Tokens offer casual riders a slight discount on Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority buses. They’d offer convenience too, if getting them weren’t so inconvenient.

Riding a TARTA bus costs $1.25. The farebox accepts cash, but it doesn’t give change. Weekly passes cost 10 times the fare and monthly passes 40, so commuters who buy them effectively get their noncommuting trips free — and they get free transfers, whereas without one each bus charges a fresh fare. But for riders who don’t use 10 or 40 trips in the allotted time, passes are actually more expensive than paying cash. Tokens allow even occasional riders to clip 12 cents off every fare, as long as they eventually use up the roll of 25 that costs $28.25.

TARTA’s downtown stations sell neither tokens nor passes. Passes, however, are available from several downtown businesses. Tokens are available from only one: the Edison Plaza branch of KeyBank. And the bank closes nearly six hours before the last bus leaves on weekdays; on weekends it doesn’t open at all.

Of course, tokens are also available at TARTA’s offices on West Central Avenue, but for most downtown workers, that’s an extra trip.

James Gee, TARTA’s general manager, said the only staffed bus station downtown was not designed to be secure enough to sell tokens and passes. But he said it had been “quite some time” since he looked into vending machines.

Some people take buses less than 10 times a week because they can afford other options. The better transit serves them, the more they’ll use it. That use gives them a stake in TARTA and a reason to support it politically. And bringing economically diverse people together on mass transit creates a stronger, more connected community.

For these passengers, the savings may be trivial. The convenience may be more significant. With a token, there’s no need to count out money when boarding. And riders who use tokens never discover they spent the change they needed for the bus on something else.

Unfortunately, if getting tokens means using part of a lunch break for an errand to a bank, tokens are not very convenient.

So TARTA should enable customers to buy tokens at Government Station, the strip of Jackson Street where its routes begin and end, whenever buses are running. A vending machine there should make tokens available when they’re needed, in the places they’re needed.

First Published February 2, 2017, 5:00 a.m.