Toronto Transit Commission fares
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Toronto Transit Commission fares include:
Contents |
[edit] Basic fares
As of April 1, 2006, these are the basic fares (in Canadian dollars) paid by users of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in Toronto, Canada.
| Fare type | Age | Single trip | Multiple trips |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | 13–64 | $2.75 | 5 for $10.50 (= $2.10)* |
| Senior | 65+ | $1.85 | 5 for $7.00 (= $1.40) |
| Student† | 13–19 | $1.85 | 5 for $7.00 (= $1.40) |
| Child | 2–12 | $0.70 | 10 for $4.70 (= $0.47) |
*Token machines sell 4 or 9 tokens at $2.10
†To qualify for the student fare, riders must have a TTC student discount card, which shows that they are currently attending an eligible secondary school in Toronto or an adjacent region. Student cards are valid only from the date of issuing to the date when the current year's card is purchased. Riders without valid ID must pay a full adult fare.
[edit] At subway and RT stations
All subway and RT stations have at least one fare collector's booth where single-ride cash fares are paid, and cardboard tickets and metal tokens are sold and can be used. There are also automatic turnstiles operated by tokens, and some stations have unattended secondary entrances with automatic turnstiles only.
Tickets are available for multi-ride fares of all types, but do not operate the automatic turnstiles. Tokens do (they were introduced for that purpose when the subway opened in 1954), and are otherwise equivalent to adult-fare tickets. As well as the collector's booth, tokens are sold from automatic machines that accept $10 and $20 bills (for each bill they give as many tokens as possible and the appropriate change: a $10 bill buys 4 tokens for $8.40). The machines also sell one token for the single-ride fare in coins.
[edit] On buses and streetcars
On surface vehicles (buses and streetcars), fares are deposited into a farebox near the driver. Tickets and tokens are accepted but are not sold; passengers must buy them in advance at a subway/RT station or an authorized TTC retailer. Single-ride fares must be paid with exact cash; change is not given.
(The exact-fare policy was introduced in 1975. Before that, retail stores did not sell TTC fare media; tokens were sold only at subway stations, but surface route drivers sold tickets and did make change for cash fares.)
[edit] Transfers
The basic TTC fare is valid for one continuous journey of any distance, including all changes of mode or vehicle required. Passengers can also use GO Transit (at normal GO fares) for an intermediate stage of their journey without having to pay a second TTC fare when they change back to the TTC, although there are few routes where this is useful; this policy is called TTC Times Two.
Many subway and RT stations include a bus or streetcar terminal within the fare-paid area, so passengers can simply step off one vehicle, walk to the appropriate platform within the station, and board another without formality. These terminals are generally not provided at downtown stations due to space constraints, but do exist at most other stations. All transfers between subway/RT lines also work this way.
For other transfers, a passenger who is not using a pass must obtain a free paper transfer ticket, called a "transfer", when paying the fare, and show it to the driver when boarding each subsequent vehicle. On surface vehicles transfers are given out by the driver; they are pre-printed with the route and date, and are torn off from a special holder in a way that encodes the time and direction of travel. At subway/RT stations they are dispensed by machines just inside the fare barrier that print the station, date, and time.
A special rule has applied since 1990 to the three streetcar routes that run along Queen Street. Here passengers are required to carry proof of payment, but are not required to show it unless asked. This means that a passenger who starts his journey on one of these routes, and is not using a pass, must take a transfer as proof of payment; but passengers who already have a pass or transfer can board the streetcar through any door, not needing to show it to the driver. This system cannot be easily extended to other routes because it is incompatible with the paperless transfer system used at subway stations; the routes along Queen are the only ones that do not enter a fare-paid terminal at some point.
As of 2005, the TTC is experimenting with "time-based" transfers that allow additional free rides within a time limit (up to 2 hours), even if the passenger makes a stopover or reverses direction. The experiment is linked to the temporary replacement of part of one streetcar route (the 512 St. Clair) by a bus service due to track reconstruction. "Time-based" transfers are only available on route 512. On other routes, 512 "time-based" transfers are only accepted at normal transfer points. (External link, PDF.)
