Catch TTC – It doesn’t get any simpler

Catch Toronto's Transit with CatchTTC.comThere’s no longer any real need to resort to fancy smartphone apps or psychic devination, when it comes to catching the TTC here in Toronto, because beleaguered transit riders now have CatchTTC.com as an easy, one-stop location for their web browsers that will put the basic info at their fingertips. So what’s the catch?

There really isn’t one. This site is just a bare-bones scheduling service that let’s you pick favourite stops from all the TTC routes, and then just takes your current time to tell you when the next two arrivals will be. No dowloads, and no more searching through the maze of the TTC’s main website for route schedules.

Ad-Driven Transit Reforms?

If anything the TTC would be smart to spend a tiny fraction of its enormous budget (currently sucked up by management and personal) to just buy into this website now…While it’s still in it’s cheap infancy phase.
ie. Not showing much revenue from any ads that it will sure get clicks on as the layout and features improve themselves.

From there, this service could be easily improved upon by showing service disruptions and perhaps even optimized to offer tweetbacks of next arrivals to Twitter accounts that tweet a desire for info on their favourite #TTCstop…

In fact, if the TTC could figure out how to integrate that sort of service with forms of advertising that actually connected with riders during all of that blank-faced transit time, they could offer free Wi-Fi and have a real winner on their hands…and a much less disgrunteled ridership to boot!

TTC Toronto Transit Commission

Media Alert: Jenna Morrison’s stolen video

MEDIA ALERT:  

Desperately seeking the STOLEN video camera
and recording of dead cyclist,
Jenna Morrison & her son Lucas

WHAT: A video camera (Sony MiniDV TRV 900) containing the ONLY images of Jenna and her son Lucas dancing – The images are irreplaceable and of immense value to the family.

HOW: Repeat, re-tweet, or link to this info to spread the word.
ALSO: Keep your eyes open on Craigslist, Kijiji and pawnshops for a camera of this description. Remember that even ‘deleted’ files can be recovered if the memory wasn’t reformatted or recorded over.

WHY: This priceless family footage was to be used for the upcoming Dec 15th fundraiser, ”In Celebration of Jenna” at the Great Hall, 1087 Queen St. West
- all funds to go in trust for her son, Lucas.

WHERE: Stolen from an Acura TSX on Millwood Road, Toronto

WHEN: Nov. 27th – overnight B&E

WHO : Vehicle of family friend, Aron Slipacoff – robbed  Nov 27th

 PLEA:

” The tape (recording) is what is most important to us (as it contains irreplacable images)  - if anyone has any information, please call the Toronto Police Services at 416-808-2222, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS, or the Police at 53rd Division 416-808-5300″

FOR MORE INFO CONTACT:
Aron Slipacoff, family friend
aron@hooplacommunications.com
cell:   416.834.2766

Pass on this shortened URL:   http://wp.me/pMnHT-iJ

TWEET: Plz!Help find stolen camera w/the only known images of (dead cyclist) Jenna Morrison dancing w/her son Lucas http://wp.me/pMnHT-iJ

Special thanks to PC Tim Burrows on Facebook and Anotonia Zirbisias…
for helping get this write- up published in the Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/1094545–from-tragedy-to-disgust-video-of-dead-cyclist-stolen

Additional Coverage:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/11/30/toronto-morrison-tape.html

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111130/111130_Morrison_Theft/20111130/?hub=CP24Home

 

Jenna Morrison RIP

What Will it Take: Jenna Morrison RIP

RIP Jenna Morrison

Jenna Morrison died on her way to pick up her 5 year-old son. His spiderman helmet was hanging from the handlebars of their tandem-bike that they were to ride away on together…

Instead, this vision of sustainable urban life and personal transportation turned to an instantly horrific tragedy – when the bike-for-two was crushed by the truck that took the life of a mother and her unborn child instead.

Yet life goes on, as some of us search for ways to bring meaning from such tragedy. Hopefully we can learn to see things abit more clearly on the road, before the impact of this moment subsides and we all return to our daily scramble through busy life in the city and the incident becomes just another fading memory.

So what are the crucial points that we can take from this, so that we can move forward with it all – with a renewed sense of safety and self-preservation?

As someone who has ridden one of those tandem (trail-a) bikes, I’ve also added my theory on a possible cause of this accident further below…Which anyone who rides these articulated/hinged bikes should take passing note of.

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GO to Niagara…Ride the Falls by Bike!

 

Go Transit is MetrolynxSlowly but surely Metrolinx is becoming a household brand-name as it offers greater visibility for it’s exciting expansions of Ontario’s mass-transit infrastructure.  Through new services in it’s operational GO Transit division, which is already very well known to all Commuters here in Southern Ontario, Metrolinx is also making a big push to break away from the commuting pack into much more leisurely and adventurous modes of rail travel as well. Not only can GO Transit enthuse weekend sightseers, but it’s also purposely re-geared itself for the pleasures of cycling as well. Most obviously with the provision of specially equipped trains that can carry our bikes down to spectacular routes and scenery that surround Niagara Falls!

