Originally Posted by Richard Eade
Currently OC Transpo uses APCs (Automated Passenger Counters) mounded in buses and the O-Trains to get passengers counts on a per stop, per run, or per route basis. These counts are used in route planning; for example, to add additional buses onto a busy route or to determine if a route is not justified. This data already exists and covers ALL riders, not just the sub-set of passengers who use a PRESTO card. (As far as I know, the data is not available to the general public; although it would be interesting if OC Transpo decided to put it on the Web.)
A problem with the current system is that there is no way to tell, short of actually watching people, where a passenger boarding at, say, Hurdman Station came from. Was he a ‘walk-up’, or did she transfer from another bus; and if so, which bus? There are certainly ways of estimating, or guessing, that most of the people who left one bus would be a portion of the people who boarded another, but without directly observing them it is not a sure-thing. Without the whole-route information of each rider, it is difficult to say for sure that the people who alit from their bus on Rideau Street are the same people who boarded buses at the Mackenzie Station to go to Tunney’s Pasture. Thus creating ‘whole trip’ (or transfer-less) routes is a bit of a guessing game.
One method used to help plan more complete routes is Origin-Destination Surveys. Unfortunately, these surveys are voluntary and few riders take the time to complete them.
The PRESTO card provides an opportunity to gather Origin-Destination information on an on-going basis. If OC Transpo can get all PRESTO card users to ‘tap’ their cards when boarding, then those riders would leave a trail which spans transfers. The origin of the journey is easy to discern because it is the first ‘tap’ of the trip. The destination would be determined by the first ‘tap’ of the return trip, since there is no requirement to ‘tap’ when leaving a bus. (Most people will go to a location and later leave that location without doing much walking in between.) With the PRESTO card information, OC Transpo should be able to divine complete Origin-Destination information from many riders and better tailor the system to their needs.
Unfortunately, there are limitations to collecting data from the PRESTO card use. For one thing, a large number of riders will not have the PRESTO card; students will, for the foreseeable future, be using a (non-smart) student card, which can’t be tracked. Also, as described at the last Transit Commission meeting, OC Transpo would like ePass users to ‘Tap’ their PRESTO card, but they are not being forced to do so. Once the information gets out that ePass holders don’t need to ‘Tap’ it is likely that fewer people will do so if boarding by the rear doors. Seniors are being told NOT to ‘Tap’ their PRESTO card on Wednesdays, so that data will not be collected either.
And then there is the significant portion of passengers who currently ride the bus using cash or tickets to pay their fare. The idea is that some of the ticket users will switch to using a PRESTO card with an ePurse. Unfortunately, the remainder will switch to using cash, which will provide no full-route data. (In the past, OC Transpo tried the idea of collecting transfers and issuing new ones at each transfer. This did provide some information across a single transfer, but could not identify a start or end location, nor could it track a trip across multiple transfers. Also, all of the transfer information had to be manually input for evaluation and the transfer time-limit on a trip could not be enforced.)
Tickets were to be phased out with the introduction of the PRESTO card, but there was concern about the need for social groups to provide ‘free’ rides for their customers. (Currently they can hand out tickets, which in many cases are provided free by OC Transpo.) Not only was there the additional cost of $6.00 per PRESTO card, but the funds in an ePurse can be refunded upon request (less a service fee). Because of the technology involved, smart cards will probably not be cheap enough to be handed out free for single use, non-refundable, applications.
Although the PRESTO card readers installed on the buses and at the O-Train stations could have included an optional bar-code reader, this was not ordered by OC Transpo. Thus the option of replacing tickets with cheap bar-code tickets (which could also have been sold in vending machines or displayed on cell phones) is not possible. Until some other form of inexpensive alternative for tickets becomes available, tickets will remain; and I believe that this will be for a long while.
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