Puzzlepieces – tag ‘toronto’

I’ve oft-critisized the TTC (well, its management) in private for practices such as not opening up their data (in GTFS). Toronto’s transit agency is now the main holdout in the area. Actually, only one of the agencies has made their data truly public, the others have given it exclusively to Google. Anyhow, here’s an idea that would help them redeem themselves.

I noticed a few months ago that in a very large number of TTC subway cars, the maps, of which there are typically several per car, were entirely missing. It was pointed out to me that these are stolen frequently. So, here’s the brilliant idea. Sell the TTC maps.

TTC should send out a press release to the local media (couple of radio stations, the free newspapers that everyone reads on the subway already, etc.) announcing that a limited run of 200 of the maps will be sold the following week from the ticket both at the Bloor/Yonge station, for $15. No further advertising is needed, not even a little poster at the ticket booth. The media loves TTC stories, and this one will certainly be reported. All 200 will be sold within the first few days, at which point the TTC can put out a second press release bragging about the incredible demand and that they ran out far faster than expected, and will consider expanding sales and perhaps making them available at other stations as well.

The TTC will make money off this (profit from sales, plus reduced theft costs; not much, but they need whatever they can get), gain regard, and all at almost no work at all. The maps should be printed as-is, no need to make a consumer version of them or package them in any way. The only con I can think of is that the maps are probably not quite able to fit through the tiny window in the ticket booths that is normally used to pass money and tickets/tokens back and forth; I’ll leave this minor problem up to the TTC to figure out.

For those interested, you can see the TTC map (and a user-created similar map) on ahk2chan, an interactive map on the TTC site, and a Chinese version.

WorldChanging Seattle: Smaller Homes, Bigger Communities - my interests seem to converge a lot. Reading an article about how small houses are better (which I have been trying to convince people of for some time) on a Seattle (where I now live) website, the article goes on to talk about trying to do the same thing in Toronto.

so I intended to write this post last week, after reading some articles to make sure I had my facts right. having procrastinated, I see that Councillors back down on anti-gun proposal, and also I didn’t have my facts completely correct. Regardless, I think there is still a point in what I was going to say.

In general, I’m against guns; the average Torontonian has no need for them. I am not against well-run organized places where people shoot at targets. One of Toronto’s complaints was that guns used by gangs are often acquired by stealing them from private homes, rendering pointless the fact that those guns may have been registered in the gun registry. But gun ownership and gun stealability don’t have to go together.

My idea is that gun clubs could rent out lockers at the club for people to store their guns, rather than having them kept in the individuals’ homes. The gun clubs would have to apply and pay for a bulk gun storage license, and would be periodically inspected by the police to ensure proper security. They would more than make up for the license fee by the locker fees they could charge themselves. Seems like a sound plan to me.

I started writing this post a few weeks ago and have mostly forgotten what I was going to write about. whups…

Headway Wiki is a great wiki for public transit data, which accompanies the Headway blog. I added some links for Waterloo, Toronto, and Seattle.

It is great seeing that some cities are opening up their data in a somewhat standard format, although I wish everyone would. Governments trying to keep their data private is almost universally pointless and counter-productive. Google Transit seems to be the best generalized transit trip planner (on the other hand, there seem to be several new ones I haven’t explored), although sites targeted to specific cities often offer a lot more.

Unfortunately I missed out on the first Metronauts unconference, Metronauts being an expansion of TorontoTransitCamp. The wiki is sorta all over the place, but I guess moving from unconferences to major projects takes time.

Unveiling [the Toronto TTC] Museum station - everyone may not like Joe Clark, but the world needs more people like him. People who care enough about the public good to do quality work on their own time for it, when fighting a very uphill battle.

The Map Room: Toronto’s Language Quilt - really neat map by the Toronto Star.

Inscribed in the living tile: Type in the Toronto subway (Joe Clark) - I read just about all of this, so I must be crazy. As much as I’d like the TTC to fix the signage problem (I wouldn’t mind trying to fix it myself, I’ve certainly had problems with it), signage seems to be the least of the TTC’s problems these days.

Toronto Transit Camp - extremely cool idea. I’m not sure if I can attend (nor do I have a lot to contribute at the moment), but I am looking forward to the results.