The Many Valid Transit Fares in Toronto

The Toronto Transit Commission is quite unique in many ways – it operates solid overnight service (including – theoretically – sub-10 minute frequencies on some bus and streetcar routes, which most North American cities can’t even muster during the daytime), runs on the odd Toronto rail gauge, and really has some challenges opening new light rail on time. But what I didn’t realize until recently was how interesting the fare payment options are in Toronto.

Even though the PRESTO contactless payment card system has been in full use on transit in Ontario for over a decade, and contactless open-loop payments with credit cards is now readily available, the TTC still accepts many different types of fare media. This is quite different than my home transit system, LA Metro, which only accepts a TAP contactless card systemwide!

But somehow, I couldn’t find a comprehensive list of what is accepted as fare and what each accepted fare type looks like. So I decided to compile them all here, including going on some fun adventures to acquire the ones I don’t yet have 🙂

PRESTO Card & Contactless

PRESTO is Ontario’s unified contactless transit payment card. Outside of the TTC, it’s also used by many Greater Toronto Area transit agencies (GO Transit, York Region Transit, Mississauga’s MiWay, etc.) as well as Ottawa’s OC Transpo. They cost CA$4 each, but are free if added to Apple Pay or Google Wallet. They can be loaded with stored value, or monthly passes from various agencies, but not a day pass. There is no fare-capping. On Proof-of-Payment services, fare validation teams have PRESTO readers that can electronically validate whether a PRESTO card was tapped in.

PRESTO also includes contactless payment using any credit or debit card. I appreciate that PRESTO treats open-payment customers as first-class citizens: open-payment enjoys the same transaction monitoring, 2 hour transfer window, and discounted pricing (at least on TTC) as PRESTO card users.

There are quite a few different designs of PRESTO cards. All of them were limited to some extent (except for the early green colored cards). For instance, the gray and white “Toronto” PRESTO card was only available to people who preordered a ~$1500 Canada Goose jacket. Also, I think it’s quite cool that PRESTO cards include a Braille “P” on their faces, which makes them more usable for people with vision impairment, but also easier for all users to find in their wallet. Unfortunately, though, these Braille-embossed cards are only sold through PRESTO retail outlets, not in PRESTO fare vending machines.

An interesting feature I discovered is that PRESTO allows one “debt” trip if your card balance is at $0.00, but only if the card is a physical PRESTO card. Presumably this is because physical PRESTO cards cost $4, while virtual cards are free.

PRESTO Ticket

PRESTO tickets use the same contactless tap-to-pay system as PRESTO cards, but differ in many odd ways:

• They are single use
• There is no youth or senior discount
• Tickets expire 90 days after purchase, even if they were never used
• Tickets are the only way to obtain a day pass on the TTC (you cannot load a day pass onto a PRESTO card)
• Tickets are only available in 1-trip, 2-trip, or day pass variants
• Tickets do not benefit from the $0.05 fare discount that PRESTO cards get
• You can only purchase tickets at a PRESTO fare vending machine, not online
• As far as I know, the TTC is the only PRESTO agency that uses PRESTO tickets

I don’t really know what the point of a PRESTO ticket is, given that they are single use and cost more than just loading some funds on a PRESTO card (which now has a $0.05 minimum load amount). But I bought one at a subway station anyways, just to find out what it looks like 🙂

Streetcar Ticket

All Toronto streetcars have two payment machines. They are in the second and fourth segments of the train. These exist because the new Alstom Flexity streetcars place the streetcar operator in a sealed compartment, so they can no longer provide proof of payment (which is required on all TTC streetcar routes) for customers paying with cash or TTC token. The TTC felt that these elaborate machines were the best way to offer proof of payment for these customers… which seems like a very expensive solution for a relatively small problem…

To be fair, when the new Flexity streetcars were first rolled out in 2014, these machines were also used to provide paper proof of payment for customers using PRESTO. This was eliminated when PRESTO became capable of storing transfers in 2018.

The machines also used to accept credit and debit card payments, but no longer do because (apparently) the card readers would cause the machines to crash, so they were removed. You can still find some streetcars with machines bearing an obvious covering plate/decal where the card reader used to be.

After a lot of Googling, I couldn’t find a single picture online of a ticket issued by these payment machines. So, in true transit nerd fashion, I went out of my way to get some loonies and put them in one of the machines.

I think it’s pretty cool that the tickets show the location at which they were printed. I wonder how this works; does the ticket machine interface with the streetcar’s built-in GPS/route tracking features?

I found some information online saying that the tickets printed by the streetcar payment machines need to be validated using the red box next to the machine. This is false, these tickets don’t fit into the validators.

