I'm late to the party here, but I was reading this morning about how New York City recently completed the rollout of its One Metro New York (OMNY) fare payment system. What this does is allow you to use contactless payment systems, like Apple Pay, to get on the subway. ONMY is now available across the five boroughs on every bus and at all 472 subway stations (feel free to impress your friends at virtual parties with this stat).
Metrolinx here in Toronto is similarly piloting contactless payments on the Union Pearson Express. You now have the option of tapping a credit card, a phone, or a watch. Maybe this doesn't seem like such a big deal, but I still remember when the PRESTO payment card was first rolled out -- it felt late to me. Apple added near-field communication (NFC) to iPhone in 2014, and at that point I think it was fairly obvious that standalone payment cards wouldn't be around much longer.
I'm late to the party here, but I was reading this morning about how New York City recently completed the rollout of its One Metro New York (OMNY) fare payment system. What this does is allow you to use contactless payment systems, like Apple Pay, to get on the subway. ONMY is now available across the five boroughs on every bus and at all 472 subway stations (feel free to impress your friends at virtual parties with this stat).
Metrolinx here in Toronto is similarly piloting contactless payments on the Union Pearson Express. You now have the option of tapping a credit card, a phone, or a watch. Maybe this doesn't seem like such a big deal, but I still remember when the PRESTO payment card was first rolled out -- it felt late to me. Apple added near-field communication (NFC) to iPhone in 2014, and at that point I think it was fairly obvious that standalone payment cards wouldn't be around much longer.
That time has arrived for New York City and will be hopefully arriving shortly for Toronto. And I think it will be particularly useful for tourists who may not have a Metrocard (NYC) or PRESTO card (Toronto) and just want to jump on a train. I've only taken the subway a handful of times during this pandemic, but I'll be back at it once the world fully resumes. And I definitely can't wait to take the UP Express to the airport again (and
This morning on my way into the office I ran into a friend who lives in my building (downtown). She works in midtown and so I asked her how she gets into the office. She told me that she either takes the subway or an Uber, but that increasingly she has been taking Uber, particularly on the way home.
We then started talking costs and she told me that what she does is carpool with a friend from work using UberPOOL. They live nearby and so what they do is leave from the same place at night (the office) and then select a midpoint location between their homes for the drop-off. After splitting their portion of the fare, the ride costs her about $3.25.
As she was telling me this, I couldn’t help but think to myself: Wow, this is massively disruptive to transit. That is the same cost as taking the subway. So why take transit? With the subway, there may be a speed argument in certain instances, but that certainly wouldn’t be the case with some of Toronto’s streetcar lines (such as the King line). It’s faster to walk.
However, there are obviously geographic limits to how far you can go in an UberPOOL before your costs greatly exceed taking transit. But as Uber and other similar services continue to bring down the price of a ride (eventually the labor cost component will disappear), how big does that area get?
All of this – including my own mobility patterns – has got me thinking yet again about the role of transit in the city of tomorrow.
One segment that continues to be underserved is the regional scale. Here in the Greater Toronto Area, we are working on that by transforming our commuter rail service into a two-way all-day Regional Express Rail service. Today that strikes me as being hugely valuable. And unless driverless vehicles somehow solve our traffic problem, it will likely remain that way.
I would love to get your thoughts in the comments below.
That time has arrived for New York City and will be hopefully arriving shortly for Toronto. And I think it will be particularly useful for tourists who may not have a Metrocard (NYC) or PRESTO card (Toronto) and just want to jump on a train. I've only taken the subway a handful of times during this pandemic, but I'll be back at it once the world fully resumes. And I definitely can't wait to take the UP Express to the airport again (and
This morning on my way into the office I ran into a friend who lives in my building (downtown). She works in midtown and so I asked her how she gets into the office. She told me that she either takes the subway or an Uber, but that increasingly she has been taking Uber, particularly on the way home.
We then started talking costs and she told me that what she does is carpool with a friend from work using UberPOOL. They live nearby and so what they do is leave from the same place at night (the office) and then select a midpoint location between their homes for the drop-off. After splitting their portion of the fare, the ride costs her about $3.25.
As she was telling me this, I couldn’t help but think to myself: Wow, this is massively disruptive to transit. That is the same cost as taking the subway. So why take transit? With the subway, there may be a speed argument in certain instances, but that certainly wouldn’t be the case with some of Toronto’s streetcar lines (such as the King line). It’s faster to walk.
However, there are obviously geographic limits to how far you can go in an UberPOOL before your costs greatly exceed taking transit. But as Uber and other similar services continue to bring down the price of a ride (eventually the labor cost component will disappear), how big does that area get?
All of this – including my own mobility patterns – has got me thinking yet again about the role of transit in the city of tomorrow.
