Toronto’s Auditor General has dropped a new report on Presto reliability. Concludes TTC is losing revenue due to Presto issues, but can’t provide an estimate “because of information gaps and control weaknesses.” ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/… (PDF) 
Amazing: Presto doesn’t provide reliability data for its readers performance on weekends and holidays.
Until recently, they also didn’t provide this data for days that are holidays in India. (Because they’ve off-shored this part of the business.)
Until recently, they also didn’t provide this data for days that are holidays in India. (Because they’ve off-shored this part of the business.)
Presto staff apparently were not aware they weren’t tracking reliability data on days that are holidays in India. Also: they’re only keeping data for 60 days, when the contract calls for 7 years.
TTC wants Metrolinx to pay $7.5 million to compensate for fare revenue lost due to Presto equipment reliability. Metrolinx is balking, saying the TTC needs to provide more data to support the revenue loss claim. But Metrolinx controls the data.
The fare vending machines on the new streetcars are often not working because… the coin box is full and emptying them involves cooperation between two agencies and is more complicated than you’d think!
TTC and Metrolinx also currently in disagreement about re-adding debit/credit card support to the streetcar vending machines. (It was removed because it often failed.) Metrolinx says card support is never coming back to these machines. TTC wants it.
Report suggests some Presto issues aren’t being captured because reliability data is calculated by pinging readers every 15 minutes, so temporary issues don’t show up in the data. AG thinks TTC’s 2018 estimate of $3.4 million lost due to Presto reader issues could be understated.
Holy hell, until LATE 2017 Presto reader reliability was calculated by pinging the machine ONCE A DAY, at 7 a.m.
Metrolinx says increasing the rate of “pinging” to track reliability would mean it’d take longer for taps to register??? Windows CE, man.
“The weekly [reliability] rate is provided to TTC in a PowerPoint presentation without supporting back-up information.” Oh wow.
56% — more than half — of issues logged with the fare vending machines on new streetcars in August were due to the coin box being full. Average of six machines failing per day due to TOO MANY COINS.
In conclusion: uh, IT projects are hard?
