Two regional transit agencies are defending the Presto fare card in the wake of a damning auditor’s report Wednesday that put the cost of the regional smart card at $700 million.

Ontario’s auditor general found the expense hasn’t paid off in convenience for transit riders, in part because more than 80 per cent of regional riders use the TTC. Presto won’t be fully available in Toronto until 2016.

Transit officials in York Region and Mississauga admit their bus riders have been slow to adopt Presto. But they believe the investment will pay off long-term.

The complexity of the Presto system, which incorporates the fare structures of 10 regional transit agencies, accounts for the slow roll-out of Presto over the last six years, they said.

Most agencies that have built similar systems harmonized their fares before launching cards, said Mississauga Transit director Geoff Marinoff.

“We’ve taken nine systems plus a regional system, we’ve got a mix of single fare and fare-by-distance, plus we’ve got different systems’ fare products (and) passes. If there was complete fare integration, which there isn’t, (Presto) would have gone faster,” he said.

Despite the city’s $12 million cost to install the Presto system, only 18 per cent of Mississauga’s $65.8 million in fare revenue this year will be paid with Presto. With 70 per cent of Mississauga Transit trips beginning and ending in the city, the card’s cross-regional benefits might be limited. But there’s a growing student market that can now use Presto to go from the local bus to the GO buses running to McMaster and York universities.

Marinoff agrees with one of the auditor’s observations: The self-serve benefits of Presto, whereby riders can go online to top up the value on their cards, is of little use to riders who live on cash.

“Until we can get the equivalent of a lottery terminal, where someone can walk in with $10 or $20 and put it on their card, Presto doesn’t really work,” Marinoff said. About 100 of Mississauga’s ticket vendors are corner stores.

In York Region, which invested about $7 million in Presto, only about 6,000 daily bus riders use it.

But general manager Rick Leary says YRT-Viva has converted many ticket-users by offering the same discounted price on Presto and waiving the $6 cost of the card. Now the focus is on converting monthly pass holders, he said.

The real pay-off for York, though, will come when Presto is widely available on the TTC, by the Pan Am Games in August 2015.

“The greatest portion of our riders also use TTC. TTC is one of our contractors, so the integration of the TTC is critical,” said Leary.

He believes Presto’s convenience will be worth the investment, but neither he nor York’s Presto point man, Rajeev Roy, said they had seen research proving it.

While the auditor suggested Ontario may have signed on for one of the most expensive fare card programs in the world, Metrolinx’s research over the past year shows it is on the low end of the scale, said CEO Bruce McCuaig.

The cost works out to about 14 cents per Presto ride, once the program is mature in 2016, he said. At that point, Metrolinx projects 676 million rides annually will be paid for using Presto in the Toronto region and Ottawa.

While some cards handle open payments, permitting riders to tap their debit or credit cards, others were designed before that technology was widely established, he said.

“Everybody is the process of developing open-payment capability. I don’t think you’ll find many systems around the world that actually have a functioning open payment,” he said.