit justification...I will never know.

It boggles my mind that there are still people who think Presto would be a bad thing. For god sakes, I cannot believe you are making me agree with ac3r. I certainly don't think we're ever going to switch...GRT is probably the reason I am going to have to keep carrying cash when I travel...

Thanks for the clarification lol. But for the record, I am not opposed to Presto at all. I even have a card from living in Ottawa which would have been nice to reuse and benefit from interoperability.

That's a shame to hear that payment issues still exist. I had the issue you're describing for a very long time at specifically City Hall Station; I assumed something wrong with that terminal. I actually failed to pay for my trip because of that once, and the fare checkers were "fair" checkers in this case, understanding that their issues aren't my fault.

My personal experience was that issues like that had been resolved and the new terminal software works way better. I hadn't seen others complaining online anymore either, so I could only assume EasyGO was at least working adequately at large.

[Bytor]

I'm going to hazard a guess that you work in some sort of engineering related profession, and not anything product or customer related,

I have many years of experience in frontline technical support in addition to my other IT experience of a more engineering bent.

because this post sounds like how the majority of my coworkers think. Yes, we understand how it works and why it works that way (but the general public at larger never will). Yes, once you understand there is a potential 48 hour delay it's not terribly stifling and can be worked around.

But for at least the last decade people think of a "payment cards" of any kind as an instantaneous and usable anywhere. I'd wager over 80% of the population doesn't know and doesn't care to know that payment terminals in shops are internet connected, and so the thought that payment terminals on busses aren't connected but would need to be isn't a logical train of thought for them. Today it's even expected for mobile/popup shops, food trucks, etc. to accept credit and debit payments backed by mobile connections, and most cash only places obviously take a hit.

If you build a product that goes against consumer expectations for technical reasons, that's fine, but you need to be sympathetic to the position you've put your customer in. Have some humility and shame, not anger towards the confused customer (and customer service should reflect that, short of accepting abuse whether verbal or of the system).

You're assuming that I expect people to know. I don't.

I do expect people to be willing to accept some trivial amount education so they can avoid the same problem again. And the explanation I have as to how it works was very abbreviated
and definitely not technical in any way.

I do expect people to treat customer service reps fairly, which RainRider22 did not, by their own words. Hence the YTA judgement. I mean, they think that their call to GRT customer service was an encounter with "GRT management", but is was really just them bullying a CS rep.

[taylortbb]

When the region asked for bids, Presto was not interested. At all.

Presto (Metrolinx) was very interested, they just weren't willing to respond to an RFP. Because RFPs take lots of time/money to respond to, and governments generally don't bid on things between each other. When we joined another Metrolinx project, for Bombardier LRVs, we didn't make Metrolinx bid on LRV supply. We accepted that the LRV order had already been competitively tendered by Metrolinx, just like Presto was.

There's a reason why it has been adopted by transit agencies servicing millions upon millions upon millions of people in our nations most important cities and it isn't because anyone is putting a gun to the heads of people in oh...Brampton, Ottawa, Toronto, Durham, Mississauga, Hamilton, York and Oakville. They went with it because it makes sense to do so. As said, it just works. It has a lot of good features. It is accepted in basically every important urban centre in Ontario - sans ours, of course.

Metrolinx made funding for just about everything contingent on adopting Presto, so municipalities absolutely adopted Presto because of a financial gun to their head. Toronto tried very hard to do something other than Presto, but eventually the province told them funding for the Eglinton Crosstown was contingent on Presto adoption and the TTC gave in.

And there's the rub. It isn't. It wasn't there to add the needed fare products when we were looking at vendors, so why would it be there now?

I have zero faith in PRESTO/Accenture.

It wasn't there at the time because Presto was still focused on rollouts in the GTA, and getting the initial system running and stable. It's been almost a decade since, and the situation has changed a lot. The specific dealbreakers, like the upass, have since been overcome in other cities.

Presto has been far from a perfect system, but at this point the teething pains are mostly over and it works pretty reliably in the GTA.

Accenture is inept, but ultimately they're just a contractor. Metrolinx owns the system, and they're the ones that decides what Presto does or doesn't do. Accenture just gets (over) paid.

No, it doesn't. Every single transit system that has installed PRESTO has had significant problems with it far worse than we have had with EasyGO.

I don't think locals understand that.

Are you angry at EasyGO now? Prepare to be abso-fucking-lutely raging if we were to switch to PRESTO.

Ac3r definitely has too rosy of a view of Presto, and missed where it got forced on the GTA transit agencies. But I've never seen a major government tech system that didn't have launch issues. The question is how well it works now, and the answer seems to be "pretty well".

