PRESTOdigitation
May. 19th, 2026 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterI'm back from Toronto, where I attended the Bony Blithe mystery convention, saw Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung in conversation at TIFF Lightbox and did a bit of a bookstore crawl too. But in this particular entry, I'm going to focus on public transit: getting there, getting back and in between: getting around Toronto.
With VIA Rail, it was a minor miracle: the train got into Toronto's Union Station only about ten or fifteen minutes late on Thursday afternoon. Getting back to Ottawa Sunday afternoon, the train was actually five to ten minutes EARLY!! And with quite a bit of recent train travel, I've moved up to the second tier, Privilege, for travel rewards. So definitely no complaints there.
Now for the intra-city transit part. Back around 2013, OC Transpo here in Ottawa started moving away from bus tickets, cash fares and paper bus passes towards plastic cards known as PRESTO passes, where you load what you need onto that one little plastic card. There were definitely some growing pains with my card malfunctioning regularly and needing to be replaced. But the card I've had since 2016 has been reliable. I've got it on autoload so when my account dips below a certain amount, more money is loaded on to the card and billed to my credit card.
What's great is that I can also use my PRESTO card in Toronto. No more fussing about with subway tokens. But as for autoload ... well, turns out there's a problem. When I scanned my card at College Station, the machine made a rude noise at me and displayed that there was only 46 cents left on my card. Annoyed but undeterred, I proceeded to the machines where you can load more money onto a card. The instructions looked fairly straightforward: put your PRESTO card here, stick your money in there ... it was kind of an impatient machine though, kept asking me if I needed more time, to which I responded in the affirmative.
Well. I inserted a $20 bill, which the machine eagerly sucked in. OK. Problem was, the display still kept insisting there was only $00.46 on my card. And there didn't seem to be any coin- or bill-return button. So I enlisted the help of one of the orange-vested TTC folks.
He suggested we try the machine next to it. I took another $20 out of my wallet and he guided me through the process. "Are you sure it's not going to just swallow my $20 again?" I asked.
He assured me it wouldn't and indeed, the process worked fine. He then guided me back to the first machine and somehow called up a log of the most recent transactions there. And managed to get the machine to regurgitate the $20 I'd inserted a few minutes earlier.
So I guess somehow the autoload doesn't work if you're in a different city? I'll have to look into that.
Anyhow, I've found the subway in Toronto to be generally much more efficient than our poor beleaguered LRT here at home. But of course, it still has its service disruptions, for ongoing construction, labour disputes, and whatever else you get in the big city. And now they've shipped their former CEO Rick Leary to Ottawa to deal with our mess here.
Before checking out of my hotel on Sunday morning, I checked the TTC site to get an idea of what to expect.
I noted that there was no subway running northbound between College and Eglinton, but the southbound trains to Union Station looked to be running normally.
Except they weren't. At the turnstiles, TTC people were redirecting everyone back upstairs to board shuttle buses. Now, the phrase "replacement buses" strikes fear into the heart of every Ottawan who regularly deals with disruptions to our LRT service. And when you've got baggage to deal with - the physical as well as the psychological kind - that doesn't bode well. After a short wait, one single bus arrived that was standing room only. Now, if you're good with math, you'll have figured out that one bus doesn't carry quite as many people as one Toronto subway train with however many cars they usually have.
Some kind soul offered me their seat. I made it to the station with plenty of time to spare, and got to relax in the Business Lounge with a glass of cold juice before it was time to board my train.
And the rest is history.
With VIA Rail, it was a minor miracle: the train got into Toronto's Union Station only about ten or fifteen minutes late on Thursday afternoon. Getting back to Ottawa Sunday afternoon, the train was actually five to ten minutes EARLY!! And with quite a bit of recent train travel, I've moved up to the second tier, Privilege, for travel rewards. So definitely no complaints there.
Now for the intra-city transit part. Back around 2013, OC Transpo here in Ottawa started moving away from bus tickets, cash fares and paper bus passes towards plastic cards known as PRESTO passes, where you load what you need onto that one little plastic card. There were definitely some growing pains with my card malfunctioning regularly and needing to be replaced. But the card I've had since 2016 has been reliable. I've got it on autoload so when my account dips below a certain amount, more money is loaded on to the card and billed to my credit card.
What's great is that I can also use my PRESTO card in Toronto. No more fussing about with subway tokens. But as for autoload ... well, turns out there's a problem. When I scanned my card at College Station, the machine made a rude noise at me and displayed that there was only 46 cents left on my card. Annoyed but undeterred, I proceeded to the machines where you can load more money onto a card. The instructions looked fairly straightforward: put your PRESTO card here, stick your money in there ... it was kind of an impatient machine though, kept asking me if I needed more time, to which I responded in the affirmative.
Well. I inserted a $20 bill, which the machine eagerly sucked in. OK. Problem was, the display still kept insisting there was only $00.46 on my card. And there didn't seem to be any coin- or bill-return button. So I enlisted the help of one of the orange-vested TTC folks.
He suggested we try the machine next to it. I took another $20 out of my wallet and he guided me through the process. "Are you sure it's not going to just swallow my $20 again?" I asked.
He assured me it wouldn't and indeed, the process worked fine. He then guided me back to the first machine and somehow called up a log of the most recent transactions there. And managed to get the machine to regurgitate the $20 I'd inserted a few minutes earlier.
So I guess somehow the autoload doesn't work if you're in a different city? I'll have to look into that.
Anyhow, I've found the subway in Toronto to be generally much more efficient than our poor beleaguered LRT here at home. But of course, it still has its service disruptions, for ongoing construction, labour disputes, and whatever else you get in the big city. And now they've shipped their former CEO Rick Leary to Ottawa to deal with our mess here.
Before checking out of my hotel on Sunday morning, I checked the TTC site to get an idea of what to expect.
I noted that there was no subway running northbound between College and Eglinton, but the southbound trains to Union Station looked to be running normally.
Except they weren't. At the turnstiles, TTC people were redirecting everyone back upstairs to board shuttle buses. Now, the phrase "replacement buses" strikes fear into the heart of every Ottawan who regularly deals with disruptions to our LRT service. And when you've got baggage to deal with - the physical as well as the psychological kind - that doesn't bode well. After a short wait, one single bus arrived that was standing room only. Now, if you're good with math, you'll have figured out that one bus doesn't carry quite as many people as one Toronto subway train with however many cars they usually have.
Some kind soul offered me their seat. I made it to the station with plenty of time to spare, and got to relax in the Business Lounge with a glass of cold juice before it was time to board my train.
And the rest is history.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-19 03:58 pm (UTC)Don't talk to me abour replacement buses!
https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/1805154.html
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-20 12:11 am (UTC)