Niagara GoTrain Bike Racks 1 GO Transit now offers an additional trip on Friday evenings to facilitate longer weekend getaways both down to The Falls, as well as offering a quick weekend train trip in the opposite direction back into Toronto from the Niagara Peninsula. From June 24 to September 5th passengers can take their bikes along to tour The Falls and Vineyards of this famous wine-growing area at no extra charge! So let’s consider the new experiences that easy service opens up to even the most casual cycling enthusiast…

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Time to be Good to Yourself?

Time to Eat Yet?Allright…Our mandate here at Thumbshift might have started with Cycling and the Art of Maintaining Zen, but it soon spread out into all sorts of multi-modal transport ranging from Commuter Transit to piggy-backing on the TTC…and of course some of the messy politics and civics that go along with all that. So since it’s been a long road already, I’d like to pause to reflect and refresh ourselves abit with some healthy outlooks on fast foods and fluids. Ironically enough, before we consider the subtle details of healthy fast-food, let’s start with a quick review of a great little spot for French-Canadian style poutine right here in Toronto…A quick ride across Queen West.

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Taking Transit to the Ballotboxes

There are lots of varying opinions about why Canadians need to elect another federal government for the 3rd time in 7 years. Amid all the waste, posturing and self-serving party politics there’s one thing that Canadians should keep in mind however…Once the parties start to present, and revise their platforms (depending on which way the breeze blows), this is pretty much the only time that we can convince ourselves into believing that we live in a truly responsive and representative democracy. So why not raise some of the important issues (like public transit!) that could make a real difference down the road, while the politicians are in that rare mode of thinking where they need to actually listen and act upon public opinion, or otherwise face the consequences at the polls.

So, if there’s indeed enough will to participate in the democratic process, let’s go ahead and raise the subject of crumbling infrastructure and Public Transit to our representatives during this brief window of opportunity. Let’s take this one issue as an example of laying down tracks to a better and more sustainable future, and try to see what required to get this issue onto the ballots.

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Self-Generated Carbon Credits

The Green RevolutionThe Green Revolution seems like a broad general term that most people wish was alot less about marketing hype, and alot more market-driven hope. In this particular case though, it also represents a small firm that is offering to realize a form of people-powered green energy that could soon be available in your very own local gym.  All it took to get these power-generating  stationary bikes rolling was the opportunistic vision of a LEED’s certified entrepreneur and the adept experience of a mechanical engineer to finally put the pieces together. At which point the fitness industry finally has a personalized way to use Ontario’s fancy new feed-in “smart meters” to monetize their investments, and springboard into some ‘green’ marketing strategies of their own.

Evidently, the fellows behind “The Green Revolution” not only realized just how much energy was being burned off in most exercise gyms (as most members already suspect), but they’ve also followed through on this potential energy with the next logical steps in developing a system that could put all that wasted energy to better use. At least in terms of marketing power and symbolic carbon credits…Whatever those turn out to actually be!

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Metrolinx Gears Up for Air Rail Link

One of the Big Moves being mapped out by the Ontario Government’s public transit planning arm called Metrolinx, is a bold initiative called Air Rail Link (ARL) which promises to finally connect Toronto’s downtown core with Pearson International Airport via a dedicated express train…All in time for the 2015 Pan American Games!  Just to make things really challenging though, Metrolinx is also trying to implement electrified services along it’s key corridors which include a stretch of the railway route that will service the ARL, so this means selecting new locomotives that can go into service for 2015 that won’t be outdated by the electrification of this rail corridor . So effectively, the ARL project has become a lightning rod for concerns about transit expansion, railway electrification, new diesel technology, dedicated passenger rail lines, and all the political, bureacratic, and technical challenges that go along with it as well. So if the ARL is indeed to become a model project for the Future of transit and rail travel in the GTA, what stands in the way of this happening in the Present?

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Repairing the Sprawl

For most downtown Torontonians, our memories of this weeks horrific Pedestrian death beneath the wheels of the Queen Streetcar are still far too fresh for us to address issues of Pedestrian safety via the major root causes of  such dangers such as jaywalking and late intersection crossing. Instead let’s take a step back from the edge of the curb, and walk to the nearest corner, where we can more safely consider the advantages of Mass transit, in reducing traffic congestion, and creating a more livable and sustainable urban ecology for us all.

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War on Cars ?

A lot of Torontonian’s would agree to the notion that newly elected Mayor Rob Ford rode a wave of discontent in to office, by stirring up public contempt and dissatisfaction against big easy targets like overspending and waste. Among the many populist positions he took to ride such waves of public opinion was the greatly trumped up “War on Cars”, and the enormous frustrations that most people in Toronto feel about our now infamously long commute times, and notoriously noxious and congested roadways. But aside from the fact that the downtown core was never laid out and designed to carry this much surface, much less subterranean, traffic…Why should we get bogged down in these wars of words and rhetoric, where motorists, and cyclists and perhaps someday even pedestrians get turned against each other…Often to just serve short term political ends.

It might seem obvious to take a more collective approach to solving traffic related issues, but before taking a slide down that slippery slope of self-interests, perhaps we could at least declare a truce in the War on Cars. Not with some egotistical remark from some individual politician or lowly blogger, but with just one more example of how truly ridiculous the entire notion (and election platform pillar) really is.

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