City
Bloggers Help TTC Website
Robert Ouellette from Reading Toronto has openly challenged Adam Giambrone, chair of the TTC, to redesign their web site with the help of Toronto's active blogging community. "Toronto bloggers are more than willing to offer their insights into how the TTC site might be designed Why not give us a call and ask for our input," Ouellette writes at RT.
The current TTC web site is terrible. Using drop-down menus for the most important information and ad-like banners for less important announcements and links, the TTC web site throws the study of human-computer interaction on its head. Information that could save you 15 minutes in transit might take 30 minutes to find online.
Giambrone responded to Ouellette's challenge and is interested in the project. This could mark a huge change in the TTC's attitude towards some of its biggest supporters, between the TTC and the large community of people who love and use it.
We need blogTO's readers to give suggestions of how the TTC can make a state-of-the-art web site. What features does it need? What should it look like? The idea is to come together with these suggestions at a "blogger symposium", find the 10 most insightful reader suggestions and present these to the TTC. Then the blogging community can track how the organization responds to the suggestions.
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#1 suggestion in my books (beside making things ont he site easier to find) would be a trip planner. eg an area where I say there I am and where I want to go and it tells me what busses/trains I have to take. When I used to live in Sydney, Australia I used the Sydney one religiously (helped when I was new to the city)
http://www.131500.info
2. an email address to provide feeback and complaints, AND a response from a real person
3. non website related: educate TTC employees on how to deal with crisis(such as delays, ill passengers, train problems) every time there is a problem, TTC people have no clue where to direct people to and the shuttle buses are always confusing... as well, replace all the speakers with those people can actually hear what is being announced
It also makes the city more tourist friendly.
<a href="http://crazedmonkey.com/toronto-transit-map/";><a href="http://crazedmonkey.com/toronto-transit-map/";>http://crazedmonkey.com/toronto-transit-map/<;/a></a><br /><br />
It should definitely be included (prominently!) in the official site.
An aesthetic overhaul would be cool.
RSS feeds that inform us of schedule and route changes, emergencies, and delays.
The TTC's site is the crappiest, most user-unfriendly, and not intuitive in the least! Ugh.
Go Bloggerati Go!
Maybe also a number that you could SMS and it would reply with any delays.
But as for designing the website, we need to think about the most common uses of the page and put them up front. Maps, schedules, fares -- these things should be the most promenant links from the front page.
...but how is all of this great info going to be compiled and presented to Giambrone?
Google Transit is great. But the point is publishing in open standards, so that any third-party developer has real-time access to everything they need to build a better mousetrap. Er, trip planner. Google Transit is just one developer.
Among other things, this will make it possible for other regional transit agencies to similarly publish to open standards. Presto -- the third party developers, like Google Transit, are instantly pulling in an integrated trip planner ... and interagency politics are avoided entirely.
Open standards are a great way to embrace the public.
And on one of the blogs someone suggested utilizing some of the great photography of the TTC.
There's a huge amount to work from and I'm really happy people are talking about this.
Cheers,
Robert Ouellette
Editor
Readingtoronto.com
It's not Red Rocket Science so I hope we see something soon. If the first iteration is not "perfect" it can be improved. Websites should be FLEXIBLE so it can be SPEEDILY adjusted based on user comments and experience. (I suspect that most TTC folk look on a website like a new garage and tries to plan for a 30-year life span!)
It's not Red Rocket Science so I hope we see something soon. If the first iteration is not "perfect" it can be improved. Websites should be FLEXIBLE so it can be SPEEDILY adjusted based on user comments and experience. (I suspect that most TTC folk look on a website like a new garage and tries to plan for a 30-year life span!)
Check out <a href="http://hopstop.com/";><a href="http://hopstop.com/";>http://hopstop.com/<;/a></a>. New Yorkers swear by it and their subway system (plus co-operation with longer-haul & commuter lines like the Metro North, trains that go to diff. airports) dwarfs ours at present. Dependable and user-friendly, in my experience. Peep it.
