If you live in Toronto or any city with public transit, you know how frustrating it can be to get to your stop only to realize there’s been a route change or a detour, and you’re now behind schedule. With a new update to the Transit app and the TTC website in a few weeks, riders can see planned and spontaneous route detours on a map.
Previously, the best way to track detours was to go to the @TTCnotices Twitter account and read the most recent posts to make sure your route was still working. This was not easy and very tedious, so I’m extremely excited to start using the Canadian-made Transit app to see my bus routes more accurately.
We’ve partnered with our pals from @transitapp to add a new free in-app feature that will track and show in real-time any unplanned surface vehicle diversions on a one-year pilot. (Yes, planned diversions will also be there).
So when a road is blocked or closed for an emergency,… pic.twitter.com/dbMFAfKCht— TTC Media Relations 📰🚌🚋🚈 (@TTCNewsroom) September 3, 2024
If the bus or streetcar is off its standard route, users will see the new route in the app, and the old route will be desaturated and marked with a dashed line. The Transit app will change the route on the app once it detects a bus or streetcar going off a route more than three times in a row. The app will also load planned route diversions like the upcoming TIFF festival.
The TTC and the Transit app are partnering on this 12-month pilot project and the TTC says all buses and streetcars in its network will support this feature. A new open data standard will also exist between the TTC and the Transit app, so people who don’t want to use the app will be able to see this same live map on the TTC’s website in a few weeks once it’s up and running.
If you want to give it a shot, you can download the Transit app for iOS or Android for free. If you haven’t heard of Transit before it is created by a team in Montreal and in 2022 it even won an Apple design award.
Source: Toronto Transit Commission
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