A Toronto transit rider has launched a website that tracks subway delays and disruptions on the TTC to make commuting on the system easier for riders.<\/p>\n
Andrew Ilersich, who has a background in programming, tells Now Toronto he developed and launched the TTCmap<\/a> site after finding it increasingly difficult to find correct information on the TTC website<\/a> detailing delays and alerts.<\/p>\n He says his final straw occurred recently when attempting to commute home, as he attempted to transfer onto the 52 bus at Lawrence Station after his subway ride, and was shocked that the bus had been redirected to Eglinton Station.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe service alerts didn\u2019t say anything about the 52 bus going somewhere different. The service change page didn\u2019t say anything either,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He says it\u2019s a situation that occurs far too frequently.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are times like that, if you\u2019re taking the TTC all over the city, where there\u2019s really not clear communication about how what disruptions there are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n So, last month he launched a website which shows real time delays and disruptions on the TTC subway system which is pulled directly from the TTC website.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ilersich says typically the TTC has several different pages where riders can find information related to disruptions and changes, for example live service alerts are in a different web page than the long-term service changes.<\/p>\n \u201cTo know everything that\u2019s going on with your route, you need to check all those pages. There\u2019s really no way around it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However, his website makes the experience of finding the information much easier.<\/p>\n \u201cMy website tries to take a lot of those sources that are pertinent to a transit rider in the moment, and consolidate them in one place on a map,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, Ilersich also says his app prioritizes visual aid, compared to official TTC web pages that tend to write out disruptions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt plots everything on a system map so that you can just glance at it, and in a second you know exactly what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n If users want the information that comes with the full announcement, they can simply move their mouse over the icon to reveal it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ilersich shared the website with the TTC board at its board meeting on Thursday, where he was met with a lot of interest and compliments.<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n Moving forward, Ilersich says he hopes to see the website get adopted one day, potentially even by the TTC themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf it was official, you know, then it\u2019d be easiest to find [and] it would be easiest to use. It would have that kind of endorsement,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n As of now, the website only shows details for the subway system, but he hopes one day it can expand to include streetcar and bus routes as well, something he says would need help from the TTC due to the difficulty.<\/p>\n \u201cThe announcements as they are don\u2019t really have enough information to automate that process of drawing new lines on the map for the detours, and that would really need to be the case before I was [comfortable] rolling this out as a tool that everyone relies on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For now, he says the website has changed the way he commutes for the better.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been really useful and a lot better than the system before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Toronto transit rider has launched a website that tracks subway delays and disruptions on the TTC to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,10479,10480],"class_list":["post-10641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-ttc","tag-ttc-disruptions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}