A fundamental change is coming to subway stations across Toronto as the city begins removing fare gates that operated on an honours system to crack down on fare dodging, which the TTC calculates costs it north of $20 million every year.
Beginning this week, fare gates on Toronto’s shortest subway line that used to open automatically for riders will need a station assistant to verify the person using them is allowed.
The so-called no-tap gates are installed at stations across Toronto’s subway network to allow people with paper transfers or other exemptions to get into the station without tapping a debit, credit or Presto card. The TTC said, however, that the gates are also being used by thousands of riders who should have been paying the full fare.
In order to fight “unacceptable levels of fare cheating” across the system, the agency is beginning the years-long process of phasing the gates out.
“Collectors will be at the fare gates to manually open them for those who legitimately don’t need to pay, including children under 12, support persons, and those using paper bus transfers,” the TTC said in a social media post.
“Everyone else — those who should be paying to enter through these gates — will have to pay.”
The end of no-tap gates begins this week on the city’s Sheppard Line, according to the TTC. The line was selected because it is the smallest on the network and will allow the agency to essentially pilot the move before rolling it out to other routes and busier stations.
“It’s a smaller line, it’s a more contained line, it allows us to work out any problems that we encounter,” Stuart Green, TTC spokesperson, told Global News. “Some things that maybe we didn’t think of.”
Toronto’s no-tap gates are part of a broader problem the city has with fare evasion.
At many stations around the subway network, roads designed for buses to move in and out of stations are being exploited by people trying not to pay to ride.
As Global News previously witnessed at Eglinton station, some individuals walk parallel to the station and then duck in near the bus stop in the parking lot to access buses and the subway platform without entering through the front and paying.
“Trespassing and accessing the station through the bus bays without paying is dangerous and illegal,” wrote Adrian Grundy, a senior communications advisor at the TTC, after Global News watched and recorded riders entering the station without paying.
The TTC has previously acknowledged it has a problem on its hands, and not just at Eglinton station.
“A recent analysis of illegal bus bay entries and exits at TTC stations has found several hot spots, which are now subject to blitz deployments by TTC special constables,” Grundy added.
According to a report by the TTC’s audit risk and compliance department, losses from fare evasion more than doubled to $128.8 million in 2023 from $60.7 million in 2018.
The report showed the TTC lost most revenue from bus riders who didn’t pay: $67.1 million.
It lost $30.2 million from streetcar riders, while subway riders who did not pay their fare cost the TTC $26.5 million.
For the phase-out of no-tap gates to be complete and work smoothly across the city, Toronto will need to introduce tappable bus transfers to replace the paper slips currently in use.
Those, the city said, aren’t expected to be released until around 2026 and the process won’t be complete without them.
— with files from Global News’ Sean O’Shea and Matthew Bingley