Hamilton Street Railway Perpetuating Cashless Society

We had a chance to interview Donald Hull- Director of Transit for City of Hamilton who told us that the HSR is working to eliminate paper fare media and move ALL their passengers to the PRESTO card and they will longer be issuing Senior paper tickets or Senior monthly passes but be offering that discount when people use a PRESTO card as of Jan 1 2013.

So this means people will still be able to pay cash/change to get on the bus but will no longer be able to purchase paper tickets or monthly bus passes from stores. There are still thousands of paper tickets and paper monthly passes available but the production of them has stopped which means once all the tickets and passes are used up there will be no more and everyone will have to get a PRESTO card if they plan on using transit in Hamilton. This means if you don’t have a PRESTO card you will ‘always’ have to pay $2.55 every ride and you will not be able to obtain monthly bus passes because it will only be available in digital format.

If you get a PRESTO card you only have to pay $2.00 and the only way to get a bus pass is to have a PRESTO card. Every time you get on a bus and tap the PRESTO card to get on it sends information back to a database which records every bus you were on and how long you were on it. The PRESTO card has the same type of chip as credit cards and debit cards.

We also had a chance to interview Gary McNeil- President of GO Transit. Mr. McNeil describes the PRESTO card as a convenient tool for people to use who are commuting back and forth on different transit systems because the PRESTO card works for the following transit companies:

GO Transit
Oakville Transit
Burlington Transit
Brampton Transit
MiWay (Mississauga Transit)
Hamilton Street Railway
York Region Transit/Viva
Durham Region Transit
OC Transpo (2012)

 

 

So this helps reduce time for individuals using multiple transit systems because they don’t have to buy individual transit tickets.

Mr. McNeil also informed us that the PRESTO card is just a ‘reaction’ to the coming cashless society after I brought up the subject of the Royal Canadian MINT chip. For full report please view video below:

FOR FULL INTERVIEW WITH GARY MCNEIL AND DONAL HULL PLEASE CLICK HERE

For information on how this will be interconnected to the Smart Grid please click HERE