[edit] History of zone fares
As noted, one TTC fare is good for any distance within the City of Toronto; there are no fare zones in the city today. The same was true from 1921 until 1953, when the City of Toronto covered a much smaller area than today. Then as now, there were routes extending outside the city, and extra fares were charged; these were on a zonal basis, although the zones might better be described as fare stages along the individual routes outside the city, as each one was a separate radial route.
But with the creation of Metropolitan Toronto ("Metro") in 1954, covering the whole present area of the City of Toronto, the TTC took on responsibility for transit within the entire area. At that time they did not consider a flat fare feasible for so large an area; instead they rounded off the edges of the city fare zone and renamed it the Central Zone, and set up a series of concentric semicircular rings around it as Suburban Zone 1, 2, etc., with an additional fare required for each one. Routes extending beyond the Metro limit continued to be separate radial routes, so the zones still had the effect of fare stages, but within Metro it was now possible to change buses within a suburban zone. This external link shows a route map of this period; the Metro limit is not marked, but the only TTC routes outside Metro are the Port Credit bus in the southwest and the part of the North Yonge bus beyond Steeles Avenue in the north.
A few years later, Suburban Zones 1 and 2 were combined as Zone 2 and the Central Zone became the new Zone 1.
During this early period, the outer zones within Metro were still relatively undeveloped and bus routes in them were sparse; but as development increased, there was pressure for lower suburban fares, and in 1962 the outer boundary of Zone 2 was extended to all the way to the Metro limit. Higher fares, still on a zonal basis along each radial route, now applied only on the few routes running beyond Metro; in effect, the zone boundaries after Zone 1/2 had changed from semicircles to rough rectangles. (Eventually the zones along each remaining route beyond Metro were effectively combined and the fares coordinated with those of adjacent transit agencies; see below.)
In 1968, the Bloor-Danforth Subway was extended east and west through the boundary between Zones 1 and 2, but the subway itself remained part of Zone 1. On January 21, 1973, with construction already well advanced on a similar extension of the Yonge-University Subway, the TTC acceded to pressure to abolish the zone boundary, and all of Metro (today the unified City of Toronto) gained service at a single flat fare. (Unfortunately, the new subway stations on both lines in what had been Zone 2 had not been designed for the change: their bus terminals were outside of the subway's fare-paid area. The layout of some stations allowed this to be easily corrected by moving the fare barrier, but at other stations this was infeasible and they were not reconfigured until a later renovation, or not at all.)
A fare increase in 2005 led some to call for the reintroduction of fare zones, but the TTC does not believe this would be wise. Zonal tickets would be impractical to enforce on the subways (with buses, the drivers would stop at each zone boundary to check proof of payment or collect an additional fare from each passenger, which was already a significant delay); and in addition, charging more for longer (and therefore less pleasant) trips through areas where service is provided by buses rather than trains would alienate the very suburban customers the commission is now trying to attract.
[edit] Passes
[edit] Current passes
As of April 1, 2006, three kinds of pass are generally offered on the TTC.
| Fare Type | 1 day | 1 week | 1 month | 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | $8.50* | $30.00 | $99.75 | $91.50/month |
| Senior/Student | no discount | $23.75 | $83.75 | $76.75/month |
*Valid for group on weekends.
There are no passes at child fares.
A Day Pass, on weekdays, is valid for one person and is not transferable. On weekends and holidays, however, the same pass becomes a Family/Group Pass: this means that the passholder may be accompanied, at no charge, by up to 5 other people with a maximum of 2 adults over 19 in the group. The pass can be bought in advance, to be marked with the date only when the owner is ready to use it.
