Comments on: Future Toronto Transit Map features

By: Victoria

Victoria — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:58:15 +0000

Thank you SO much for your time and effort! You’ve made things way easier for me to understand being new to the city. If the TTC wasn’t in it’s ‘dire financial state’ I would urge them to use your maps on their site (which I have found to be rather confusing)and of couce PAY you for your quality work.

By: Gil

Gil — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 06:23:26 +0000

I love your map and thanks for all the time and effort you’ve put in!

The Toronto.com website uses Google Maps to display several features which are sought out on their website (restaurants, hotels, bars&clubs, attractions, cinemas, shopping, sports&recreation, subway station and Green P parking lots. If you could get some sort of partnership with them going you could display these in relation to your transit routes map. Other attractions such as hospitals and post-secondary institutions could also be included.

When clicking on GO stations if you could possibly link them to their schedule from Go Transit’s website.

If you do get around to showing routes from the 905 agencies (you had mentioned that the scaling gets weird the further out from downtown you go) I would use the information directly from the various agencies rather than from the TTC which has some inaccuracies.

By: Leo Petr

Leo Petr — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:06:54 +0000

One thing you don’t currently show are the Blue Night routes. It would make sense to give them their own layer.

By: ecila

ecila — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:21:23 +0000

I think it would be great if you expanded the map to include York Region and beyond Toronto so people can plan routes in and out of the city as well. :)

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 05:28:26 +0000

Great job, Ian. You implemented a bunch of features that I knew I didn’t have the chops to consider for my own TTC map.

Perhaps with the buzz you’re getting from Torontoist, etc., you might enlist a few interested people to scout the entrance locations from the stations they frequent (or some they don’t). I’d certainly be willing to sign up for a few. Exact GPS coordinates shouldn’t be too crucial, what with the satellite view and relative positioning info available for people who print the relevant area of the map (say) and then mark the spot they’re standing on while visiting the place.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:11:31 +0000

I think your map is great! I have posted a link on my web page.

By: Ian Stevens

Ian Stevens — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 04:00:55 +0000

That would be a nice feature, Eric. Unfortunately, it would be difficult with the current implementation. The surface lines, of which there are about 200, and their labels would be time-consuming to isolate in Illustrator. I suppose the layers for the selected lines could be loaded on demand. If I ever get around to reformatting the layers in any way, perhaps I’ll look into this.

By: Eric S. Smith

Eric S. Smith — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 01:45:58 +0000

It’d be awesome to be able to light up a given surface route, to have the bus or streetcar route that you’re interested in glow in a different colour, showing exactly where it goes at a glance. Be a pain to isolate each route, but that’d raise this map well beyond its paper-bound Ride Guide origins: light up all routes connecting to a subway stop, or just see where a single bus route goes without having to search for its number among all of the red lines.

By: Montreal Map

Montreal Map — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:44:10 +0000

just another none Google-Map map: http://www.ca.map24.com/ - I like its 3D tilt thing…

By: Montreal Map

Montreal Map — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:39:22 +0000

Hi Ian!

yes, Google API does allow Local search which can be used for both address and business search.

about station entrances:
1. some of entries which you know, you can point yourself just looking on satellite map, right? :)
2. for the rest you can involve website visitors! :) Alone with displaying a station, give a link to a simple tool where people can add a geo location for entrances themselves! Slowly but surely they will fill the missing stuff :) Something like this:
http://mtlmap.com/locator.php
http://mtlmap.com/locator.php?lat=45.482521&lng=-73.562565

About the layers - yes, you are right: it must be a single layer always… But you can have several sets of layers rendered for different combination of info displayed. Which might require more manual efforts at your side :) Well, I think this “layering” thing is not of that high priority actually :) The info itself is valuable. How it’s displayed - it’s another issue.

Bus stops is a dream indeed, but I think nobody in healthy mind will do them manually. Only if those transportation guys will provide some kind of list with either addresses or with geo coordinates. Using public effort in this case (kind of geo wiki) might be not that effective/useful…