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.
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.
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