As I follow the ups and downs (and further downs) of the Presto card rollout on the TTC, I sometimes take a step back and ask myself: what problems is this supposed to solve?

I mean specifically for riders. What problem do riders have with the current fare system to which Presto is thought to be the answer? I can’t, for the life of me, think of a good answer.

The legacy fare system, the one being phased out by Presto implementation, offered three payment options. First, if you were a frequent rider, you could buy a monthly or weekly pass, and then everything was problem-free. You keep the pass with you, show it when passing through a fare gate or when asked, and you’re golden.

Second, if you were a less frequent but still regular rider, you buy tokens. One problem with these might be that they’re small and easy to lose track of. Another might be that you need to get to a store or station where they sell them if you run out.

Third, if you had no tokens or pass, or didn’t want one, you used cash — depositing exact change in the fare box. That isn’t changing. The TTC will still accept cash single fares and use paper transfers (or, at stations, paper single-use Presto cards), so Presto is pretty much irrelevant to current cash users. Except for children, who under the old system simply rode free: the ultimate hassle-free fare system. Under Presto, kids will need to buy a $6 Presto card to tap on and off at stations that have fare gates.

Now, under the legacy system, passengers might lose their pass or token. They also might lose their Presto card, which costs $6 to replace (and Councillor John Campbell spent part of Tuesday tweeting his tragicomic customer-service hassles as he tried unsuccessfully to transfer the balance on his lost card, or even get Presto customer service on the phone to help).

People might not have tokens handy, or might find it a hassle to go to the store or station to buy some. But then, they also might not have their Presto card handy — harder, it appears, to replace — or they might have forgotten to reload its balance, which takes up to 48 hours to do online. So again, this appears not to be an improvement.

I have sometimes heard authorities say that making transfers between GO and the TTC and other regional transit operators like Mississauga Transit and Viva is part of why Presto is necessary. But the problem with “fare integration” between systems has never really been the actual fare medium: cash works on all systems! The problem is that the various systems charge customers again — full fare — when they transfer from the TTC to another system or vice versa, and they will continue to do so with Presto and could have stopped doing so without it.

If you are a customer, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with the old system that is addressed by Presto. And to counterbalance that fat zero on the benefits side, Presto introduces a host of new problems, costs and inconveniences: it costs $6 for the card itself; it appears to take 48 hours to reload online and requires getting to a station to load instantly; as a proof of payment, a transfer or monthly pass is easier for fare inspectors to glance at (rather than needing to scan a card to check its fare status); after changing vehicles, you’ll need to check your account to ensure you have not been double-charged, as has been happening, and arrange to have it rectified if you have been (when one rider was double-charged recently, the situation was rectified when the TTC mailed him a token as reimbursement). You need a separate card for each person — one card cannot pay two fares on the same trip, making occasional family travel a bit more of a hassle. And then the rules need to be memorized: you tap on and off a GO or UPX train, but only on and not off a TTC vehicle.

The rules about what to do when a machine is out of order and when changing vehicles seem — so far — complicated enough that many TTC staff are insisting on incorrect things (that people walk to the next station to pay, for instance, or that you need a paper transfer to get on a streetcar) and the system is sometimes incorrectly charging people twice for the same trip.

Many of these are things that can be brushed off by those looking to defend the system. Plan ahead, you whiner! Learn the system! It’s only a few bucks! But each small hassle or inconvenience, each extra step you have to take, each bit of confusion you encounter is a kind of cost imposed on potential riders. And if the system actually wants to attract riders rather than repel them, it wants to minimize the barriers to ridership wherever it can. Or should.

One lives in hope that some of this will become simpler as things go forward and Presto becomes standard and everyone gets used to it and irons out the wrinkles. But the growing-pains adjustment would be a lot easier for customers to stomach if it appeared that the best-case new scenario wasn’t more of a hassle than the old standard they already knew. It feels, from the customer’s point of view, as though it’s too generous even to say Presto is a solution in search of a problem. It’s actually a whole set of problems posing as a solution in search of a problem.

Here’s some good news: the biggest problem I’ve encountered with the existing system is I can’t use my debit or credit card. Not having a pass, token or cash is sometimes a problem, and needing to find a bank machine and then also go get change can be a big hassle. By 2018, parallel to the Presto system, people will apparently be able to tap credit and debit cards to pay the cash fare. That’s a huge improvement. A real one.

Now obviously, there are probably other problems, from the transit agency’s point of view, that are solved by fare cards. They no longer have to manufacture and count and dispense all these tokens. No tokens and a streamlined pass system means no longer having to staff booths with attendants to sell them. Metrolinx, the agency that runs Presto and that forced it (more or less) on the TTC, gets to collect royalties on its use and justify the cost of developing it. There may be more.

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But the thing is, these are not customers’ problems. The problems it solves are someone else’s, and the problems it creates are riders’. And from a customer service point of view — and that of government agencies which I think should use the number of happy riders as their sole measure of success — that is a problem. Metrolinx and the TTC should be finding a way to solve it.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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