Silician Sketchbook

What time was it? 1:30 PM or thereabouts. It was drizzling somewhat and there just happened to be a streetcar going in the right direction (a rarity) so I took it to College and Yonge. Outside of College Park, on the southwest corner of the intersection was an ambulance, and on the way into the subway station, I heard someone say, “Move to the right. Move to the right, please.”

A man on a stretcher was being pushed by some paramedics, surrounded by some police officers, a firefighter (maybe), and a man in a maroon TTC uniform. The man on the stretcher may have had an oxygen mask on him, I’m not sure. I didn’t feel compelled to stare.

“Is he alive?” a man asked to no one in particular.

“I don’t know,” quipped someone in the group.

I would think that, at least at that moment, he was alive, although it might just be that he can’t be placed into a body bag until pronounced dead by a coroner. I don’t know the answer to that, but I do think I would be weirded out by the notion of passing by a dead man on my way home.

A few weeks before that, I was on my way home, having gotten on the subway in rush hour at Queen’s Park and gone round the loop. Approaching College station, I overheard something on the driver’s radio about a possible heart attack victim. At the station, a small crowd had gathered, presumably around the victim. One of the passengers boarding said, “Poor guy.”

The only other subway incident that I was in the vicinity of occurred at Queen’s Park station in the early afternoon. As I was going taking the north entrance into the station, a woman was telling everyone that the station was closed, that “someone jumped in front of the subway.”

Police surrounded and denied access to the station’s turnstiles, and when I surfaced on the south side of College street, there were two ambulances, some firetrucks and police cars outside the westbound streetcar stop. At the eastbound streetcar stop the same woman was telling others that the station was closed, adding, “Usually they do this during rush hour.” I boarded the streetcar and headed to College station.

On the subway, a public announcement informed all users of the Yonge-University-Spadina line that, due to a “track level personal injury” at Queen’s Park station. the entire University branch between Spadina and Union was shut down. Note that track level is not the same as platform level.

What I thought to be a relative certainty, isn’t. Union station was out of, or not selling, tokens on the way to class and on the way home. Paradoxically, Queen’s Park station was selling tokens so I purchased my allotted five tokens and went to class. Of course, they were completely sold out around 5:30 pm, but so was Union station!

On the other hand, Finch station, which hasn’t been selling tokens at 6:30 pm for a while now, suddenly begins selling them with a ten token cap.

This could be indicative of supply-side problems, or that the TTC is changing high volume sites in an attempt to be fair to passengers while disrupting hoarders. And then there’s the possibility that it’s all dependent on when the staff decide to empty the turnstiles of their tokens.

So anyone that has to take the TTC should know by now that there is a fare hike coming in November. While the cash fare will remain where it is at $2.75, tickets and tokens will go up $0.15 to $2.25 and the monthly Metropass price is going up $9.25 to $109. Related to the upcoming increase is attempts by the TTC to curtail token hoarding.

I haven’t been a regular TTC user for so long as to have experienced a previous fare increase, so the first question that came to mind was, Why tokens? They’re priced the same, so there should be no difference, right?

The short answer is, Tickets are easy to print. It’s not in the TTC’s best interests to honour tokens that are purchased prior to previous fare hikes, but short of upgrading every automated turnstile, there is nothing they can do. As an aside, they actually did upgrade the token infrastructure due to counterfeiting and the fact that American dimes did surprisingly well masquerading as tokens.

Tickets can’t be used for automated turnstiles, so they can be refused when presented to an operator. For those stuck with old tickets, there will come a point when the TTC will offer to refund them for their book value, or you can just pay $0.15 in addition to the old ticket [PDF] during a one-month grace period. I think that the optimal solution is to buy tokens now and refund the old tickets later.

If you happen to be a University of Toronto student, good news! A Metropass will continue to cost $87.75 for the rest of the year. For me, however, I can’t justify the cost of a Metropass – discounted or otherwise – for December since I won’t be commuting for a week, maybe two. And so I joined the ranks of would-be token hoarders.

My main entry and exit points tend to be Finch, College, and Queen’s Park stations. From my experience, tokens are only sold during rush hour. Specifically, I see them on sale at Finch around 9:30 am, and at the other stations around 5:00 pm. When I pass through on my way to class in the early afternoon, there is a red sign that says, Tokens are currently unavailable. Please buy tickets. It’s either that, or tokens are sold out (there’s a sign for that, too). Staring out the subway window at stations that have platform-level fare collector booths (Dundas and Queen stations), red signs are also present during the early afternoon.

You’ll be pleased to know that token machines at Finch, College, and Queen’s Park are either:

• Out of order
• Selling one token at a time for the cash fare price of $2.75

Where you can buy tokens in the afternoon is at Union station. I prefer Union because I’m not in a rush to get home. It adds about 10-15 minutes to my commute to class as I’m taking the long away around, but I usually take this path anyway, for reasons I may mention later.

As mentioned previously, token sales are limited to 10 tokens at a time. What isn’t mentioned is that Finch station only lets you buy 5 at a time. There are functioning token machines at Union but they only accept $10 bills and dispense 4 tokens plus change, so unless you’re in a hurry it’s better to just wait in line and buy your 10.