My main problem though is not so much with the website itself as the representation of the various modes of transit available in Toronto. For starters, there should be a rapid-transit map that looks more like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TTCstreetcarmap-2005.png";> this</a> than a map that just shows the relatively sparse subway lines. This would help differentiate between bus routes and streetcar routes, something that is almost impossible for tourists to figure out from the current maps.
Other suggestions - realtime service advisories during delays (like New York), trip planners, suggested travel routes and times for the most popular routes (like to the airport or stadiums), and, god help us, an email suggestion box. Pretending that if you can't see the complaints they don't exist is no way to run a public agency.
Other model websites: <a href="http://www.dart.org/";>DART</a>, <a href="http://www.bart.gov/";>BART</a> and <a href="http://www.smrt.com.sg/";>SMRT</a>.
Also, we used to be able to "call" any bus stop to find out when the next bus was coming. This was a (the only?) Y2K casualty, and could come back via web.
Kevin McLaughlin
AutoShare
This is a trip planner that let's you plan routes using GO buses/trains and TTC Subway with TTC Buses coming soon.
<b>www.tomapster.com</b>
You enter start and end addresses and it finds a route for you. It provides walking directions to get to and from stations.
There are a number of cool features such as Click and Go, you just click two points and the system figures out the route between them.
The website also allows displaying overview of all subway lines and GO trains and buses.
contact: dimitri.gnidash@gmail.com
For help you can contact the <a href="http://rgdontario.com/";>RGD</a> (Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario).
My suggestion would be this:
Have the ability to turn off the display of all bus and streetcar routes except user chosen ones. This will allow for a clear and unfettered view of a route(s).
Next, have the ability to turn on and off the display and selection of stops along each selected route... maybe have one colour for stops in one direction, and another colour for the opposite direction. Have these stops or coloured micro dots selectable, where upon a time schedule will pop up and can be read and/or printed for that specific stop. TTC already has time schedules listed at most of their stops, and undoubtedly have this information on file. It would be unfeasible for them to update the sign at each and every stop along a route whenever the schedule changes, but would be a snap to do online once they have the site properly set-up for it.
Also, it would be nice to be able to turn on and off the display of major landmarks around the city, for instance, the AGO or Kensington Market... this would help in quickly locating points of interest, and should automatically scale down in size (keep their size, relative to screen size) as you zoom into the map. If you hold your cursor over these landmarks, a pop-up balloon with information would appear.
Finally, it would be a big bonus to somehow see street numbering along selected routes... maybe at every 100th door or so. Another feature that could be turned on and off perhaps? Of course, I could just google an address to find that out,... or call the business... but if you want a SUPER TTC site, it's just one last suggestion.
Hope you like some of my ideas... I just wanted to add my two cents worth.
Thanks,
If TTC can't list times for each stop along a route... they should atleast let you pick any route and see the 1st and last bus leaves/arrives from/at either end of that route... and how often it runs at different hours on different days.
If it's late at night and you want to go home from somewhere but are unfamiliar with the routes you would need to take and don't know which routes have stopped running, you could find yourself waiting out in the cold for nothing. Not all stops have a schedule posted by them to let you know.
1. Yes, an interactive guide is a great idea - I've checked out the ones mentioned in comments above and they don't work so well for me (tomapster.com wanted me to walk down to Bloor from Davenport and sent me far away from my intended destination).
2. Show where the stops are - showing the lines are great, but I want to know which stop I'm getting off at if I'm taking the bus/streetcar somewhere new.
3. The St Clair construction has been so frustrating - the stop location at Bathurst & St Clair changes daily sometimes. It would be wonderful if I could check the site before I left the house in the morning to find out where I should be going instead of wandering around like a moron!
4. finally, the obvious need for a more esthetically pleasing site, most kids are creating nicer looking sites these days.
They should have an interactive Flash version of the maps too with bus-route hilighting. As soon as you hover your mouse over the red line, it should light up and you would instantly see what station it goes too, and how far the route goes. It's a no brainer, and much easier than following the line and looking at numbers.