Toronto Transit Commission Fares - History of Zone Fares

History of Zone Fares

As noted, one TTC fare is good for any distance within the City of Toronto; there are no fare zones in the city today. The same was true from 1921 until 1953, when the City of Toronto covered a much smaller area than today. Then as now, there were routes extending outside the city, and extra fares were charged; these were on a zonal basis, although the zones might better be described as fare stages along the individual routes outside the city, as each one was a separate radial route.

But with the creation of Metropolitan Toronto ("Metro") in 1954, covering the whole present area of the City of Toronto, the TTC took on responsibility for transit within the entire area. At that time they did not consider a flat fare feasible for so large an area; instead they rounded off the edges of the city fare zone and renamed it the Central Zone, and set up a series of concentric semicircular rings around it as Suburban Zone 1, 2, etc., with an additional fare required for each one. Routes extending beyond the Metro limit continued to be separate radial routes, so the zones still had the effect of fare stages, but, within Metro, it became possible to change buses within a suburban zone. This external link shows a route map of this period. The (roughly rectangular) Metro limit is not marked on the map, but Suburban Zone 2 extends to just reach this limit in the north and the southwest only; the Port Credit bus and part of the North Yonge bus are the only TTC routes then extending outside Metro.

In 1956, Suburban Zones 1 and 2 were combined as Zone 2 and the Central Zone became the new Zone 1.

During this early period, the outer zones within Metro were still relatively undeveloped and bus routes in them were sparse; but as development increased, there was pressure for lower suburban fares, and in 1962 the outer boundary of Zone 2 was extended to all the way to the Metro limit. Higher fares, still on a zonal basis along each radial route, now applied only on the few routes running beyond Metro; in effect, the zone boundaries outside Zone 2 had changed from semicircles to rough rectangles. (Eventually the zones along each remaining route beyond Metro were effectively combined and the fares coordinated with those of adjacent transit agencies; see below.)

In 1968, the Bloor–Danforth Subway was extended east and west through the boundary between Zones 1 and 2, but the subway itself remained part of Zone 1. On January 21, 1973, with construction already well advanced on a similar extension of the Yonge–University Subway, the TTC acceded to pressure to abolish the zone boundary, and all of Metro (unified City of Toronto since 1998) gained service at a single flat fare. (Unfortunately, the new subway stations on both lines in what had been Zone 2 had not been designed for the change: their bus terminals were outside of the subway's fare-paid area. The layout of some stations allowed this to be easily corrected by moving the fare barrier, but at other stations this was unfeasible and they were not reconfigured until a later renovation, if at all.)

A fare increase in 2005 led some to call for the reintroduction of fare zones, but the TTC does not believe this would be wise. Zonal tickets would be impractical to enforce on the subways or buses without introducing a new fare collection technology. Formerly, with buses, the drivers would stop at each zone boundary to check proof of payment or collect an additional fare from each passenger, causing a significant delay. In addition, charging more for longer (and therefore less pleasant) trips through areas where service is provided by buses rather than trains that would alienate the very suburban customers the commission is now trying to attract.