TTC buses to get Wi-Fi, but don’t fire up your tablets yet
It’s part of a new dispatch system that will keep buses better organized, but transit officials aren't promising to provide access to riders.

Thestar.com
June 19, 2014
By Tess Kalinowski

The TTC will begin installing the technology to make its buses and streetcars Wi-Fi capable in 2016.

Although transit officials are promising better service as a result, it doesn’t necessarily mean commuters will be able to browse the Internet.

The Wi-Fi capability is part of the $95-million computer-aided dispatch automatic vehicle location system (CAD/AVL) that will replace the 1970s system the TTC uses to communicate with bus and streetcar drivers, according to a report before the TTC board on Tuesday.

The technology is considered crucial to making the TTC’s surface routes more reliable by alerting the control rooms that track vehicle movements to buses or streetcars that are veering off-route or off-schedule, said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.

“It allows you to see exactly where every bus is, where it’s going, how far off its schedule it is. It allows us to really manage routes much more effectively. Route supervisors can see exactly what a bus is doing or if it’s been sitting too long at a particular location,” he said.

The TTC board asked in April for a staff update on the provision of free Wi-Fi on buses and streetcars.

But the report next week doesn’t provide that information, and Ross would not speculate on when that service might be available.

“We will come back and report back to the board on when we might have free Wi-Fi on our vehicles. It would be premature for me to give you a date today, when we have to get the CAD/AVL on our vehicles first,” he said.

Since late last year, Wi-Fi has been available on the platforms at the Bloor and St. George subway stations, and Ross said the contractor, BAI, will continue to roll out the service in the system’s 61 subway stations. But so far, plans to find a cellphone provider haven’t panned out.

A 2007 plan to put Wi-Fi on York Region’s Viva buses never materialized, said Ann-Marie Carroll, acting general manager. The technology was too new and depended on selling ads for TV screens on the buses to pay for the service. That didn’t prove to be viable, she said.

Meantime, so many people have Wi-Fi enabled devices it’s no longer considered to be worth pursuing, said Carroll.

“It’s really something you need to be sitting down for,” she said. On an urban bus system, so many riders are hopping on and off, Wi-Fi has limited value.