We had this recent post about the TTC and Google getting together to make a trip planner map called Google Transit. Portland is the only city currently working, but in our comments section a reader points out, “Google’s Trip Planner for Portland gives consistantly worse advice than Portland Transit’s own web site.” Maybe the software needs fine tuning? I thought. Then another reader directed us to Montreal’s STM transit trip planner. It calculates not only your routes, but the time you should catch the bus and if you are willing to walk a little bit.
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Chicago’s is also great. It gives you the times both if you want to *leave* at a certain time, but also if you want to arrive at a certain time.
http://www.transitchicago.com/maps/tripplanner.html
Even long-term residents of the city use it to figure out how much time to give themselves to get from A to B, or figure out the best way to get to an unfamiliar part of the city.
There’s really no excuse at all for the uselessness of the TTCs webpage. Recently I was trying to get to the airport at a time the subway wasn’t going to be able to get me there, and while they had all the bus schedules on line, they list only departure times, with no information at all about how long it takes to get from one stop to another, even when the other is the end of the line.
In 1987, the TTC introduced an automated telephone system called TTC Timeline which told you when the next bus, and the bus after that, would arrive for each stop and it notified you of any delays on your route. Each stop had its own phone number. TTC got rid of it in 2000 – just another example of the decline of public transit in Toronto.
Wow, that system would’ve been incredibly handy. A lot of stops do not have schedules posted, and being able to phone in would be convenient, especially now that so many people have cellphones.
Translink in Vancouver also has an excellent trip planner (http://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/), and it’s been up and running for about three or four years already. When I moved to Toronto, I couldn’t believe how horrid the TTC’s website is. There’s really no excuse for it.
Ottawa’s OC Transpo Travel Planner is pretty good. It offers several trip options (least walking, least transfers, quickest route, etc…)
http://octranspo.com/Intro_Trip_Planner.htm
If the TTC is looking for model, I would suggest the Paris site. The interactive map of the subways is very good, and the trip planner is excellent.
http://www.ratp.fr/
In general, it looks like the TTC has lots of good models to choose from. I guess there is an advantage to being late to interactive trip planning.
I hear Mississauga has a fairly good Trip Planner for their system. Instead of collaborations with Google shouldn’t the TTC look to options closer to home and maybe cheaper?
I’ve been told that the “TTC Timeline” phone system was the sole victim of the Y2K bug.