A Weekly Pass is valid for 7 days, starting on a Monday and ending on a Sunday. The pass is marked for a specific week and is only sold from the preceding Thursday until its second day of validity. This pass is valid for one person at a time, but is transferable and thus can be used by different people at different times. Seniors and students use the same pass, so it can be transferred from one type of user to the other.
The monthly pass is called a Metropass. It is valid for a specific calendar month and is sold from the 24th of the previous month until the 4th working day of its validity. Passengers who sign up to buy 12 months of Metropasses pay a lower rate, as shown above. The pass is transferable under the same rules as the Weekly Pass.
Day Passes are cardboard; Weekly Passes and Metropasses have a magnetic strip for automatic turnstiles and so, like tokens, they work at all subway/RT station entrances whether staffed or not. On surface vehicles, the pass is simply shown to the driver.
Metropasses are also valid for free car parking at some subway stations; some parking lots are restricted to Metropass holders.
A fourth kind of pass is not sold to the general public at all, but is only available to those attending conventions, trade shows, and similar meetings. The TTC issues these passes for the applicable number of days and sells them to the convention operators; as of April 2006, prices range from $5.75 for a 1-day pass in quantities of 100 to 499, to as low as $3.75 per day for a 3-day or longer pass in quantities of at least 1,000.
[edit] History of passes
The TTC has always been cautious about the loss of revenue from selling passes to riders who would otherwise make the same trips and pay more. Passes have been introduced gradually, and have always been relatively expensive compared to some other transit systems: for example, in the fares effective for April 2006, an adult Metropass must be used for 48 trips in a month or else tickets or tokens would be cheaper. (However, the following month the federal government announced a 15.5% tax credit on monthly transit passes, starting in July. For people able to buy a pass and wait for their tax credit, this reduces the threshold to 41 trips per month.)
The first pass regularly offered on the TTC was the Sunday or Holiday Pass, introduced in 1973. As the name implies, this was only offered on Sundays and holidays, but it allowed group travel, similar to the later Day Pass. However, because the TTC was always heavily used on the last day of the Canadian National Exhibition, the pass was not offered on Labour Day.
The TTC introduced the Metropass in 1980. At that time there was only one price, based on the adult fare. The pass was not transferable, and had to be used with TTC-issued photo ID (in about 2000 the TTC also began accepting Ontario driver's licenses as ID). A lower-price Metropass for seniors was added in 1984, and for students in 1991 (originally at a slightly higher rate than seniors). The magnetic stripe was added to the pass in 1990, allowing it to operate automatic turnstiles, even though this meant that the user's ID would then not normally be checked.
Also in 1990, the Sunday or Holiday Pass was replaced by the Day Pass. It remained valid on Sundays and holidays (now also including Labour Day) for groups, but was extended to weekdays and Saturdays as a single-person pass. On weekdays, however, it was not valid until the end of the morning rush hour at 9:30 a.m.
Free parking for Metropass users at certain parking lots was introduced in 1992.
In about 1993, the TTC introduced an Annual Metropass, good for a whole year. As a higher-cost option, the pass was available in transferable form: the first transferable pass on the TTC. Both versions were soon withdrawn and replaced by the 12-month discount plan for the regular monthly pass.
Around 1994, the TTC began the practice of announcing specific periods around Christmas, and sometimes other holidays, when the Day Pass would be accepted as a group pass on any day. Later, starting around 2002, they also offered transferable weekly passes during such periods, but again, only for specific weeks as announced.
In 2005, with a political climate including the prospect of subsidies tied to ridership, the TTC became more willing to promote pass usage even at the loss of other fares. First, in March, they extended the Day Pass to be usable by groups on Saturdays. Then in September, the Metropass became transferable (with ID required only to prove eligibility for the senior or student fare), and at the same time, the transferable Weekly Pass was introduced.
In February 2006, to reduce lineups at the collector booths, the TTC introduced vending machines (accepting payment by debit card only) at some subway stations for the Weekly Pass and the Metropass. In April 2006, the Day Pass became valid all day on weekdays.
