KITCHENER – Boarding numbers are in for the LRT's first three months of paid service and it appears that more people are taking public transit.
Last month alone, ION trains were boarded 515,000 times. Along the transit corridor, boardings are up 33 per cent.
Despite the encouraging numbers, problems persist: riders are supposed to be able to pay and go at the terminals, but it doesn’t always work.
"We've seen improvements in many areas but we still have some machines that suffer from issues with the pin pad or screen sensitivity," explains Peter Zinck.
Still, any impact to revenue has been "very insignificant" as the system is in a $1.2 million surplus.
Now, with things going smoothly, the region is playing hardball with the machine's maker.
"We withheld money from the supplier, the vendor, until they have it all working properly, but the concerns are subsiding," explains Regional Coun. Tom Galloway.
Those concerns are subsiding in part because the region has installed new Easy GO card readers at certain platforms to prevent the tapping error.
The next challenge for the system will be to get service down to every eight mins instead of the 10 it is running on right now.
Galloway says that should happen in the new year.
