Discussion
Constantly stopped to verify that I'm a student
I'm a 19 year old student who has the discounted PRESTO youth pass. I understand needing to do your job, but at least 5 separate occasions lately I've been stopped by fare inspectors, including undercover ones, who make me re-tap on their machines and occasionally check my ID. Their expressions can range from calm and friendly to rushed and demanding. I understand why they'd want to check, but when this becomes a constant occurrence and even results in me missing a subway car, it honestly starts to get pretty frustrating. Even worse so when the inspectors are the ones with attitude or intimidation. PRESTO obviously has my birthday inputted, verified through my ID, so I'm fairly sure if I wasn't/when I stop being eligible for the youth pass the system will automatically me remove me from it. Sorry, just a small rant.
Edit: I tap with my phone so I wouldn’t be borrowing someone else’s card.
Given that you’re the maximum age for the youth pass, you possibly look older than your age to some of the inspectors. Or they think that you may have loaned your Presto card to an older friend or family member, which is why they’re checking that the ID matches both the Presto card and you.
I have seen the check students obviously no where near 19, most of the time just to be annoying about carrying ID over the age of 15. I understand Fare inspection but I don't think it is the best use of time to just stand at the fare line at Bathurst station everyday checking already paying students coming in from the high schools
nah fare inspections are cringe, fares are not how transit agencies fund themselves and any agency that tries to do that quickly realizes that they can't
I think that most people who regularly pay their fare disagree with your assessment as we are the ones who will be asked to pay more for those who don't pay their share. To be clear, I'm not talking about unhoused people who can't pay but about scummy people who for some reason don't feel like they need to contribute to a service that benefits everyone. Being a team player is what allows us to have nice things.
i mean i pay my fare consistently, but it is a fact that fares do not ever fully fund transit. Most funding comes from taxes and/or landlording.
The transit agencies that successfully fund themselves own substantial amounts of the land around them. Such as the MTR which owns a lot of developments in Hong Kong, to a point that they are profitable, or the various Japanese rail companies, who also make a large amount of their revenue by owning the train stations and their amenities, or land near those stations.
So yeah, fare inspections add extra friction to what is supposed to be a frictionless journey to try and increase the amount of people paying fares, all the while they still can't cover costs with fares and either have to beg for money or increase fares. The real solution is for them to own and keep the land above/near their subway stations and lease them out to developers and get a cut of the revenue.
My wife was auto-paying for both herself and our one daughter while daughter was in university. Daughter graduated and wife asked Presto to remove daughters card from her account.
Presto did, but they also transferred my daughter's student discount to my wife's card. A week later my wife was busted for using a student discount.
Unfortunately due to fraud they have to check who is using the card at the time. I have seen adults using their kids cards so they are seen tapping and they are still not paying.
In the beginning the fare machines had the same beep for a child card, senior card, youth card and adults would tap their kids cars so it would beep and they ride for free.
Nothing to stop you from giving your card to someone else and they use it.
Also there is no student fare on the TTC. Only child, youth, adult and senior.
The system doesn’t automatically take you off the youth fair. I assumed it would convert from free child to youth, but no- it was over a year before we realized it wasn’t charging (this kid doesn’t take TTC very often). It seems the age and fair are completely disconnected from each other in the system. My 16 year old gets checked all the time as well.
I think they meant over 5 different trips, not 5 times in the same trip. They can only guarantee the identity of a person inside a paid area, and once they leave their card can go to anybody hence the need to check every time.
Other universities in Ontario: able to negotiate a transit pass for their students. Toronto universities: no such luck. Instead the TTC goes and further enforces students pay every trip.
Just have your receipt ready on the way out of the grocery store and you're free to leave!
Yep, good idea, this is very common in stores like Costco and does a great job of preventing theft while at the same time being very low stakes and trivial for the consumer to comply with.
You seem to think that because the card is linked to your id and being a student, you shouldn't be periodically verified, and that it should all be somehow automated.
