The New York-based transit guru behind the TTC’s controversial move toward “open payment” says he believes the electronic fare system would cost Toronto “a small fraction” of the cost of adopting the province’s Presto smart card.

Paul Korczak’s words are sure to further infuriate Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne, who on Friday warned the TTC it risks losing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies if it doesn’t halt its open payment efforts and fully implement Presto.

She urged the TTC to scrap its plan to issue, in early August, a Korczak-developed request-for-proposal and called TTC chair Adam Giambrone’s touting of open payment “troubling and confusing” given that Ontario has already spent $200 million on a system with one card to get commuters into and around all the GTA transit systems.

Korczak, awarded a $1.3 million contract to lay groundwork for the next-generation system where riders pay with a tap of their debit or credit card on an electronic reader, said he doesn’t get mixed up in politics.

But, sitting on a bench in the Eaton Centre on Sunday, he didn’t mince words arguing that open payment, which he helped pioneer at the end of his 27-year career with New York’s transit utility, would a better choice for Toronto than the smart-card technology he introduced to the Big Apple in 1999.

The savings, he said, come from the fact that the credit and debit technology, including tap-and-pay cards like Mastercard’s PayPass, is used in stores everywhere so the TTC could use off-the-shelf electronic readers and other equipment. Banks and credit card companies process the transactions, reducing the transit service’s operating costs.

Ontario has committed $173 million toward the estimated $400 million to $500 million cost of the TTC fully adopting Presto, now accepted at seven subway stations and soon to be at 12.

Asked how the cost of open payment would compare, Korczak said: “It’s a little early to put a number on it but my experience says it would be a small fraction of that (total Presto) number . . . .”

“Proprietary custom-built (smart card) fare systems are expensive to design, build and maintain and that’s why New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington are moving from them to open payment,” added Korczak, whose two-man company is involved with the switch in each of those cities.

“But the main benefit is customer service. Customers can use the card of their choice, debit or credit . . . just as they do in every retail shop in here,” he said, gesturing at the mall. “People know how to shop. There’s no learning curve.”

He estimated, based on his involvement with pilot projects, including an ongoing one in New York, that open payment could be up and running on the TTC within 30 months of a contract being signed.

But Wynne is far from alone in arguing the TTC is doing its riders a disservice by going back to the drawing board when it previously supported a regional system already working on GO, the TTC and elsewhere.

The Toronto Board of Trade, an influential business group, argued last week that the costs of open payment are bound to be higher than those of Presto because going it alone would cost Toronto the provincial subsidies.

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Rob Prichard, chief executive of the Metrolinx regional transit agency, also argued open payment costs would be higher and said, rather than criticizing Presto, the TTC should be rolling it out and helping make it better.

“The first step in all of this is getting Presto implemented across the region. The second step is a process of continual improvement.”

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