It’s been about 12 months since I purchased my Avenir folding bicycle, and while the head-turning novelty has worn off, the flexibility that a bicycle adds to my commute has not. Originally, the decision to buy a bicycle came out of a parking problem. My house is a 15 minute drive from Brampton GO station, but the parking lot tends to fill up by 7:15 am. If there were no spots remaining then the only other solution was to drive another 20 minutes across Brampton to Bramalea GO station. In order to avoid the parking lot altogether I would have to walk 20 minutes from my front door to the Orangeville GO bus stop for a 15 minute trip to Brampton GO. A bike would have cut the walk to 4 minutes, but there was no place I felt comfortable locking up the bike for the day and I had a desire to take the bike downtown to save on TTC fares. The solution was a folding bike, which are allowed on rush hour GO trains and could be folded, bagged, and placed in the luggage compartment of almost all GO buses. (more…)

No, it wasn’t an elaborate April Fools Day joke…

On April 1st, the Government of Ontario announced funding a collection of transit projects across the GTHA. While many of the projects are in the central parts of the region, and there has been some criticism of this fact, these are the projects that are closest groundbreaking – some will see construction start next year. We can’t forget that we need to build a region-wide network, but we need to start somewhere.

Here’s what was announced: (more…)

Toronto has the only existing street railway/"light rail" gauge in Ontario.

Track gauge is a finer detail in the technology of rail-based transportation.  It is defined as the distance between the inside edges of the heads of the running rails.  It’s an important detail since this decides the distance between wheels on the trucks/bogies of rail cars, which can impact what systems on which said rail cars can and cannot run.

What makes this topic interesting in Toronto and the GTA is that the TTC has its own unique gauge: 1495mm.  This applies to both the streetcar and the subway networks of the TTC, but excludes the SRT (which is currently standard gauge. However, if the SRT is converted to LRT, as is widely expected, it would be changed to TTC gauge).  The TTC is expected to apply their unique gauge to Transit City as well, as it keeps the system flexible and has maintenance efficiencies.

Standard gauge, however, is 1435mm, and is used by the freight railways, which would include GO Transit’s rail fleet.  If one goes back in Toronto’s history, one will find two streetcar companies operating on Toronto’s streets, one at standard gauge and the other at the TTC’s, a result of meeting a legal requirement at the time.

There are now many communities in Ontario talking about LRT in their future networks.  These include not only Toronto, but also Hamilton, York Region, Region of Peel, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, and even London. (more…)

DRL Map by C. Livett, adapted from Network 2011 DRL plan

On Wednesday, Toronto city council voted to study the possibility of fast-tracking construction of the long-dormant Downtown Relief Line — perhaps even putting it ahead of plans for extending the Yonge line further north. Not only was the Yonge North extension approved in principle with previous conditions attached, but council also moved to study the Downtown Relief Line in detail and suggest having it moved from Metrolinx’s 25 year plan to the 15 year plan.

And they want to replace the technical name ”Downtown Relief Line” with something more imaginative and marketable. Ideas, anyone?

According to an article in the National Post, Councillor Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre), who proposed asking Metrolinx to review its priorities, said the downtown relief line might be a solution to the overcrowding that is expected to result from extending the Yonge line north.

“The residents of Toronto deserve better, the riders of the TTC deserve better,” said Mr. Thompson. “From a perspective of cost, the downtown relief line is cheaper, it is more efficient, it provides a utility that is needed.”

Over at Spacing Toronto, Sean Marshall wrote an article noting the opposition within the TTC to the Yonge extension and staffers’ views that the DRL should be “a last resort”. However, with the Yonge extension becoming a more likely reality, if the DRL is already in place when the Yonge extension is completed, it would relieve future overcrowding on the Yonge line as a result of the new stops. As well, the new subway line would put off or even altogether negate the need for an expensive and awkward second renovation of Bloor-Yonge station, the worst bottleneck in the subway system, and relieve crowded streetcar routes on Queen and King. (more…)

Blinkenlights Stereoscope (2008), City Hall, Toronto

Binary data is often represented by two states: on and off. The Blikenlights Strereoscope installation at City Hall this year during Nuit Blanche, made data very public.  If you attended, you may have noticed the installations’ connection to open, malleable and user-contributed data.  As stated on the project website, “Project Blinkenlights invites the public to be a part of the installation by opening up a variety of ways to interact with and provide content.”  In terms of a practical application of open data, the issue returned to city hall through the issue of open transit data, discussed at the Web 2.0 Summit on November 26, 2008.

Wikipedia defines that open data is “a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.”  The challenge to open up the city’s transit data (i.e., schedules, routes and timetables) to be used in Google Transit was posed by Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation during his talk at the summit.  Mayor Miller stated in response to Surman that the process to get Toronto online with Google Transit is underway and we can hope to see results next year.  Surman summarizes this exchange via a blog entry accompanying an archive of his talk.

Many questions about opening up transit data are still outstanding in relation to the draft RTP or final RTP in relation to trip planning and fare cards:

Trip planning:

• If Toronto opens up data their data for Google Transit, will the other regions and transit agencies in the GTHA be encouraged to do the same? (Note: Hamilton’s HSR system is already online at Google Transit)
• Do Metrolinx’s plans for an integrated trip planner take into account Google Transit, mashups or citizen initiatives?
• What information is needed by citizen and community-based groups like myttc.ca to continue to innovate and build from the community level up?

Fare cards: intense data collection is also a real possibility with fare cards when they are implemented across our region.

• What data will be collected through fare cards?
• Where will this data be stored, who will access it and for what purposes?
• Will any of the aggregated data from fare cards be opened up?