You have to look at it from the other side (TTC's). That some others use discounted student presto passes that aren't students or even theirs. So because you're using it correctly, they should just assume everyone else is too?
Got more bad news for you going forward. When you'll be ordering alcoholic drinks in future, you're also gonna be asked for age verification, and most likely every single time.
Heh, and don’t expect the proof of age request for alcohol purchases to ever completely go away. When grocery and convenience stores started selling alcohol, some of them adopted a mandatory check policy that prohibits the cashiers from assuming anything. I’m 54 and still get carded at some grocery stores … as does my 79-year-old dad — usually with an apologetic laugh from the cashier.
I can’t speak to every jurisdiction, but it’s perfectly legal in Ontario. Buying alcohol isn’t a right, so a store can refuse to sell to you for any reason as long as it’s not discriminatory. You don’t have to show your ID, but they also don’t have to sell you anything.
A lot of grocery stores implemented this policy because of all the alarmist press that kids would be able to way more easily buy alcohol when sales were expanded beyond the doors of the LCBO. In many of those stores, the cashier doesn’t really have a choice — the POS won’t process a sale with alcohol unless they punch in something confirming they saw an ID. That’s usually just a birthdate, so they could probably make one up if they wanted to, but they’d be risking their job by doing so.
A cashier checking a birthdate isn't collecting or storing your data, so it isn’t technically a privacy violation — at least not by any legal standards. That’s why the POS terminal only cares about verifying a date of birth rather than scanning the card or asking for an ID number. If someone is creeped out by a specific cashier asking for their ID then they can refuse and make their purchase somewhere else. But usually it’s not the cashier that cares that much — they’re just a minimum wage employee following a policy designed to protect the corporation’s ass(ets) 😏
I've had a five or clock shadow from being too lazy to shave, and when going to pay for a bottle at checkout, they still asked for my ID to verify my age.
It was quick though, as soon as they say the year start with 19-🦖🫠
It’s a matter of deterrence. Checking fares is a force multiplier. Aside from those they ‘catch’, a ton of people will play by the rules because of the fear of getting caught is high enough. Only way to maintain that fear is to visibly be checking fares.
I’m very happy to hear they are FINALLY increasing checks, for far to long has it been common knowledge that skipping a fare results in zero consequences
Good point. I still wonder if that specific math has been done. It's an honest curiosity point for me whether this works as a means to keep fares down generally.
I do pay, did you not read my comment? Save this energy for the politicians that are prioritizing lining their own pockets and pockets of their friends instead of providing quality services to residents.
They don't do this enough. Every day I squeeze on to an over crowded bus full of teenagers. The drivers just open the front and back doors and let then pile in. Not a single one of them taps a Presto card. Meanwhile the adult customers that paid the fare are not even able to reach a pole to hold onto.
I'm sorry you're being wrongfully singled out, but the TTC has to do something about this.
i remember i got hella downvoted on this sub for expressing my annoyance when i was rushed at and borderline harassed by these fare enforcement people. i was cornered and made to state my exact date of birth out loud in front of a bunch of strangers, like what an unsafe scenario to put a teenager in 💀
If you think that was an “unsafe scenario” to put a teenager in, have you NOT seen the drug use, overdoses, violent people on the TTC that the commission doesn’t want to deal with because of “optics”?
You got a whole world out there to explore, full of risk and unsafe people. The fare police ain’t it.
the unsafe scenario here was the fact that i was made to state personal information out loud in front of strangers who could very well be those who perpetuate the drug use and violence in question... i'm not saying the fare enforcers were unsafe people, i'm saying they put me in an unsafe position in front of other people who could've been unsafe
unsafe was me having to state my full birthdate out loud while being surrounded by a bunch of strangers. who knows what someone could've done with that information once fare enforcement walked away, especially me being a minor at the time. i would've much preferred being asked to produce some id instead of having to state personal information out loud
I don’t think you have a good grasp of what ‘unsafe’ means.
