The UP Express, AKA UPX, is a half-billion-dollar train that runs between Toronto's Union Station and Pearson airport along GO Transit's Kitchener line. Two stops are shared with GO Transit stations. The Presto card readers on the UPX side of the station are separate from the GO Transit readers and they don't talk to each other.
Let's say you get on the UPX at Bloor station and tap on using a GO Transit Presto reader, which is green. You get off at Pearson and tap off on a UPX Presto reader, which is silver. One trip, right? But you are going to get charged for two, and to make matters worse, the GO fare charged will be for the full Kitchener line, because you didn't tap off (on a GO reader).
The simple solution would be to connect the two systems, right? But that's not the Presto way. They're going to fix it with a better "user experience".
I can't wait to see what Metrolinx comes up with. In the meantime, if you have any friends or family taking the UPX, make sure they know about this little quirk.Ferguson said Metrolinx is “working to improve the user experience” and is launching a pilot initiative at Union “to test out designs that would better visually distinguish the two types of machines.”According to Olivier St-Cyr, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s faculty of information and an expert in user experience design, public-facing technical systems that rely on people to correctly interpret visual cues like signage are often the least effective.He argued it would be ideal to just have one type of machine, but if that’s not possible Metrolinx could design a system that prevents people from choosing the wrong device. For example, he suggested that if possible the devices could be programmed to reject a customer’s payment if they end their journey by tapping their card on a different colour device than the one they started with.
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