I know presto had issues before...SO DID EASYGO!...in both cases those issues are largely solved, but while presto now works mostly smoothly, supports some advanced features, and is a path forward towards greater integration and modernization of fare payment in Ontario, but we're stuck with our shitty and expensive custom solution, that isolates us from Toronto, and will cost us a fortune to custom implement anything that presto already has.

This is the key point I think. Waterloo Region isn't big enough to justify the overhead costs of running our own modern smartcard fare system, so we're effectively stuck on a technological dead end. We're not big enough to reasonably pay for developing an open payment system, but Metrolinx is. We can either move to Presto, or we can have a basic farecard system that never achieves feature parity with Presto/Oyster/OMNY/etc, the transit fare systems of major cities.

[Bytor]

When a  bus gets back to the barn at the end of the day, the mechanic giving it the once over sets the farebox to a WiFi AP at the barn. At that point in time it uploads a record of all transactions it did, and downloads a bundle of updates, such as you adding funds to your daughter's card.

Manually? Can’t it just connect once it receives the WiFi signal? For that matter, couldn’t they install their WiFi network at a few major transfer points and terminals and have most buses pick up updates sooner than end-of-day?

Potentially, yes. However, It depends on the hardware. These aren't exactly AMD Threadrippers with 64 cores and a terabyte of RAM. Heck, they aren't even my 7 year old Xeon E5-2620 v4 with 160GB RAM.

They'll probably be late '00s-era, early '10s chips, toughened for the industrial world, with 1 GB RAM, running Windows CE 7 (or whatever the proper name for it is these days). And it likely takes them an hour to download and apply all updates due to limited memory and local storage space for processing. So even with WiFi APs outside the barns, they wouldn't be able to update very much in a 5-10 minute stay at a place like Ainslie, or UW station. And few stays at timepoints are that long.

[Bytor]

[quote="danbrotherston" pid="112423" dateline="1703423183"]
This part I do not get. There are MANY problems with EasyGO--even if we leave aside the IMMENSE teething problems it had (remember when they wiped their entire database and started again? FFS!), and leave aside that it was late to deploy, and even after they were deployed the equipment broke constantly.
[quote]

This is where a meme pic of a PRESTO fare gate or terminal on a TTC bus says "Hold my beer".

If you think EasyGO's problems were "IMMENSE", then, my friend, you know nothing about the problems PRESTO had.

Why did it take the TTC 3 years of testing (2009 to 2012) then a contract signed in 2012 that was supposed to be finished by 2016 but, thanks to multiple halts, was not done until 2019, and after that has had multiple system-wide outages, including one this year?

[Bytor]

0

This is the key point I think. Waterloo Region isn't big enough to justify the overhead costs of running our own modern smartcard fare system, so we're effectively stuck on a technological dead end.

No, we're not. Multiple agency support aside, there's no technological reason we can't have a system that accepts credit and debit and an app that on phones with NFS can either update your card directly or be a virtual card, or use Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc… S&B supplies those capabilities to other systems, and the Region of Waterloo just has to want to pay for it. S&B does the development, everybody else that uses it has already subsidized it, so we wouldn't be on our own. feature parity is possible.

Indeed, back in October at a council meeting is was said that the Region hopes to have and app and credit & debit tap fare payment by fall 2024.

We're not big enough to reasonably pay for developing an open payment system, but Metrolinx is. We can either move to Presto, or we can have a basic farecard system that never achieves feature parity with Presto/Oyster/OMNY/etc, the transit fare systems of major cities.

IMNSHO, PRESTO needs to be reorganized from a system vendor into a standards setter and transaction clearing house.

A standards setter in just that it lays out the data structures on cards and how fareboxes and kiosks and agency apps access things, and what the hardware and software needs to comply with to be compatible. They can certify existing third-party system vendors as pre-approved as well as certify new vendors that a municipality wants to use in the future.

A transaction clearing house for fares. When you pay with stored value from one agency for a ride with a different agency, the different agency reports it to PRESTO who then pays them, and PRESTO then collects from the original agency. Also, if somebody buys $25 stored value for GRT through the PRESTO app, PRESTO would pay that to GRT.

And then legislate that all Ontario transit agencies must use PRESTO as soon as their hardware has been certified.

I can think of a lot more complicated scenarios, like if the TTC and GRT wanted to honour each other's monthly passes, but then I think there would need to be some subsidization by PRESTO on behalf of the provincial government given the wildly varying monthly pass costs and how many trips a month you'd need to make before it becomes worth it. So maybe the TTC reports to PRESTO a ride with a GRT monthly pass and PRESTO gives the TTC $3 but only collects $2 from GRT?

