Presto: Technology Adoption in the Transportation Sector
Often when discussing the future of urban transportation, the idea that car travel will become less popular is at the top of the agenda for most urban and regional planners. Conversely, for the average citizen the freedom and independence provided by private automobile ownership trumps the societal benefits of public transportation. Ultimately, individual freedom is the core principle on which car ownership stands and thrives.
Even so, the reality for most large, urbanized settlements is one in which the intensification of development combined with increases in population density necessitates a concentration on the expansion of multiple forms of transportation. Both public and private modes of transportation require attention from citizens in order for cities to thrive. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by government policy at all levels.
For the Greater Golden Horseshoe Area of Ontario (external link, opens in new window) , these policies (external link, opens in new window) are in place (external link, opens in new window) and continue to evolve. With that being said, the finer details of making these lofty goals a reality involves the types of technologies that Adopt-IT studies in detail.
The Presto Card (external link, opens in new window) is a perfect example of the use of technology that attempts to enable the types of transportation policies discussed above. A focus group event held in part by Adopt-IT revealed that, as with any Big Data and Analytics (opens in new window) related technology, there are both barriers to the expansion of Presto’s capabilities and opportunities for the program to improve the region’s connectivity.
As a division of the Metrolinx (external link, opens in new window) Crown agency, representatives from Presto provided examples of some of the issues the government is concerned with. First, an explanation of Presto’s data collection capabilities is necessary to understand where both the barriers to adoption and opportunities for growth arise.
The extent of the Presto program’s data collection at the time of the focus group was such that “tap data” was being collected all across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) and Ottawa. Tap data provides an indicator of a rider’s entry a Presto enabled vehicle (at the time of the focus group, only GO Transit vehicles were able to track when passengers exited). Additionally, tap data provides information on the route and provides longitudinal indicators of how often a rider travels. At the time of the focus group the monetization of tap data was inhibited by low data quality, a lack demographic data, and a lack of data consent policies.
With that being said, the primary barrier to adoption that arose in the focus group related directly to privacy issues (opens in new window) and the expansion of data collection capabilities to include riders’ demographic information. Relatedly, the notion that data security is paramount in the use of technology was implied through the extreme example of abuse of ridership data for terrorist activity.
Data encryption was directly referred to as a method for controlling potential privacy and security breaches. It was also brought up that individual card holders should be given the option to opt out of having their tap data collected. What this boils down to is a perfect opportunity to implement the principles of privacy by design (external link, opens in new window) . Given how ubiquitous the Presto system is planned to become in the City of Toronto (external link, opens in new window) , privacy by design should be a core component of the technology’s evolution.
During the focus group, one representative provided the idea that Presto was still at the stage of “crawling” within the metaphor of a child learning to walk. This seems like a reassuring notion implying that at the time there was (and likely still is) time for the agency to take these privacy issues into account as it grows its data collection capabilities.
On a positive note, one of the primary implications of Presto’s data collection is for the improvement of transit planning. For example, the completion of transit expansions could be sped up through the analysis of routing after analyzing tap data. If stakeholders understand the way that travel will be affected by changes to routes, there are opportunities improved logistical coordination.
Even more optimistically, if the technology becomes popular enough it may be a major factor in the mitigation of car use and the improvement of the region’s transit culture! Until then the rollout of the Presto system in Toronto is continuing at relatively slow pace and has faced issues related to the transactions (external link, opens in new window) made by transit users trying to load their cards. While the system is currently available on all of the city’s streetcars, the city’s buses and subway entrances haven’t yet adopted the technology. Additionally, it appears that purchasing a Presto card in person is more difficult (external link, opens in new window) than one would hope. One can hope that once the system is fully in place it will eventually operate at a high enough level that the pros of its use will outweigh the cons.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has an undergraduate degree in Urban and Regional Planning and does not own a car. However, he does have a ZipCar membership and enjoys going for drives around the outskirts of Toronto from time to time.
