crazed monkey

I’ve updated the Toronto transit map to include support for linking. You can now link to addresses as well as link to stations. Just click the “Link to this page” link above the map.

Posted on December 3rd, 2006 in transitmap - 4 Comments »

Now that my Toronto transit map contains many of the features I envisioned when creating its predecessor, it’s time to think of new features I would like to add. What follows are whatever features I can think of. Most of these are pretty zany, involving tedious work, but who said a feature request list had to be realistic?

• GO Train stations and addresses.
• Link generation for a search result so that searches can be bookmarked.
• Optional rendering of station names and info on a separate layer.
• Listing of adjoining surface routes for each station, with link to the schedule for that route.
• Surface routes, subway and train lines on their own layer along with the option to select which layers are displayed.
• Clickable bus and street car line markers which bring up the TTC web page for that line.
• Clickable bus and street car stops which link to the corresponding page on the TTC website.
• Rendering of station entrances.

Of these features, the first five seem to me to be a good combination of usefulness and feasibility. The other three require either large amounts of time and/or the usage of a GPS receiver.

Which features would you like to see?

Posted on November 19th, 2006 in transitmap, ttc - 17 Comments »

Based on a user comment on the new map, I have added another zoom level to the Toronto transit map. I didn’t do this before because Illustrator wouldn’t let me export a large enough image to PNG, in this case 13794 by 8192. Instead I exported the image in two parts and collated the resulting images using ImageMagick. The detail on that zoom level is high enough so that the names of side streets are now visible.

In addition to adding the higher zoom level, I also re-rendered the tiles for levels 3 and 5 as the scale on the line strokes was off. Surprisingly, this resulted in a 50% bandwidth savings for the level 3 tiles so they should download a little faster now.

To further increase download speed, I have spread the tiles over four domains based on the recommendations of a study on optimising page load time. Incidentally, Google’s map tiles are also spread out over four domains and I coincidentally chose the same simple algorithm.

Posted on November 17th, 2006 in transitmap - No Comments »

As with my old subway map, the most difficult parts of creating the new map didn’t involve any programming. The hardest and most time-consuming part by far was cleaning the TTC ride guide and projecting it onto Google’s tiles. I made heavy use of Adobe Illustrator for this part, removing the unnecessary bits which Google’s maps already have (streets, street names, landmarks, etc.) and then scaling, rotating and moving the map around so that the routes matched their respective streets. Sure, that should have been relatively simple but it wasn’t. First, Illustrator’s selection tools leave much to be desired. Secondly, Illustrator is a pig. The 1MB PDF which is the TTC ride guide ballooned to over 30MB inside Illustrator, and oftentimes even the most minute transformations took tens of minutes to complete. Even after all that work, the lines don’t quite match up, especially on the city’s outskirts, but it’s good enough.

All this tedious work leaves me with a greater appreciation of the TTC ride guide. The PDF version of that document has been around for at least a decade, and yet a computer I purchased last year had trouble manipulating it. There’s no way the map could have been made manually; it has to be computer-generated.

In addition to being unwieldy on large files, Illustrator wouldn’t let me export the image for zoom level 2 of the map. Apparently it was too large to be saved to PNG. I had thought zoom level 3 would be enough but, as someone was quick to point out, that level isn’t enough as it doesn’t contain names for smaller streets. I’m currently trying to figure out a way around that, although it’s difficult as the image for zoom level 2 will be 13794 by 8192.

Through my work with the Toronto transit map I’ve created a few tools which others will find useful. The first is a simple script to download and collate the Google tiles for a given area into one large image. The second is a command-line tile cutter which uses free software and which has a few more features than the automatic tile cutter for Photoshop. I will be releasing those shortly.

Posted on November 13th, 2006 in transitmap, ttc - No Comments »

About a year ago I played around with the Google Maps API and created a map containing the TTC subway system. It wasn’t intended to be all that useful as the TTC’s own map contains much more information. Still, that didn’t stop my map from rising to the top of the Google rankings for TTC-related searches, resulting in hundreds of visits. A few people sent me emails and comments thanking me for making the map, and it even got a mention in the print version of the June 2006 issue of HUB. I didn’t see much reason for the fuss as the map could have been so much better.

For the past little while I’ve been working on an update, one which makes use of new features in the Google Maps API and which should prove to be even more useful than the TTC’s own system map. This map encompasses not only the subway system, but also the full TTC ride guide, including street car, bus, and train lines. Best of all, the map now has search capability as well as integration with the TTC subway rider efficiency guide. Enjoy.

Many will note, and will no doubt complain, that the map stops just west of the airport and just north of Steeles. I did this to limit the size of the map for bandwidth purposes, and because the lines further north and to the west diverge considerably from the streets on Google’s map. You will notice that even west of the airport the lines diverge. I would have stopped the map further east but felt that I needed to include the airport for the sake of completion. As for those north of Steeles and west of the airport, this is a Toronto transit map. Anything else is just gravy.

Posted on November 11th, 2006 in transitmap, ttc - 101 Comments »