On certain special occasions the TTC has offered passes with other periods of validity as appropriate. These have included the Papal Visits of 1984 and 2002.
See also the Fares outside Toronto section, below.
[edit] Downtown Express fares
The TTC operates four rush-hour express bus routes serving downtown. In addition to the basic fare, the passenger must pay a supplement of one ticket or token, or its equivalent value. For example, an adult can pay with 2 tokens, or 1 token plus $2.10 (not $2.75), or $4.85 in cash. Pass users and those transferring from ordinary routes pay only the supplement; for Metropass users there is also the option of buying a sticker (sold only at certain subway stations) for $29.50 that covers use of the downtown express buses for the full month.
Express buses in other parts of the city charge regular fares.
[edit] Tokens
The use of tokens was first introduced in the 1954 with the opening of the Yonge Subway. The 24 million lightweight aluminum tokens, made by the Royal Canadian Mint, were withdrawn as of February 1, 2007, because of counterfeiting; the 20 million new tokens are of a bimetallic design produced by Osborne Coinage, a casino token manufacturer based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Old tokens can still be exchanged for new ones at the TTC Head Office.
[edit] Types
All TTC tokens have been the same diameter, slightly smaller than a dime.
1954 token
These aluminum tokens had a simple design:
- Side 1 with the word "SUBWAY" circled by the words "GOOD FOR ONE FARE"
- Side 2 with the word "SUBWAY" circled by the words "TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION"
1968 token
The extensions of the Bloor-Danforth subway into the Boroughs of Etobicoke and Scarborough were commemorated by special brass tokens. While these remained in circulation, they could be used interchangeably with the aluminum ones.
1975 token
These tokens were also aluminum and circulated alongside the earlier ones:
- Side 1 with TTC crest (with motto Service, Courtesy, Safety, a crown with date 1954 and wings) circled by the words "TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION"
- Side 2 with TTC logo and three maple leaves below, circled by the words "TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION"
2006 token
The new tokens, which replaced all older ones after a two-month transition period, have an outer gold-coloured part with a spiral pattern, and an inner silver-coloured part.
- Side 1 with TTC logo circled by the words "VALID FOR ONE FARE"
- Side 2 with TTC monogram circled by the words "TORONTO TRANSIT COMMISSION".
They are the first TTC tokens to use mixed-case lettering. The brass outer edge is partly reeded. Security features are embedded in the token.
[edit] Fares outside Toronto
The TTC operates a few routes that extend outside Toronto into Mississauga and York Region, by arrangement with their local transit systems. Regular TTC fares apply for Toronto Pearson International Airport, just outside the city limits, but generally a supplementary fare is required equivalent to the Mississauga Transit or York Region Transit fare. On outbound trips this may be paid when leaving the bus; inbound, the TTC fare and the supplement are collected when boarding.
There is also a GTA Weekly Pass, valid on all three systems as well as Brampton Transit. GTA passes are not valid on GO Transit - Ontario's interregional transit system. Introduced in 1994, this pass has always been transferable and valid for 7 days starting on a Monday. As of March 30, 2006, it costs $43. It is sold only at certain subway stations (which connect to Mississauga, York and Brampton transit systems), and in some retail stores outside Toronto.
A Twin Pass, which combined a Metropass with a monthly GO Transit ticket for a specific journey at a discount compared to their individual prices, was available from 1988 until 2002.
The provincial Minister of Transportation has announced plans to introduce the GTA Farecard, a unified smartcard-based payment system for the entire Greater Toronto Area similar to the Octopus Card used in Hong Kong. It will be introduced sometime after 2007 (after trials completed by GO Transit in Mississauga ).
[edit] Overnight service
The TTC's Blue Night Network charges the normal TTC fares. The overnight period is considered for purposes of TTC passes as part of the preceding traffic day: in effect, the date changes at 5:30 a.m. and not midnight. The GTA Weekly Pass is an exception, its validity ending at midnight.
