Howard’s End

By Jonathan Goldsbie

It seems its website isn’t the only thing embarrassingly behind the times at the TTC these days: the above scan is of a current January Metropass. (Councillor Howard Moscoe was TTC Chair from 1998-2000 and 2003-2006; his successor, Councillor Adam Giambrone, was elected by the Commission as its Chair on December 6 of last year.) What makes this a particularly odd error is the fact that it’s not simply a case of the TTC forgetting to change the wording on the back of the pass between months; rather, the information and legal text is always tweaked and revised from month to month, and this is actually the first Metropass since August 2005 to bear the name of a Commission chair.
A dear friend who dug through all of her old Metropasses prepared for us the following report:

July-Dec 2004: no Moscoe.
Jan-Aug 2005: hello Moscoe.
Sept 2005-Dec 2006: no Moscoe.

This raises some questions, including:
What is the turnaround time for the production of Metropasses? That is, how far in advance of production are new texts and layouts delivered to the manufacturer? And how long is it between production and the Metropasses eventually being sold to the public?
Why was there an expectation, on the TTC’s part, that Councillor Moscoe would still be its chair in January? At whose direction was the additional sentence fragment added, and was there not an awareness of the appointments process that occurs with the commencement of each new term of Council?
An email to TTC Public Affairs has thus far gone unanswered.
FEBRUARY UPDATE: The text on the back of the February Metropass is identical to that of January’s. The font in which the month is printed on the front, however, is remarkably different, which is perplexing because the January pass itself introduced a new font as part of the larger redesign. Perhaps they’re now trying to foil counterfeiters by utilizing a different typeface each month?
MARCH UPDATE: The TTC finally got it right on the third try; the March Metropass correctly namechecks “Chair Adam Giambrone.” And the typeface in which the month is printed on the front is indeed different from those used in January and February.