Subway Station Transfer

Subway stations also still accept cash and TTC token payments at entrances with a station collector’s booth. To allow these customers to transfer to other TTC services within 2 hours, most subway entrances have red machines that print a paper transfer ticket.

Again, customers paying with PRESTO don’t need to use this machine because PRESTO cards can now store transfers.

It’s quite interesting to note that the transfer rules are different if you use a paper subway transfer instead of a PRESTO transfer. Paper subway transfers are only valid for a one-way, contiguous trip, and are not valid at the station at which the transfer was obtained (so you can’t pay to enter a subway station, get a transfer, leave the station, then catch a bus at the station). In contrast, PRESTO transfers are valid for all trips within 2 hours of the first PRESTO tap, regardless of their direction or stop location.

Bus Transfer

Like on the subway and streetcar, buses also have paper transfers. You can get a bus transfer by asking a bus operator for one after paying, but sometimes they’ll say “no” in my experience, especially if you pay with PRESTO. I couldn’t find a bus operator that would give me a paper transfer, so I had to cheat for this picture.

These are pretty complicated to read. But the gist of it is that the left side of the transfer shows some important stops along the bus line, as well as the average time it takes to reach them from the top or bottom stop. For example, on the right-side transfer (the 85 Sheppard East one), the paper shows that Don Mills station is 18 minutes away from Sheppard station when travelling “down” (i.e., towards Rouge Hill). Similarly, the Toronto Zoo is 12 minutes away from Rouge Hill when travelling “up” (i.e., towards Sheppard station).

The right side of the transfer with all the numbers is where the bus operator can make tears to indicate when the transfer was issued and when it expires. Bus transfer rules are similar to subway transfers; they are only valid for a one-way, contiguous trip.

I’ve seen some talk online that the “zone” number doesn’t matter, but this is not true! From the TTC themselves, TTC’s connecting agencies (namely York Regional Transit and Mississauga MiWay) don’t accept paper bus transfers unless the “zone 3” box is punched.

TTC Tokens, Tickets, and Day Passes

These are legacy fare media that the TTC has accepted essentially since it was established ~102 years ago. Unlike most transit agencies in North America, the TTC still accepts them as payment, but is planning to phase them out in June 2025 (pushed back from the original date of December 2024). Retailers and fare vending machines stopped selling these forms of payment between 2022 and 2023.

These legacy day passes don’t work the same way as a typical day pass. These passes weren’t valid during the morning rush hour on weekdays until 2006. However, they have always served as fare payment for an entire group of people on weekends and holidays.

Like paying with cash, customers using these forms of payment must obtain a paper transfer. The exception is using a ticket on a streetcar; there are validators in each streetcar that stamp the ticket with the current date and time. Then, the ticket itself serves as proof of payment.

Metropass

The Metropass was replaced by PRESTO in late 2018, when it became possible to add a 12-month pass to a PRESTO card. Before then, the Metropass was, for most of its history, a thin plastic card that could be swiped on subway faregates. Metropasses were only week or month passes, not 1-day or single-ride fares. There used to be some interesting Metropasses that combined fares for GO Transit, the TTC, and other Greater Toronto Area transit agencies.

In 2005, Metropasses became transferable between people. By 2006, there were automated Metropass vending machines that dispensed week and month passes. There was also a “Metropass Discount Program”, which was a 12 month agreement offering discounts on monthly Metropasses, similar to how today’s PRESTO annual pass system works. This worked by mailing a new Metropass to each customer for every month. Each of these Metropasses had a different design, so these passes would’ve been an amazing collector’s item!

You can buy a framed set for $225 (!) on TTCShop.ca.

Since the introduction of PRESTO and new faregates, Metropass vending machines and readers are all gone from the TTC system.

Others

There are two other payment methods on TTC I’ve found. These are the Support Person Assistance Card and CNIB transit card.

The Support Person Assistance Card allows customers with disabilities to have a support person accompany them on the TTC for free. Interestingly, these cards are tied to the “person who needs support, versus the person providing the support”. This means that the support person shouldn’t pay with PRESTO or some other method. Instead, the person requiring support pays normally, then shows the assistance card to grant their support person entrance to the TTC system.

On the other hand, the CNIB transit card is issued by CNIB, giving people with blindness unlimited free travel on the TTC. It’s separate from the CNIB ID card that CNIB issues to people with blindness. This card functions like a PRESTO card – it can be tapped on PRESTO readers to enter the TTC system. I couldn’t find a high-quality picture of this card online either 🙁

Hopefully I didn’t miss anything in this post – if I did, please do let me know! 🙂