Today Fri Sat
It is forcast to be Fog at 11:00 PM EDT on May 24, 2012
Fog
22°/13°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Rain at 11:00 PM EDT on May 25, 2012
Chance of Rain
19°/13°		 It is forcast to be Clear at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Clear
19°/13°

14 Comments

news

Metropasses To Get A Little More Secure, A Little More Pretty

By David Topping

20090603metropass1.jpg

20090603metropass3.jpg
At top: a large-scale version of the new July Metropass. At bottom, the set of new passes, to scale, with July’s monthly pass off to the far right.


Earlier this morning at their head offices, the TTC announced changes to its Metropass fleet, with the aim of making counterfeiting, as Chief General Manager Gary Webster put it, a “tougher issue for the bad guys”—and with the not altogether unintended consequence of making the passes a little nicer to look at now, and a lot nicer to look at as of April next year.


As Webster explained, counterfeit passes right now cost the TTC about two million dollars a year, and the challenge is “visual verification”: the magnetic strip on the TTC’s back has “never been counterfeited,” but when a human being is the one doing the verifying—say, an operator trying to quickly fill a busy streetcar—it’s significantly harder to catch a fake pass that looks all but identical to a real one. The TTC is working on introducing a universal fare card system, like London’s Oyster, but doing so will take time, Chair Adam Giambrone said today, and may cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
20090603metropass4.jpg

20090603metropass2.jpg
Adam Giambrone displays the July Metropass with, and without, sticker.


Enter, for now, a new hologram, and a new sticker. As of July 1, the passes will feature both: the sticker, like those that come with new credit cards, must be removed before the card is first used (preventing ticket agents from returning their used passes to the TTC for a refund as “unsold”), and the hologram makes the pass significantly harder to duplicate and fake cards significantly easier for operators to spot. Webster and Chair Adam Giambrone said today that the Metropass change will, in spite of costing $250,000, likely save the TTC eight times that.
More excitingly, though, was the other significant aesthetic change to the passes that’s coming soon: art. We first wrote in May that the TTC was looking to team up with public institutions—like OCAD, the AGO, and the ROM—to get art on the pass, and today Adam Giambrone made it official: the pass, he said, will be “redesigned…to include art” by April 2010, with the TTC issuing a request for expressions of interest from institutions this August.
All photos by David Topping/Torontoist.

Filed under: , , , , , ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • http://undefined torontothegreat

    a hologram isn’t that effective when it’s the same hologram on the card each month.
    A counterfeiter would only need to print a match of that one hologram and put it on the cards each month.
    The hologram doesn’t even have to be all that good, as long as it has the same colour spectrum, the operator would not be able to tell the difference at a glance.

  • http://undefined dowlingm

    Can we at least get the vanity printing of the Chairman’s name off them?

  • Jerad Gallinger

    Not to be nitpicky with the good folks at the TTC—okay, maybe very specifically to be nitpicky—but shouldn’t it be “this fare medium” instead of “this fare media”?

  • http://undefined Brad Ross

    @torontothegreat The pass design/placement may – or may not – change each month. Likewise, the hologram’s shape and size may – or may not – change each month.
    Brad Ross
    Toronto Transit Commission

  • http://undefined triplexpac

    Ugh not pretty at ALL

  • http://www.hardcircle.net Ian

    Security measures are never going to catch every counterfeit. But as long as they prevent a significant amount, they can be worthwhile
    While anyone with a holographic printer might be able to make an effective counterfeit, the fact that not everyone owns a holographic printer raises the initial investment a counterfeiting operation requires. Also, the large the operation, the easier it can be to find by conventional investigation.
    Of course, 20 years from now when we all have holographic printers at home, there may be no gain from this functionality, but security is a constantly-evolving job.

  • http://undefined joeclark

    Actually, determining the existence and provenance of a hologram requires seconds of close inspection, not a glance from a distance, which is all drivers can do in the normal course of events.

  • http://undefined Paul Kishimoto

    I’ve read before about the “Presto” fare card initiative—for example here. That article says only the end-of-line TTC stations will be included; this one says “The TTC [i.e. not Metrolinx] is working on introducing a universal fare card system…”
    @Brad Ross, if you happen to be reading still: why isn’t the TTC on-board for a regional system? From a purely financial standpoint, I can imagine there might be some advantage to separation, but on the bases of engineering, ease of use, incentive to public transit and many other factors, an integrated system across the GTA seems to make much more sense.

  • http://undefined Yonge And Bloor

    That “design” is brutal, hardly pretty.

  • http://undefined bsharwood

    What I find amazing is that in a city like Toronto we have a subway system where, face it, the TTC has no idea how many people ride each day, each week and each year. I buy metropasses each month, and I probably swipe them 2 or 3 times during the whole month. Most of the time I hardly pull the card out of my wallet. There is no way that the drivers and station attendants can tell a real hologram or even a real card from a fake one.
    So outside of the money that they TTC think they are losing (and really they are just guessing in the wind at that number) how can they possibly even plan for bus routes and subway schedules with little to no information to make their judgements.

  • http://undefined elliot

    oh shiny!

  • http://undefined Brad Ross

    The TTC is working with the province on a fare card system that would apply to the entire system – subway, streetcar, bus. The concerns/questions you raise, will be addressed.

  • http://undefined dowlingm

    Are there any lighting conditions that can be used to cause a hologram to be more “obvious”?

  • http://undefined jem

    Yes they have definitely erred here and they should fix it!