New fare gates coming to the TTC this February

The days of the old school turnstile are numbered at the TTC. With plans to roll out PRESTO across the system, the Commission and Metrolinx (who is managing PRESTO implementation) has been seriously investigating modern fare gates since 2014 and finally awarded a contract to Scheidt & Bachmann (S&B) for the instalment of the first wave of this infrastructure in February.

An agreement for 60 of these fare gates has already been reached via Metrolinx, with an additional 450 part of the the next stage of the roll out. Ultimately, the TTC needs about 1,100 of these fare gates to replace all existing fare-entry infrastructure, the installation of which would ideally coincide with the retirement of traditional fare media like tokens and tickets sometime in 2017.

Much of the existing fare-entry infrastructure in TTC subway stations is terribly dated and requires laborious upkeep to fight the effects of corrosion. And while the nostalgic side of me likes that you can enter through a turnstile that dates back to the opening of the subway in the 1950s, it's high time for large scale modernization of this part of the system.

We won't have to wait too long to try these new gates out, though. Given the initial agreement for 60, the first ones will start to be installed in about two months time. Perhaps this will provide extra incentive for transit riders to adopt PRESTO, as the target for a complete roll out on surface vehicles is the end of 2016.

In other words, by the end of next year, the TTC will have finally arrived in the present.

Images via the TTC and Toronto Archives.