The Story of TransitCamp

Underfunded and Overstressed

Despite the size and importance of the TTC to the growth and survival of the region, it is one of the most chronically underfunded transit authorities in the world. Squabbling between the municipal, provincial, and federal governments have left the system with little financial resource to expand and an ever ageing load of vehicles and stations needing constant maintenance. William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, spoke at a recent Canadian Urban Institute session in which he said "We in the U.S. used to look north for some of the best ideas in transportation… At one point it looked like Toronto had the best transit system in North America. I wish I could tell you that is true today. That is not."

The somewhat staggering growth rate of Toronto, filling every day with immigrants from all over the world, adds constantly increasing pressure to the already overstressed system. Our beloved "Red Rocket" is under siege, and the people in charge have responded by hunkering down in their bunkers and appearing in public as infrequently as possible. As a publicly funded entity, part of the TTC's mandate includes public consultations, which have gone from a sincere interest in the opinions of those millions of riders, to confrontational massacres held in cavernous and dimly lit halls, fronted by beleaguered officials, cowering in their sacrificial role.

Leaving the Web Behind

Faced with the challenge of desperately trying to stay above water, it is no surprise that this environment led to the decline and virtual abandonment of the TTC 's once-cutting-edge website, lost to the sands of track and streetcar maintenance and left stranded in the technological backwaters of 1996. At its launch eleven years ago, it was a leader in the field and carried an almost unparalleled depth of information to then much smaller number of web surfing Torontonians. Progress has not been kind and it has long since been eclipsed by other authorities' sites, replete with trip planners and customizable RSS feeds of service updates. Not unlike that old Williams horse-drawn stagecoach, the time had come for the site to be replaced by a sleek and modern bus, and the siren call was sounded on New Year's Day 2007. Robert Ouellette, writing on the popular Reading Toronto blog, said "The TTC Internet Site has to be the single worst information site found anywhere. It is a true embarrassment.", and called for the TTC's new chair, Adam Giambrone, to tap into Toronto's blogging community for insight into how to fix it.

Mr. Giambrone happily accepted the challenge, and a call went out to web-savvy Torontonians to gather their feedback in the comments section of leading Toronto blogs including Reading Toronto, blogTO, Torontoist, Transit Toronto, and Spacing Wire. The people gladly responded and produced an astounding 215 suggestions over a matter of days, ranging from a better user interface and information architecture and a trip planner, to simply following web standards, to customized schedules and route information. Some of the more in-depth feedback came from a session held at the Radiant Core offices, bringing together a team of web and TTC experts to provide a professional opinion (the team included Jay Goldman and Michael Glenn of Radiant Core, independent technologist David Crow, technology evangelist Joey De Villa, human factors specialist and TTC enthusiast Madhava Enros, public policy expert Mark Kuznicki, and community leader Will Pate). We produced a total of 10 recommendations, an additional 4 process guidelines, and a summary of 3 next steps to help the TTC achieve their goals.

The Birth of Transit Camp

A fair portion of the team has been heavily involved in the development of the local BarCamp community, known as TorCamp, and in running the ongoing monthly DemoCamp and quarterly Bar Camp events in the city. The community had grown from 30 attendees at the first Bar Camp in November 2005 to well over 250 at the Bar Camp held in summer 2006, and had developed into one of the world's largest and most active contributors to the global Bar Camp movement. An idea emerged from that original session — an effort to continue the forward motion inspired by the blog posts — of holding a Transit Camp to bring together a spontaneous community of interested parties, intent on improving the TTC's ridership experience and website through the application of emerging social technologies and changing community mores. The movement is very similar to the counter-culture swell of the 60's; a ray of light into the harshest of corporate cultures, spreading a meritocracy founded on the equalizing opportunities created by the spread of the social web.

Bar Camp events are a lightweight framework to rapidly organize and gather like-minded individuals and to shepherd their efforts toward a well documented end result. Using everything we had learned over the course of 3 Bar Camps and 12 Demo Camps, we issued announced the event in mid-January and held it less than three weeks later, an intense period in which we found twelve sponsors (at a $300 sponsorship cap to keep a level playing field), located a venue, crafted the Transit Camp pledge, carefully sorted through applications for the 100 participant spots, and worked with the TTC to secure their participation. The event was held at the Gladstone Hotel on February 4th, 2007, a freezing cold (5° F!) Superbowl Sunday, in a collection of rooms with deficient heating and an average temperature of 60° F, and brought together designers, transit geeks, bloggers, visual artists, tech geeks and cultural creators.

All of the participants agreed to the TransitCamp Pledge, designed to ensure that the day remained a positive solutions playground rather than a negative complaints department. One of the TTC's primary concerns in attending was related to the potential of their participation being perceived as preferential treatment toward website design and development vendors involved in the day, and so the Pledge covered all of the created artifacts (text, photography, videos, etc.) created at Transit Camp under a Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license Creative Commons license, thereby making them available to any firms who might bid on an RFP.

Our outreach program to the Commission was especially successful, particularly the first meeting at their offices during which the authors met with various TTC officials and staff and answered questions and allayed concerns in order to get a committed attendance. The passionately engaged community of Transit Campers were thrilled to have an opportunity to engage directly with the TTC in a positive environment, and were especially delighted by the attendance of Adam Giambrone (Chair), Gary Webster (General Manager), Alice Smith (Chief Marketing Officer), and representatives from the Planning, Marketing, and IT departments.

Bar Camp events are powered by their participants and the schedule is self-selected during the morning's kickoff session. The organizers had blocked off time for Speed Dreaming and Design Slam events (Speed Dreaming tackled the dream of an art-rich transit system, and the Design Slam challenged groups of participants to solve specific design challenges). Everyone was asked to contribute to the wiki on the TorontoTransitCamp website, and assistance was provided for participants not familiar with the technology. Over the course of the event, pages spontaneously appeared and were filled with photos, video, and notes about topics ranging from the application of software debugging techniques to civic and social policy, to intermodal transit as a living body composed of disparate authorities, to real time access to a TTC API for building third party websites and web applications. A curated slideshow of transit related photos was shown throughout the day, and the catered lunch break featured a presentation by Newmindspace about their subway parties, and a performance by AM of his electronic music inspired by and featuring audio samples from the TTC. The event was heavily covered by the local press, including a segment on the news with interviews and several articles in newspapers .

Bettering the Better Way: Community is the Framework

Transit Camp was a huge success by all measures. We created a positive and hope-filled environment which thrived on collaboration and participation, despite the freezing environment and potential distraction of the Superbowl. The TTC officials who attended were surprised by the passion of the other participants and abandoned other plans to stay and remain engaged for the full event, including an inspiring and uplifting closing address by Mr. Giambrone in which he sincerely thanked all of the participants for being positive voices of change.

Shortly after Transit Camp, the TTC cancelled an existing RFP for a website redesign, and spent an additional five months absorbing the content and ideas producing during that day before re-issuing a much improved and revised version in August. The event has dramatically changed the tone with which the Commission engages the public, moving from antagonistic to appreciative (and even friendly!). Recent initiatives, including the MyTTC Survey and MyNewStreetcar websites, have shown a desire to create a respectful conversation with the public and to banish those dim shouting matches to a thing of the past. 'Community is the framework' is a key value of the greater Bar Camp movement, and it is an inspiration to see the banner raised by such a tradition-heavy and bureaucratic organization. It is our hope that Transit Camp will prove to be a model for social and community change, empowering citizens to engage with authorities and to effect positive change throughout their lives.

Written by Jay Goldman with assistance, copy editing, proofreading, contributions, and moral support by Eli Singer and Mark Kuznicki.