The Chair of the City's Transit Commission says a glitch affecting some Presto Card users will be fixed in the coming days.
Changes to OC Transpo's routes and fares, which came into effect around the New Year, have caused some Presto Cards to occasionally fail to register rides properly when tapped.
Councillor Stephen Blais tells CFRA's Ottawa Now with Evan Solomon the issue is affecting users who pay a per-tap fare.
Blais says Presto is connected to a back-end database that determines what fare to charge based on what type of bus you board and when, such as a regular bus versus an express bus. However, when the new system came into effect, eliminating express buses and changing routes, some errors occurred.
“This is happening in 13 areas on the system,” Blais says. “To put that into context, we have thousands of these areas across OC Transpo.”
Blais says the fix is on right now. “They’re talking about a week to ten days,” he says.
“If you have a monthly pass, you’re not affected, you’re paying a monthly fee anyway,” Blais says. “This is for per-tap users. The bus drivers have been hopefully letting people on. Employees are aware of the problems across the service, so there should not be any issues using OC Transpo until the fix happens.”