Fare Dispute: No Transfer ticket!

It is about half-past seven Saturday morning.

I board the 35 bus, Jane Street northbound, showing my transfer ticket as I board.

Jane Street subway station is one of many where you need a transfer to board the buses.

The young chap ahead of me is called back by the driver, who spends about two, perhaps three minutes explaining that one may not board a bus at Jane without a ticket or a transfer.

Doubtless the youngster has been following the brouhaha at Bathurst Street subway station (“ Heated clash breaks out on TTC streetcar between passengers and driver ”), for he wound up his end of the conversation with “So, are you going to throw me off the bus?”.

As a conscientious fare-paying passenger I side with the driver, because it seems to me that the lad is old enough to know better, and if he’s savvy enough to know about standing up to call the driver’s bluff, he’s old enough to know about transfer tickets.

As a well-traveled user of the transit systems in Australia, England, France and the USA, I side with the passenger. If you are new to the system, the system, any system can be bewildering. (I remember back in October 1982 stuffing my first transfer into the fare box of a streetcar, and hearing the muttered curse of the driver!).

So what does it mean if I support both sides of the argument (to different degrees, but both sides none the less)?

When neither side is wholly right, nor wholly wrong, it means that the problem lies outside the two aggrieved parties.

A better way of handling this, reducing incidence of the driver-fare-disputes, is for the TTC to nail, screw, or glue HUGE signs above the transfer ticket dispensers saying “TAKE A TRANSFER – ALWAYS”, and to instruct bus and streetcar drivers to foist (literally! “take in the hand (or fist)”) transfers as people board the bus.

It won’t stop the smart-arse teenagers looking for new ways to bait bus drivers, but it is a cost-effective way of defusing many honest situations.

P.S. OK another huge sign at every entry-point to the system “Make sure you have a transfer”.

P.P.S. When I took the trains out of Paris in 1978-1980, failure to produce a ticket resulted in the police waiting for you at the next station, and the train stopped and waited while the conductor handed the miscreants over to the police and they recorded the details. Harsh? Maybe, but word soon gets around, and my friends and colleagues early on cautioned me to make sure I always had a ticket before I boarded any mode of public transit.

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