Over the past week I’ve been taking the TTC ( Toronto Transit Commission ), mainly because my car has some electrical problems. I like the down time after work to just relax so I thought I’d investigate options to use the TTC more often. The TTC pricing is very complicated but an excellent example of behaviour focus pricing and value.

I’m planning to go to work and home on the TTC, and I work 5 days a week ( Mon to Friday ) so that’s a total of 10 trips per week. On average I work a total 220 days a year. So that’s approximately 440 annual trips, or 36 trips in an average month. So lets look at the options available:

Plan Per Trip    Weekly         Monthly

Cash                                                    $2.75 $27.5             $99
Tokens/Tickets ( 5 or 10 tokens ) $2.10 $21 $75.6
Day Pass ( Family Too ) $8.50 $85* $306*
Weekly Pass ( Transferable ) $3.00 $30 $130
Monthly Pass ( Transferable ) $2.70 N/A $99.75
Monthly Pass – Annual $2.48          N/A $91.50

I’m ignoring some options like the GTA Weekly Pass( including the suburbs ), Express routes charges, and convention events passes. The TTC provides a webpage for the Full TTC rates.

So the winner for me appears to be the Tokens/Tickets. It would be interesting to understand the other considerations that the TTC looks at with their pricing.

I’m sure they know that a percentage of all Tokens/Tickets purchased are never used. Do enough people lose/keep their Tokens/Tickets to make this program the most profitable?

Do people with the monthly pass really travel enough on the weekends to make up for the extra cost?