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The TTC has decided to open up its redesigned site as a public beta test of sorts. It’s a definite visual improvement, but what about what’s under the hood?

first things first, it’s already lying to us.

No TTC route diversions, EVAR. There are route diversions every single day. I don’t care if there’s actually a day WITHOUT a diversion, I won’t believe it, because there’s always some construction, or a bus being diverted, or a route on diversion somewhere. Color me a non-colored cynical.

I won’t lament their stylesheets or layout choices as some commenters have addressed because A: it’s a vast improvement, and B: it really does not look like DOS for christ’s sake. There’s nothing terribly wrong with the look- it’s all laid out in an easy to read column format that doesn’t require scrolling on most monitors, and things aren’t buried as deep. The logo does not look like a scanned business card at all, it just looks like the choice of “TTC red” is different, slightly lighter. It’s perfectly sharp and without artifacts.

Also, the trip planner is currently AWOL, which should really have been the showcase for the new site and would be something worth ruthlessly beta testing. Meanwhile, the Montreal STM Public Transit service has had one on its site for years. I understand that’s it’s gotta be a PITA to develop, but when you have a system as large as the TTC charging the prices they charge, it’s a no-brainer. A trip planner akin to the STM would be worth its weight (admittedly, it would weigh nothing) in solid gold. People would be more likely to use the TTC more frequently if they knew the three quickest possible routes from point A to B (like the STM system). Get this developed and available yesterday. For $110 a month for an adult pass (vs $66.25 for an adult pass in Montreal), the money is most definitely there.

Of course a trip planner is only useful if assuming the TTC transport vehicles arrive on time. They never arrive on time. Ever. If you think you caught one that arrived on time then you’re wrong. What you actually caught was a bus that was 20 minutes late and happened to arrive at the time the next bus was set to show up at.

This begs the question of why did the TTC spend ANY money upgrading its online portal when its actual service is in dire need of a full retooling? A route diversion RSS is a great idea (if it ever gets used) but I’d rather not have the feed at all if I knew the 503 streetcar would get me to work on time reliably. The occasional disruption I can handle because, well, shit happens. But when the 502 and the 503 are supposed to arrive every ten minutes (theyy’re supposed to come between 5-8 minutes apart from eachother) and neither one comes at all for at least 15 minutes every single day then I really don’t care if I’ve got a website that tells me so. Which it doesn’t.

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