Toronto, Canada's premier city, while not the capital of our great nation it probably should be. It's one of the most dynamic and ambitious cities on the planet.
Home to just about 6 million people, the T Dot is a multicultural melting pot, with cultures from all over the world calling it home.
So to get to the point of my story here..while doing laundry I found a curious token in the basement of my storage locker. This is actually the second coin I've found down there, the first being a 1927 One Pence coin from Great Britain.
Being a coin collecting nut job this is pretty cool for me.
Today I found this lil sucker
I had no idea what it was but it says "good for one fare" on it so I knew it was some sort of transit token. What I found out through a quick Google search is that it's for the TTC, which is the transit provider in Toronto.
The TTC was established in 1921. Fares were 3 cents back then but now it will cost you $3.25 to ride the rails, streets and subway.
Apparently they stopped issuing these tokens and are trying to get everyone to use electronic cards now. I can't believe how tiny it is, it's smaller than a dime. I bet alot of these get lost.
Here's a comparison to a Steem coin..
One neat thing about coin collecting is researching into the pieces. Today I learned a ton about one of the major cities in my country that I wouldn't have known about if I didn't find this coin/token.
The Toronto transit system has been operating at a loss for the last 50 years. With increasing costs it makes the service not profitable but for quite a while it did generate enough income to pay for itself. Toronto had busses and street cars before the subway system was invented. Now it runs all three.
I live on the east coast of Canada in Halifax, Toronto is a 17 hour drive away for me so ofcourse when I visit the city I fly. I always find it so cool that the streets in Toronto still have rail lines and street cars meandering thru traffic.
The above pic is from 1973. Today the older streetcars have been replaced with newer futuristic looking models. Some have been made right here in Canada by Bombardier out of Quebec.
More than 2 million people ride the Toronto Transit system a day. It has 149 bus routes, 4 subway lines and 11 super cool street car lanes.
Here in Halifax we have about 50 bus routes, so that should give you a sample size of how big Toronto is. We don't have a subway or street cars but we do have some of the crankiest bus drivers in the country I'm sure of it! 😝
We also don't have tokens here we have crappy paper tickets, or we can pay with change or plastic bus pass.
Well finding this lil token gave me an excuse to learn a bit of info about Toronto, it's public transportation system and I got to create a post for today, I hope you enjoyed it!
Have a great day,
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