[pcthrowaway]

I don't know about Edmonton/Alberta, but provincial and municipal transit in British Columbia and Vancouver (which is a separate entity but likely still benefits from provincial resources) are subsidized with taxpayer money. Fare collection supposedly makes up a minority of the funding for Vancouver's transit system.

Also, with 68 fare machines in the city in 1978, how many repairmen do you really need?

[Scoundreller]

Heh, every Toronto subway station is manned, you can imagine what that does to costs. Often multiple entrances = multiple booth staff.

Going to unmanned and paying someone a premium to rapidly respond and fix machines 24/7 would be a massive cost reduction.

[_whiteCaps_]

We don't even have drivers for our trains in Vancouver.

[Scoundreller]

Newer system. But technically with the upgrades in Toronto, they should be able to run driverless.

Recently discontinued Scarborough Rapid Transit could have been driverless, but still wasn’t.

Toronto’s will have both a driver and and an on-train “guard” person to look out the window to make sure nobody is trapped in the door or something. Might get eliminated tho: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/toronto-says-no-to-ttc...