culture TTC’s NextBus Finally Lives Up To Its Name



Today, the TTC’s NextBus feed lit up and began showing next vehicle arrival information for the system’s 140 bus routes. This information appears to only be available through the NextBus’s mobile and desktop websites or via the TTC’s SMS next vehicle arrival system. (There may be some apps out there that pull the data directly from NextBus and display it as well, but we haven’t seen any so far.)

The Open Data feed does appear to be pushing the bus data, but will require developers to update their applications to show the information, something that, for example, RocketRadar is currently doing.

The real-time bus arrival system is a long-awaited feature—especially since the same information has been available for all streetcar routes for nearly a year—and was in testing since 2008. Now, every TTC rider can have a bit more certainty before walking to their nearest stop.

: And…the feed of bus route updates has been pulled. TTC spokesperson Brad Ross tells us that Grey Island, the company which provides the NextBus service to the TTC released the bus updates prematurely. The information will become officially and permanently available sometime next month.