[danbrotherston]

This part I do not get. There are MANY problems with EasyGO--even if we leave aside the IMMENSE teething problems it had (remember when they wiped their entire database and started again? FFS!), and leave aside that it was late to deploy, and even after they were deployed the equipment broke constantly.

This is where a meme pic of a PRESTO fare gate or terminal on a TTC bus says "Hold my beer".

If you think EasyGO's problems were "IMMENSE", then, my friend, you know nothing about the problems PRESTO had.

Why did it take the TTC 3 years of testing (2009 to 2012) then a contract signed in 2012 that was supposed to be finished by 2016 but, thanks to multiple halts, was not done until 2019, and after that has had multiple system-wide outages, including one this year?

TTC as a system is almost two orders of magnitude bigger than GRT, it's not surprising that they had significant issues. They were one of the later agencies to join presto. Other smaller systems which are more comparable to ours, have not had a similar scale of issues.

But I'll ask you, do you not feel that EasyGO was smooth and painless? Again, they didn't just haven an outage...they had to wipe their entire database...AFAIK presto never had such an extreme situation. And that's before we remember that the fare systems were so unreliable that they ran out of spares and could not longer keep fare payment running at every station reliably and we have only a handful of stations.

[taylortbb]

there's no technological reason we can't have a system that accepts credit and debit and an app that on phones with NFS can either update your card directly or be a virtual card, or use Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc…

I never disputed the technical feasibility, I disputed the financial feasibility. We certainly can pay S&B for all those things, but I don't think S&B's software isn't as standardized and "off the shelf" as you suggest. Adding all those features to our system, especially open payment, likely ends up costing a non-trivial amount of money. It sounds like we'll buy some of them, like the app, but if we went with Presto we'd get all of them without having to buy any of them.

[Bytor]

TTC as a system is almost two orders of magnitude bigger than GRT, it's not surprising that they had significant issues. They were one of the later agencies to join presto. Other smaller systems which are more comparable to ours, have not had a similar scale of issues.

But I'll ask you, do you not feel that EasyGO was smooth and painless? Again, they didn't just haven an outage...they had to wipe their entire database...AFAIK presto never had such an extreme situation. And that's before we remember that the fare systems were so unreliable that they ran out of spares and could not longer keep fare payment running at every station reliably and we have only a handful of stations.

I've never said that EasyGO was problem free. All I have ever done is point out that PRESTO's problems have been far greater than you or many others seem to remember or want to acknowledge.

It wasn't unproblematic for YRT, as this link shows, and the fact that the 905 agencies did it first and were finished before the TTC even signed the contract to get PRESTO, their implementation should have far, far smoother as the majority of bugs should have already been worked out. Saying that the TTC is huge is just a cop-out.

That database problem you mentioned? While people had to set up auto reloads and the like all over again, it did not affect what was on anybody's card or your login to the website.

[danbrotherston]

TTC as a system is almost two orders of magnitude bigger than GRT, it's not surprising that they had significant issues. They were one of the later agencies to join presto. Other smaller systems which are more comparable to ours, have not had a similar scale of issues.

But I'll ask you, do you not feel that EasyGO was smooth and painless? Again, they didn't just haven an outage...they had to wipe their entire database...AFAIK presto never had such an extreme situation. And that's before we remember that the fare systems were so unreliable that they ran out of spares and could not longer keep fare payment running at every station reliably and we have only a handful of stations.

I've never said that EasyGO was problem free. All I have ever done is point out that PRESTO's problems have been far greater than you or many others seem to remember or want to acknowledge.

It wasn't unproblematic for YRT, as this link shows, and the fact that the 905 agencies did it first and were finished before the TTC even signed the contract to get PRESTO, their implementation should have far, far smoother as the majority of bugs should have already been worked out. Saying that the TTC is huge is just a cop-out.

That database problem you mentioned? While people had to set up auto reloads and the like all over again, it did not affect what was on anybody's card or your login to the website.

I never said it was unproblematic for the other 905 agencies...only that it was less problematic than it was for TTC. To me, comparing the us with the issues TTC faced is a cop-out...because the agencies are not comparable, it's much more similar to the issues faced by other 905 agencies...and specifically the later ones.

And I am not saying that presto had no issues...but all systems have issues...EasyGO also had issues...and in my opinion they comparable to or worse than what the average Presto operator faced.

As for the database problem, I remember it well...but auto-reload is a core component and many people were surprised that it was broken. Yes, it was less than having the card values wiped, but that wouldn't have actually happened if the database is wiped, because those values are stored on the cards themselves (in addition to the database) -- and for that matter we don't actually KNOW if the card value database was wiped because that would have been transparent to us as users.