TTC Trip Planner

The TTC Trip Planner seems to be live, after some digging by the Spacing folks.

It works with a bunch of small browsers I’ve thrown at it – w3m, mobile Safari, Blackberry – so I know I can use it from a handheld. Yay!

Only minor annoyance is that for subway journeys, it only shows the direction of travel in the summary (“YONGE-UNIVERSITY-SPADINA TOWARDS DOWNSVIEW” – and yes, in all-caps) and you have to click through to the details to find out which station you need to get off at.

It does seem to get deeply confused at Kennedy Station; I live just south of Kennedy, and it expects me to take the 43 Kennedy north to the junction to Eglinton, then walk south. Everyone here uses Transway Crescent …

Update: how could I have missed the prettier and much less capslockier MyTTC?

Update 2: The official TTC site appears to have moved here http://www3.ttc.ca/Trip_planner/index.jsp?useplanner=true. Let’s see if it still works with mobile devices.

The return of Arthur

Pretty much since the new year, I let me hair just go. This was mostly because I’d lost the coordinates for Arthur, the Scottish barber who first dealt with my hair in 2006, and I’d been following him from location to location. I have weird hair, and Arthur knew just what to do to make it behave.

A couple of weeks back, I was wandering idly along the Danforth, and after looking into a barber’s window, cursed the fact that I’d lost touch with Arthur. I walked a little further and — as if by magic — met Arthur. It seems he’s moved to the neighbourhood, so now we’re back in touch. The haircut I got on the weekend is awesome.

Arthur now does house calls (preferably near TTC stops), and is looking for some new clients. He’s been doing this for longer than you’ve (likely) been alive. I hesitate to post his phone number, so please contact me and I’ll pass on the details.

wheeee!

Dawes Super Galaxy at Main St Station

I got the Super Galaxy back from Cogs yesterday. They’ve done a great job of fitting slightly raised bars and thumbshifters, and repacking all the ancient bearings. It rides like a dream; I was only planning to ride from Gerrard back to Broadview TTC, but I zoomed all the way along Gerrard to Main St station. And this was me having hardly been on a bike since last year.

I think the rear derailleur may be on its way out, ‘cos it still makes clonky noises in lowest gear. But it’s looking great, and running great, and best of all, Cogs did the work for a very reasonable price. I am happy.

beautiful bike

Sorry there’s no picture, but there’s a beautiful Pedersen parked outside Chester TTC. It’s the original tallbike.

snow fair

We get a little snow, and the TTC goes borked again. Gahh!

Toronto Subway Station GPS Locations, now in GPX

TTC stations on Google Earth
Further to Toronto Subway Station GPS Locations, I now have them in GPX format: ttc.gpx. Google Earth reads GPX files, but loses some of the metadata.

It would seem that someone has done this before, but using a different approach. I did search the forums, but there were no stations in the community overlay — honest, guv.