Tools of the Trade - What to carry on the TTC

There are a wide variety of items that you could easily chose to carry with you when riding the rocket on a regular basis. What you carry will depend on the size of your backpack or bag, how you travel and quite frankly, how "paranoid" you are!

The following is a list of items divided into two groups, essential and nice to have.

Essential Items

• Flashlight. You can get very small pen lights and LED flashlights that won't weight you down but will provide light in an emergency. I never ride the subway without a flashlight of some kind. A flashlight could come in handy in a power outage inside the subway, but could also be useful when riding the bus in the event of a local or widespread blackout.
• Bottle of Water. This is especially important if there is an outage on a very hot day but even in the winter you need to keep your liquids topped up!
• Quarters/Cell Phone. I recommend both, just in case your cell isn't working. It may be handy to call a friend to get a ride. Don't forget a phone call is now 50 cents.
• $40 Cash. The exact amount doesn't have to be $40 however it should be enough to get you home in a taxi from work. Depending on where you live you may need more or you may need to plan to go to a friends place.

In addition to the above mentioned essential items, you may want to consider the following items as well, especially if you carry a backpack:

• First Aid Kit. You can carry a very small first aid kit in the side pouch of your backpack without weighing you down. It can be useful for anything from an emergency to putting bandaids on your blisters so you can finish walking home.
• Emergency Blanket. These little silver blankets will run you $1 at the dollar store and are very small. Keep one in your first aid kit. In an emergency this could help an injured person from going into shock
• Scanner. Most people ride the subway in complete ignorance of what is going on. If you really want to stay on top of things get a scanner and listen to Transit Control yourself! More info is available on my other post

While I would hope that you never end up in a real emergency situation, the fact is there are TTC outages all the time. As proven by the latest power outage in the west end, having a couple of items like a small flashlight could make the outage slightly more fun and less annoying!

If you have any other must-have items, let me know and I will add them!

Dress for Success - Footwear for the TTC

I've often been riding the TTC and wondered what people are thinking when they get dressed and leave in the morning. From flip flops to 6" heels, what you wear on your feet when riding transit could make the difference between life and death!!

OK, mostly just sore feet :-)

My personal belief is that you should never go out in public in shoes you can't run away in! I realize this may be drastic but imagine the worst case scenario...

You are riding the subway when suddenly the train crashes into something. You're in your flip flops and must now make your way through broken glass and a panic stricken mob, to the end of the train. Once there you must climb down to track level and walk to the nearest exit along a railroad line with ties and rocks. You can imagine how well your feet would fair in a nice pair of runners compared to those trendy 6" heels or the "comfy" flip flops!

A more mundane but VERY real scenario that you will see on an ongoing basis is a service outage...

You make your way up to street level in your stylish pumps, only to find yourself facing huge crowds waiting for yet-to-be-seen shuttle buses. You decide to walk the 4 stations left on your trip and in the end your feet are feeling like murder!

OR... Maybe you realize the pain you will be in and decide to wait for, and fight to get in, the shuttle buses. Either way, your choice of footwear will have a serious impact on your day and how the TTC outage has affected you.

My advice is this; If you are a man, save your flip flops for the beach! Wear shoes you can walk in! If you are a woman, no one thinks any less of you because you wear runners to work and change when you get there!

(Oh... and all this applies to good boots in the winter too!)

How to survive the TTC - Information Managment

The first main thing to surviving the TTC is knowing exactly what is going on. With this knowledge you can modify your route, stay home, or just suck it up content in the knowledge that you are not alone!

Twitter
For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter... well, I can't get into it right now but check this out: Youtube / Wikipedia

You can use http://search.twitter.com to look for the key words "TTC" or "#darkto". In addition you should look at TweetGrid if you want to follow several keywords at the same time.

Another great source is to follow @TTCU_Community and @TTCUpdates. These all run from the TTCUpdates site. TTCU_Community is a "bot" that retweets anything posted with the #ttcu tag so if you have something you think everyone should know about post it with #ttcu and help your fellow commuters!

My TTC
My TTC is TTC's newest email Alert system. It launched less than a week ago and is recieving a "baptism by fire" today with the major outage. Visit the TTC website to sign up but keep in mind that these alerts are "Official" and so far have been non-existent or delayed. @bradttc, the Director of Communications is a very responsive individual and has been working non-stop with his team and members of the community to improve the service so I have a lot of faith that it will get better!

Yahoo Group
There are a couple of yahoo groups that do email alerts, the one I use is the Transit Alert group. Again, it is community driven but it also covers GO transit or any other GTA transit systems.

Facebook
I'm not sure what facebook groups exist for TTC updates so if someone has one, please let me know.

Horse's Mouth
If you are interested in what is REALLY going on, and not just what "they" tell you, the best way to do this is to listen to Transit Control on a scanner. Transit Toronto has a whole write up of what frequencies to listen to on the surface routes and in the subway but in short:

412.0375	TTC F1 Main Channel
412.1125	TTC F3 Inspectors
412.5875	TTC F4 Emergency
412.6125	TTC F5

The main channel to monitor is TTC Channel 1, 412.0375. Whenever an incident such as a fire or jumper occurs they will usually switch to Channel 3. Channel 5 is mostly streetcar moves but, along with Channel 4, will become active in the event of multiple incidents.

Since your car stereo only works from 88 to 108 MegaHertz you need a radio that will pick up the 412 MHz range. For this your best bet is a scanner. You can get them from Radio World on Steeles near the 400 or from Durham Radio. You can also go onto eBay or try The Source by Circuit City.

A scanner can run you from $130 (Durham has a special right now) to $700, depending on what features you want but for the purposes of monitoring the TTC you can get away with the cheaper ones. They run on AA batteries and you MUST use headphones when riding on a TTC vehicle.