In my job as transit columnist for the free commuter daily Metro, I get to learn about the workings of the GTA transport system directly from public officials. I call them up, ask a lot of questions and try to fit a tiny portion of the answers into my weekly column. In turn I rely on transit advocates to fill in the blanks as well as describe their first-hand experiences aboard streetcars, buses and trains.

My ideal of a proper discussion has these two groups in the same place at the same time, plus anyone else with an interest in urban mobility.

When I first envisioned a series of meetings to explore the Metrolinx regional transport plan, I hoped to huddle with a few advocates and get their perspective on the process and the results so far. I wanted to hear about the parts of “The Big Move” that need greater attention.

Along the way it became clear that some kind of official involvement would greatly aid the discussion, but that hasn’t proved easy. Since the draft RTP was released, Metrolinx staff have been particularly busy with stakeholder and public consultation meetings. Next comes preparing the plan for approval at the agency’s board meeting on November 28.

That said, there are still a lot of questions worth asking about how the Big Move will work, and I’m holding three more unofficial meetings before the expected board vote — each on Tuesday nights at Metro Hall in downtown Toronto. I’m hoping to convince Metrolinx and other public officials to attend subsequent meetings.

Tonight, Tuesday November 11, the session deals with paying to ride: How will GTA transit fares affect the regional transport network? How can payment be better integrated and what could this mean to capacity throughout the greater transit network? Look below for some questions sent to Metrolinx, and the responses.

An earlier Metronauts entry, Two fares just doesn’t seem fair also explores some of the key issues.

If you’d like to continue this discussion in person, join me at Metro Hall, 55 John St. @ King in Room 303 at 7pm. (Details after the jump) (more…)

MyTTC.ca is a community effort to give everyone free, open access to a better quality of transit information in Toronto. Since the first TransitCamp in 2007, Kevin Branigan and I have been working to re-build our own set of TTC data, as well as exploring different ways to visualize, display and distribute it. MyTTC.ca is, at least in part, how we’re expressing that data on the web.

The data available from the TTC was, well, a little lacking in both quality and quantity. With fewer than 20% of the stops available and a staggering error rate on the TTC site (both new and old), Kevin and I reasoned that we’d need to build our own data set if we were going to do anything useful with it. Fortunately, we were able to find just enough good data to do just that, and with that data at our disposal we finally had the stable base we needed to build fun and useful applications. (more…)

Barrie and Richmond Hill GO Lines

This is the final entry in the “Where do we GO?” series, as all directions from Union Station will now be covered (West and East sides were covered previously).  This post focuses on the remaining corridors of Richmond Hill and Barrie.  As promised, there’s a lot of comment on these two corridors.

BARRIE LINE

Recently extended from Bradford to restore service to Barrie (and the corridor renamed as a result), this corridor has a lot of unserviced pockets compared to other corridors, despite having more stations already added to it than other corridors in the network except Stouffville (with which it is a tie).  Long a poor performer in the network, GO Transit has been very keen on making this corridor prove its worth.  (more…)

Yesterday evening, I was shooting a Gears of War 2 Launch Party event in Lower Bay Station. It was my first time in the station which is pretty similar to Bay station, except more dirty and run down. It was the perfect setting for the games launch.

Source: ITS America

Imagine sending a cell phone text message with your location and destination, and instantly getting back region-wide information on real-time traffic conditions, travel time, best route, and next bus or train. This could soon be a reality in the Greater Toronto Area.

Metrolinx has proposed one of the eight “Big Moves” to be the creation of a regional transportation information portal that is accessible online and by telephone, email, or PDA that provides travellers with easily accessible, standardized information on the full-range of transportation alternatives available to them.

BIG MOVE #6: Create an information system for travellers, where and when they need it.

Here are the features, in order of importance, that I think a transportation information system should have:

1. Real-time (GPS) display of next bus/train at major station stops
2. Information portal covers ALL transit systems across region
3. Information is user-friendly and accessible using a wide variety of methods
4. Portal compares all transportation alternatives
5. Amenities offered on-board transit systems (e.g. wi-fi access on buses)

What are your priorities for a traveller information system?

Do you think this is a Big Move?

Have you been to a place in the world that has a great traveller information system?

I encourage you to leave a comment. I’ll summarize the comments and pass them on to Metrolinx.

(more…)

Maybe you’ve seen them around the city before. Bikes with small wheels, tall handle bars and a tall seat post. Some have even called them clown bikes. But, there are more to these strange creatures than meets the eye…

Last spring my car died and though a complicated series of transactions my family replaced it with a mini-van. I was concerned about the ecological footprint left by a single occupant driving a van to the GO station every morning – and I was sick and tired of the soccer-mom jokes. Also, since my school schedule isn’t the same every day, I was concerned about the diminishing amount of available parking spaces at the train station after the peak hours. The solution was to try to get to the nearest bus stop for a one-seat ride to the train station – but in Caledon this isn’t easy.

It’s a 20 minute walk through the Highway 410 extension construction site to get to the GO bus stop, where I could take the Orangeville bus without having to pay an additional fare. This was perfect for the peak hours, off peak service was terrible. If I walked 10 more minutes along the rural highway I could reach a Brampton Transit stop with decent service for 50 cents on top of my GO pass – but service ended at 7pm made a drink after a tough midterm impossible. I would have to walk 40 minutes from my front door to a Brampton Transit stop where buses ran from the start to end of service all days of the week. Walking for 40 minutes to the bus stop, while great for the body, is unfeasible for commuting and all too common in the suburbs. A bicycle was the answer, but there were problems. (more…)