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Globe: Toronto transit halts sales of tokens to stop hoarding

I’ve been playing with this $45,000 per day loss figure that showed up in today’s article. Obviously, these are future losses, as the TTC is not losing anything until the fare hike takes effect on January 3rd. So some interesting (maybe?) number crunching here:

• Given that the TTC would be losing 25 cents per token, then that means the TTC is estimating that approximately 180,000 tokens sold are being hoarded daily ($45,000 / 0.25).
• If this 180,000 is 20% above what is typically sold, this means about 900,000 are sold daily “normally”, with total sales of 1,080,000 sold daily.
• There are 40 days left until January 2, the day before the fare hike.
• The TTC has a total supply of 40 million tokens.

Something does not add up. The TTC continues to use the main line of “dangerously low” token supplies - an argument that makes no sense based on the numbers above. If only 180,000 are hoarded a day, it would take 222 days to deplete the supply of 40,000,000 tokens. Even if 180,000 tokens have been hoarded daily since November 6th, when the first token restrictions went into effect, that means 10.3-million hoarded tokens by January 2nd, leaving the TTC with a supply of 29.7-million (minus a couple million that may be lost somewhere).

And all of this completely ignores the fact that people use their tokens. With 1.5-million riders daily, approximately 600,000 are Metropass rides, leaving 900,000 rides on cash and token. That’s more than enough to replenish the daily estimate of 180,000 tokens being hoarded.

The TTC must stop using dwindling token supplies as the reason for this fare foolery. Whether or not these changes are justifiable by the numbers, be up front and honest about why customers are being continuously confused and inconvenienced by all these changes.

EDIT: Come to think of it, if the TTC sold 7.2 million hoarded tokens between now and January 2, that’s $16.2-million in revenue they’re gaining without having to provide the service. That has got to be worth something, no?