January 30, 2007
Automotive People-Mover Timetables For The Public On Your Portable Telephoning Device? It Sounds Like The Future!
You know what's awesome? People on the internet who love the TTC. Torontoist is already firmly on board with the freelance public transit love, so it seemed only appropriate to alert the masses to another project in no way affiliated with the TTC that seeks to improve it.
gottc.ca doesn't look like much when you open it in a normal browser, and it isn't supposed to. That's because it's been written as simply and sparsely as possible to do one thing: give you access to TTC bus schedules on your cell phone using a minimum of bandwidth to do so. The main page (the site's author only has the first half of the alphabet's routes up thus far, but promises that the remainder will be up by the end of this week) is designed to get you to your schedule of choice in "14 Kb or less" of bandwidth - which, given cellphone browsing costs, is far from insignificant.
The site's author also shows how the TTC could make cellphone schedule browsing even more convenient with his example of a cell-friendly schedule for the 5 Avenue Road North bus. Torontoist tested it out and, wow, that's incredibly convenient for cell browsing. Says the author:
I would like to deliver the rest of the schedules in the 5 N Avenue format, but at the moment I don't have the skills to write the CGI or whatever would be necessary to automate the process. I would certainly love it if someone came forward. The site is free and always will be - perhaps that will attract someone to donate some of their time and help out.
He adds a little editorial flair with this comment:
My take on the TTC debacle is that the TTC should stick to a few basic objectives: an open-source trip planner that websites like mine could integrate with and 2) putting more languages on their website. Anything more and they will lose focus.
However, just in case the TTC isn't happy with this free-web project, the designer has pre-emptively set up a webpage where a donation button can go in case he gets sued.
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The site works really well! Can't wait til it's all as functional as the Avenue 5 schedule.
Until then, the routes (at least the ones I tried, like the Carlton streetcar) link into the TTC's site. The TTC site makes it almost impossible to digest since it uses six columns across (too many for my 'berry.)
At current Rogers rates for bandwidth (that's a Rogers Motorola V220 in the photo), 14Kb of bandwidth would cost 70 cents.
Rogers charges 5 cents per kilobyte. Rogers' cost for that kilobyte of data is much much much much much much less than one cent.
Just so you know before you start using this service and get $50 in data charges with your next phone bill.
Very nice. I think it will be especially handy for the Blue Night service. Though on second thought, I don't envision myself ever being sober enough to navigate to the site to find when the next vomit comet comes.
Looks great. It will be really handy for the Blue Night service. Though, on second thought, I don't envision myself ever being sober enough to navigate to the site and find out when the next vomit comet will come.
In Portugal, every bus stop in downtown Lisbon has a specifc number printed on it. If you text that number to a specific number, operated by the Metropolitano de Lisboa, they then text you in return the schedule of that specific route.
Somewhat cheaper than Roger's 5 cents a kb :P.
Presumably, you could augment that site so that you could type in your browser url.com/routenumber and it returns you that directly, instead of wasting time gowing through the large directory?
Adam C-F - if you can take a picture of what the site looks like on your 'berry, I'd love to see what it looks like - email it to me at karma _at_ [my website]
You can already go directly to your schedule by typing
www.gottc.ca/5N where 5N is the bus number and direction of travel you want to go, for example 5N is the no. 5 bus northbound (Avenue Rd bus)
You still need to select the stop you're waiting at since the stops in Toronto do not have numbers assigned to them. The TTC really needs go out and assign them numbers.
Rogers DOES charge .05/kb...if you don't have a data plan. You can subscribe to a data plan. Blackberry's have their own type of plans, for all non-bb devices, see the following:
$15 1.5MB $21/MB overage
$25 3MB $10/MB overage
$40 7MB $6/MB overage
$60 25MB $7/MB overage
$100 200Mb $5/MB overage
There are also a lot of "Value packs" that include 250kb along with CallID and VM for a bundled price.
uhm... ...my question is... ...why are torontonians taking this on themselves. as cool as the technology is, this really should be the job of the TTC themselves or the city to provide this service.
whats next, people jamming the subway stops with their own routes and maps!!!
this city really needs to get its shit together.
anyone remember the bob rae eglington line, only to be squashed by mel lastmans shopping line... ...leaving some big holes under eglington west station.
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how about looking at an old proposition for the downtown relief lines
how about finishing of that damn YUS line loop that will take them student to york
welcome to toronto, the BIG CITY that still works with SMALL TOWN mentality