One segment that continues to be underserved is the regional scale. Here in the Greater Toronto Area, we are working on that by transforming our commuter rail service into a two-way all-day Regional Express Rail service. Today that strikes me as being hugely valuable. And unless driverless vehicles somehow solve our traffic problem, it will likely remain that way.
I would love to get your thoughts in the comments below.
This morning I saw this tweet about Toronto streetcar advertising. The author has a “big problem” with public transit being fully wrapped in ads and so she decided to tweet her local Councillor to see if these could be somehow limited in size.
My first thought was: I wonder how many people would accept higher fares in exchange for fewer/no advertising. Is this something people care about? Because personally, I’ll take the lower fares in exchange for someone trying to monetize my attention. I mean, every social network I use is already selling my attention off as their product.
But then this got me thinking about what the actual numbers look like. So let’s look at some of those for not only Toronto, but also for Hong Kong, since many people view that as the gold standard as far transit authorities go.
For the year ending December 31, 2016, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) posted a total operating revenue of $1.204 billion. This represents about 41% of total revenue – the rest comes from subsidies.
If you drill down into operating revenue, advertising makes up $28 million or about 2.33% of total operating revenue. So a pretty small number. If you tried to shift this number over to “passenger services” revenue (transit fares), it actually wouldn’t increase fares by that much. But presumably fares are already at some profit maximizing number.
Switching to Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, their numbers have to be unpacked a little differently because the group has a number of diverse business lines, including property development.
For the year ending December 31, 2016, total revenue from Hong Kong Transport Operations was HK$17.655 billion (almost all fare revenue). Advertising falls within the Hong Kong Station Commercial Businesses group and that company posted revenues of HK$5.544 billion for the same time period.
To try and create some sort of comparison, I’m ignoring all of the other segments within MTR.
Within Station Commercial Businesses, advertising revenue alone makes up HK$1.09 billion or about 20% of that group’s total revenue. The rest comes from station retail rent (the biggest chunk), telecom, and some miscellaneous station income.
If you add up Transport Operations and Station Commercial Businesses, total revenue was HK$23,199 billion for the year ending 2016. Advertising comprises about 4.70% of this – so more than double that of Toronto.
It’s also worth noting that MTR’s station retail rental revenue is about 3.4x that of its advertising revenue. In the case of Toronto, the TTC actually makes more money off advertising than it does from “Property Rental.” I’ve always thought this was a missed opportunity. Transit and land use go hand in hand.
In any event, I’m far less fussed about advertising on transit. But what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.
This morning I saw this tweet about Toronto streetcar advertising. The author has a “big problem” with public transit being fully wrapped in ads and so she decided to tweet her local Councillor to see if these could be somehow limited in size.
My first thought was: I wonder how many people would accept higher fares in exchange for fewer/no advertising. Is this something people care about? Because personally, I’ll take the lower fares in exchange for someone trying to monetize my attention. I mean, every social network I use is already selling my attention off as their product.
But then this got me thinking about what the actual numbers look like. So let’s look at some of those for not only Toronto, but also for Hong Kong, since many people view that as the gold standard as far transit authorities go.
For the year ending December 31, 2016, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) posted a total operating revenue of $1.204 billion. This represents about 41% of total revenue – the rest comes from subsidies.
If you drill down into operating revenue, advertising makes up $28 million or about 2.33% of total operating revenue. So a pretty small number. If you tried to shift this number over to “passenger services” revenue (transit fares), it actually wouldn’t increase fares by that much. But presumably fares are already at some profit maximizing number.
Switching to Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, their numbers have to be unpacked a little differently because the group has a number of diverse business lines, including property development.
For the year ending December 31, 2016, total revenue from Hong Kong Transport Operations was HK$17.655 billion (almost all fare revenue). Advertising falls within the Hong Kong Station Commercial Businesses group and that company posted revenues of HK$5.544 billion for the same time period.
To try and create some sort of comparison, I’m ignoring all of the other segments within MTR.
Within Station Commercial Businesses, advertising revenue alone makes up HK$1.09 billion or about 20% of that group’s total revenue. The rest comes from station retail rent (the biggest chunk), telecom, and some miscellaneous station income.
If you add up Transport Operations and Station Commercial Businesses, total revenue was HK$23,199 billion for the year ending 2016. Advertising comprises about 4.70% of this – so more than double that of Toronto.
It’s also worth noting that MTR’s station retail rental revenue is about 3.4x that of its advertising revenue. In the case of Toronto, the TTC actually makes more money off advertising than it does from “Property Rental.” I’ve always thought this was a missed opportunity. Transit and land use go hand in hand.
In any event, I’m far less fussed about advertising on transit. But what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.
