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Covering Your Tracks

By David Topping

The TTC has a very rough copy of their public GPS streetcar tracking system up and running. There’s a live map (discovered last night by Steve Munro), and a mobile phone application (discovered early this morning by BlogTO)—both seemingly tracking all streetcar routes but likely not all individual cars. As Munro cautioned last night: “This is a trial. Don’t complain to me if it doesn’t work. That’s what trials are for. Apparently there are still cars with no GPS units, and this causes problems.”

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  • http://null matt1256

    Just as I suspected. The 506 is a huge pain in the ass going east. 6 cars going west, only 2 going east between Euclid and Parliament. No wonder I’m late for work when I decide to TTC it there sometimes.
    Screencap

  • http://undefined matt1256
  • http://null rich1299

    woohoo! thanks for providing the link, as a long suffering 501 rider in south Etobicoke who can almost never predict when a streetcar will come, the schedules are a joke, I’m loving this! There’s often gaps of 30 minutes or so followed by a pack of 3-4 streetcars, if this works it will make living on a line with crappy reliability not so bad.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    A sad update from Spacing: all but the 509 and 510 routes are now disabled, because “The TTC said all other routes are not GPS-to-web enabled.”

  • http://null Svend

    What’s the point of tracking late buses and streetcars?
    I won’t get where I’m going any faster.

  • http://undefined montauk

    I know this is a stupid question, but what technology is recommended to use this service?
    I don’t know anything about phones. When I press the Internet browser button by accident I panic and frantically press the hang up button over and over, and then I shut it down, because I am afraid that I will incur exorbitant charges. I used it to check my email once but it took forever to type in my username and password so I never did it again.

  • http://null rich1299

    That’s a shame, even if they just showed the streetcars with the GPS units it would’ve been a great help in avoiding standing on the side of the Lakeshore for 20 minutes or more if I knew when at least those few were coming. Still, and sadly, this looks like it will be the biggest improvement in my transit riding experience for a very long time.