Toronto’s shifting transit plans could jeopardize plans to implement the province’s Presto electronic payment system, suggests one TTC commissioner.

City council’s rejection of a memorandum of understanding reached between Rob Ford and the province last March also included a clause that committed the city to the Presto smartcard and the province to funding its implementation.

But last week council rejected the memorandum outlining underground transit in favour of returning to a different plan that would see some lines built above ground if the province agrees.

But if the underground transit deal is off, Presto could be up for discussion again, too, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said Tuesday.

When the TTC officially endorsed Presto at its November meeting, “I did comment that we were being coerced into accepting an inferior technology and that open payment was the way to go,” Minnan-Wong said.

At the time, a private company, ACS, had bid to provide an open payment system to the TTC in exchange for future transaction fees. That would have allowed riders to pay their fares with credit cards or enabled mobile devices.

But when the province agreed to pay the cost of installing Presto — estimated to be about $300 million — TTC commissioners reluctantly agreed to continue negotiating with the province.

“The whole process the TTC used was suspect. They put out a tender and ACS won it. And then they decide they want to go with Presto,” said Minnan-Wong.

Conservative transportation critic MPP Frank Klees agreed.

“This (ACS) bid would have saved more than $300 million in capital costs along with an additional savings of $16 million in annual operating costs over the 10 year contract — bringing total savings to taxpayers of almost half a billion dollars,” he said in a news release.

But TTC vice-chair Peter Milczyn doesn’t want the Presto debate reopened, even though he, too, believed that the open payment bid was probably a better deal in the beginning.

“I did believe the ACS offer was superior because it had the full functionality we were looking for upfront. But the financial deal with Presto is essentially the same for the TTC as the deal with ACS was,” said Milczyn.

The version of Presto the TTC will get will include open payment functionality, he said.

“To stop and start over again is another delay. Riders just want the TTC to have a modern fare system and get on with it.”

The province is eager to put Presto on the TTC because more than 80 per cent of regional transit trips include the TTC.

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“It simply doesn’t make sense to have one system in use in the GTA and a totally different system in Toronto,” Metrolinx said in an email Tuesday.

“PRESTO is a proven, state-of-the-art system,” said the email. “Open payment options — such as the use of debit cards, credit cards, mobile devices and cellphones — have always been part of the plan for the PRESTO system.”

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