After what feels like an eternity and 3,400 user suggestions, the TTC’s finally rolling out its official mobile site.
That means people with the ability to access the web on their phones can venture over to m.ttc.ca, mobile.ttc.ca, or mymobile.ttc.ca to get the nice light navigable version of the transit commission’s website.
Having just played with it on an iPhone (can’t forget to mention that there’s a whole lot of people who don’t have phones, data plans and text messaging – making this a completely inaccessible service), I can say it’s pretty nice to have the trip planner right there on the phone. I have several ways of getting from home to work in the morning.
I just punched in Queen and Dovercourt as the departure point and Shuter and Church as the destination and it went to a confirmation page. From there I was taken to a page that gave me three options.
The first was to take the streetcar across the city along Queen and walk up to Shuter – the most reasonable route, and one I take normally. Point for the planner. Another point for including real-time delays.
My second option was to walk up to Dundas and take that streetcar. There’s a bit more of a walk in the morning, but the planner tells me I would actually shave a few minutes off the total trip seeing as the Dundas car has an easier time crossing T.O. Who knew.
The final option is where things get a little crazy. The plan is to walk to Ossington, get on the bus for a couple of blocks and get off at Dundas – transfer to a streetcar – and make it to work. That one has scheduling and transfer disasters written all over it.
That said, you can cutomize your trip with specifics like when you need to arrive or when you need to depart. You can also ask the site to remove one minute bus trips from your plans.
The PDF maps of the subway routes are totally useless, though. You can’t see the station names and zooming, at least on my iPhone, didn’t work.
For those who constantly need more, over the next few weeks the TTC has plans to incorporate custom-tailored text message alerts for routes you select, and/or provide that same service through email.
As for the rest of the microsite, it does a good job of providing the info you might need on train frequency and which stops have handicapped access. Those constantly wondering if the standard fare has gone up again have a special page dedicated to that too.
Most importantly, it’s fast and simple, the site that is. Whether your real-life plan to take a streetcar across town goes off without delays, however, is something that’s not fixed with some nice coding work.
