Someone in Toronto built a site tracking over a decade of TTC delays

Transit frustration is such a shared experience in Toronto. We've all had those moments: standing at a stop, checking the time, checking the app, wondering if the bus, usually packed to the brim, is ever going to show up.  

But lately, instead of just venting about the TTC, a number of tech-savvy residents are channelling that energy into something much more productive with sites tracking subway delays, and painfully slow streetcars, to name a few.

The latest website, which visualizes 12 years of TTC bus delays, comes from Toronto data scientist Karman Singh Bains. He has lived in Toronto for four years and, because he only has a G1 license, relies heavily on public transit to get around. 

He tells blogTO that standing in the cold and feeling frustrated as the 16 McCowan bus' estimated arrival time kept increasing is what inspired the entire project.

Bains initially started tracking over 200 bus routes, but because his site is constantly evolving, he’s now tracking streetcars and even subways, too.

"Right now it's in a presentable state, but it's not a full-fledged final project," Bains says. The site pulls information from Toronto Open Data, refreshed each month automatically with custom scripts.

The current dashboard allows users to explore four categories: routes, districts, wards, and hotspots. 

A ward like Eglinton-Lawrence, for example, is dark purple, showing it has one of the highest numbers of delays — an average delay of 22.3 minutes across 56,542 reported incidents.

In one of the early iterations of the website, Bains included graphs showing top routes with delays, main causes of delays, and breakdowns by day and time of week.

Those graphs aren't currently live, but Bains says he is working to bring them back.

Simply looking at routes can be misleading, he says, since a single route might span multiple districts or boards, making it hard to see whether the route itself has a problem.

"By mapping delays by wards, districts, or hot spots, we can see which specific areas are experiencing the most problems. Darker areas on the map indicate locations with higher traffic or more delays, giving a clearer picture than just looking at routes," Bains says.

It's definitely clear that high traffic areas like Spadina-Fort York or Toronto-Centre are naturally going to see the most delays. But Bains noticed other pockets of the GTA that stood out while collecting all that data. 

"If you look at the Scarborough-Guildwood ward, there are a lot of delays happening in that area, which is not that busy compared to downtown Toronto," he says. "It's concerning to me since this is where I used to live."

Despite all the data he's collected, Bains remains a loyal TTC rider. He says if the TTC wants to use his dashboard to identify problems and improve service, he's more than happy for them to do so.