The º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøTransit Commission will continue to accept tokens, tickets and day passes until the end of May next year, reversing a contentious decision to stop accepting the legacy fares as of Jan. 1, 2025.
The change was made this week after TTC chair Jamaal Myers put forward a motion at Tuesday’s TTC board meeting to continue accepting the legacy fares until June 1.
“Our customers bought this in good faith,” Myers said at the meeting. “They paid money for it ... I think it’s only fair and reasonable just to give customers the opportunity to spend the tickets that they paid for.”
The motion, which was adopted by the board, also includes a provision that gives Wheel-Trans riders until Dec. 31, 2025 to use the fares, a decision made because they potentially use the TTC less frequently than other riders.
The TTC said it wants to get rid of the legacy fares in order to streamline payments across the system. The Eglinton Crosstown and Finch LRTs will not accept tickets or tokens when they open.
Less than one per cent of riders pay with tickets and tokens, according to the TTC, which stopped selling them near the end of 2019. Third-party retailers sold them until March 24, 2023.
But many riders were surprised by the transit commission’s announcement in October that it intended to discontinue the fares as of Jan. 1, although the TTC said at Tuesday’s meeting that it had announced the possibility of phasing out tickets and tokens as early as 2019, and had handed out information pamphlets about the change to customers as well as posted information on social media.
At the board meeting, a number of speakers complained about the lack of a trade-in program and the lack of time the TTC gave riders to use the legacy fares, both of which could have contributed to a windfall for the transit agency of $24 million, the value of tokens and tickets still in circulation.
The transit advocate group TTCriders was one of a number of community organizations that signed an the TTC to let transit user exchange tokens and tickets for single-use Presto tickets.
Rev. Maria Christina Conlon of the Davenport Perth Community Ministry, a United Church in Toronto’s west end, told the Star she put her name to the petition because she’d heard from several individuals who were concerned about using the tokens and tickets that the ministry had given them before Jan. 1.Â
“If they stop accepting them or using them, where did the money go?” said Conlon, adding it would have been “another blow for people that need transportation.”
Conlon said one man had saved 100 tokens, which represented a sizable sum for anyone who is helped by her ministry, which she said includes people working multiple jobs or on social assistance.
Tickets have been used since the TTC came into existence in 1921. Tokens were introduced in 1954, the year that the TTC opened Canada’s first subway, the Yonge line, in 1954.
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