Rocket Talk: When's the TTC Going to Roll Out More Fare Collection Methods?
Newsstand: November 9, 2009
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The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Torontoist has seen its fair share of Google Maps mashups. For geography nerds like us, maps are always fun to play around with, but most of the mashups we've seen so far have not been particularly useful. That is, unless you're dying to know where they keep all the Timmy's or bust all the grow-ops.
Enter Taxiwiz. The site is far from slick, but the idea behind it is great. Taxiwiz takes Google's driving direction functionality and plots that against the standard taxi tariff schedule, making it easy to estimate how much a taxi ride anywhere in the city will cost. Finally, an easy way to settle a debate about whether it's cheaper for a group of friends to take the TTC or call a taxi when heading out for a night on the town.
Here are a few of the estimates Taxiwiz provides. Based on our experiences, they're not far off:
• From Union Station to Toronto Pearson Airport: $55.74
• From City Hall to the CN Tower: $6.45
• From U of T (Harbord & St. George) to The Drake (1150 Queen West): $13.33
The main reason we haven't seen this kind of application until now is that driving directions were only added to the Google Maps API in May of this year, but now that they're in there, we hope to see a lot of new mashups that make use of this functionality.
Of course, the coolest thing happening with Google Maps today is the ability to change driving directions by dragging and clicking your desired route. No word on when Google will add this to the API so that it becomes mash-able, but when they do, that will be totally sweet. Then you'll finally be able to figure out for yourself which taxi route is the cheapest. Exciting times, indeed.
Photo by PDPhotography from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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It's not working for me. I enter Pearson as my starting point, and regardless of what address I enter as my destination it shows:
Estimated cost:
That cab ride would cost about C$54.53. It is about 36.94 km.
or
City Hall to Bloor & Yonge:
Estimated cost:
That cab ride would cost about C$5.13. It is about 1.18 km.
I don't know if they factor it in, but the airport ride seems right because cabs are supposed to be mandated by a fixed rate to the airport, the price of which depends what area of the city you live in. From my place, the ride is always $46, even if we sit in traffic for half an hour longer.
Yes, the website is not slick.
The problem you are having with it always giving the same result for an airport trip is probably happening because you are not setting the "landmark" field to empty. It takes that field by default and ignores your address. They should definitely fix that.
Nice to see that there was a grow-op in Rosedale!
Did 3 fares from my house to
1 work: over by 2.00
2. yonge and bloor: over by 2.50
3.yonge and st. clair: over by 5.00
Not so bang on, this thing.
i tried to see what it would cost from toronto to new mexico and it was right. $53,231. I paid that once to see a dead concert. still paying off the debt but it was kinda worth it.
You can usually get a discount on fares that large. The guy should have just rounded down the meter to an even $50K.
ken,
i was only kidding. the real reason i went there was to get a big mac.
Definitely worth it then. Do they call it a Royale With Cheese down there?
This and 28 other useful Toronto Google Mash-ups are all on this one page.