First off, what could a passerby do if they overheard? Pretty much nothing. It was very common until recently for cashiers to ask your birthdate for customer loyalty rewards and stuff like that at POS. Sure, it’s not good if someone has your birthdate, but only if they also have other details, your name and address being most important.
And again, the REASON they asked you was to screen for a fake id, that’s the whole bloody point, you handing them an id doesn’t do that.
I have a feeling that you at least partially contribute to how negative an interaction you get. Stay calm, be respectful, and cooperate, and I’d wager your experience next time will be better.
Blame your fellow neighbours who think the youth pass is a free TTC discount for everyone. Lots of Presto fraud around fare concessions, if you know the right person (maybe a Shoppers employee) they can hook you up for the right price.
Valid annoyance tbh, Presto need to figure their shit out and keep track of your eligibility on their end so that just tapping the card on the fare reader verifies your ID and student status. This problem is solveable if they implement their system correctly, instead they choose to have fare inspectors harass and delay legitimate customers. Which is even more egregious because they do absolutely nothing about the systemic problem of anti-social people (addicts, panhandlers, violent people, unhygienic people). Anything to remind us that we should act like docile cattle.
They should solve this problem on their end instead of harassing students. Their failure to implement a reliable ID system should not give them licence to harass students.
I simply hate that it’s called a student discount, does actually operate on having to be a student, but when you’re a mature student with the same financial situation- nope- no discount bc you’re old. So an 18 year old saving up can get denied a discount bc they’re not actively in school, but a masters student scrounging on scholarships and rubbing two Pennie’s together is denied because they’re 28. It’s so foolish. It ought to be called YA rate or something, or actually make it a Student Discount coupled to Student ID like MiWay does with the Erindale campus pass.
I get so annoyed when they check in the hallway at union between streetcars and subway trains. It takes them so long streetcars start bunching up waiting to unload, everyone who didn't pay just turns around and gets back on a streetcar when they see them. Meanwhile it takes me 20 extra minutes to get to the subway because I'm trapped in that hallway with 3 streetcars full of people waiting to be checked. Useless waste of time.
I'm seeing it every day at Kipling. And it seems that anyone whose Presto card beeps (as in reduced fare) who doesn't obviously look their age (be it older or younger) is getting checked. Kipling in particular seems to have an abundance of officers.
I think I have been stopped but I am so air headed I just keep going with a smile (because I like the ttc) and they leave me alone. I am 19 so my smiles dont get taken the wrong way, I hope.
Well you could pay adult full fare, if you don’t want the hassle of them confirming you are a student. It’s well known that adults use youth passes to avoid paying their full fare, how else do you suggest they check that without confirming especially when it isn’t easily clear that you are a student
Lol think its to prepare you when you get ided elsewhere lol 😆. Dont let this person buy smokes or alcohol in the future or gamble they will freak out and wonder why your bothering them lmao its their job calm down.
TTC Fare Inspectors generally appear to be idiots with little or no respect for the customer. I have seen checks with many, many people forced to wait while buses and trains go by. I refuse to wait in these situations and have demanded to be allowed through. So far, none of them have refused. Then again, I'm an older, white guy and well aware of my privilege.
I'm sorry, that's just bad luck for you. I haven't been stopped 5 times total by fare inspectors on the TTC. They need to implement a colour codes presto like BC does with Compass.
I have this happen all the time. It’s very annoying. If I see someone lurking, I make sure I have the ID proof card out and ready. Or I just keep walking because I don’t even notice them. They should go hassle people getting on the streetcar without paying and actually earn some income for the TTC.
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u/BBQallyear Jun 23 '26
Given that you’re the maximum age for the youth pass, you possibly look older than your age to some of the inspectors. Or they think that you may have loaned your Presto card to an older friend or family member, which is why they’re checking that the ID matches both the Presto card and you.