I’ve been working on getting a Plazes Launcher for Zaurus running; I reasoned that a portable device able to ping Plazes with my location would make Plazes more useful.

As it turned out, it was relatively trivial to get my BashLauncher script working on the Zaurus: I just needed to install cURL and OpenSSL. I’ve written some sketchy instructions on how to do this; in the meantime, here’s proof that it worked:

I’ll work on making the instructions a little less sketchy.

Based on some feedback from users, I’ve updated the interactive bus map application. Things should work properly in Internet Explorer for Windows now (thanks Greg!).

I’ve moved the source code for the application into a Subversion repository; I’ve also written instructions for downloading and installing the source code and the data and put together a brief Making of the Charlottetown Transit Map page that describes my method for gathering the data required to drive the map.

I don’t read printed bus timetables very well. So I created the Charlottetown Transit Interactive Bus Map:

This is a little Google Maps hack that uses PHP and JavaScript to display information about Charlottetown bus routes and schedules.

This is just a tentative first go; specifically:

• Only the Winsloe - University Ave. line is included (it’s the only one in operation as I write).
• Stop and route location may be incorrect; I simply recreated this as best I could from the published schedules and maps. If you find problems, please let me know.
• I left out the early morning and early evening swings to the Garfield St. terminal.
• Assumes a Big Browser Window (map is 700 pixels wide); future versions should be more flexible.
• No allowance made for the fact that there are no buses on Sundays.
• Doesn’t span days — after the transit day is over, all times display as “n/a”.

You’re welcome to grab the source and the data and improve. Steven says I need a source code repository for all my little code experiments; expect this soon.

It goes without saying that this project is unaffiliated with the City of Charlottetown or the transit operator; if it breaks, or sends you to the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s my fault, not theirs.

Oliver and I go to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market most Saturday mornings. And this morning Oliver insisted that we take the bus rather than the car, thus proving that hope is with the children.

We caught the 10:00 a.m. from the Atlantic Technology Centre and arrived at the Atlantic Superstore at 10:15; the bus made a special stop up by the Belvedere Ave. sidewalk, and we got off and walked across University Ave. to the Market (seems like it would take a long time; takes 4 minutes).

One would think that weirdo hippie freaks (a term I use with endearment) who come out of the woodwork for the Market every Saturday would be a natural public transit constituency, but save for one fellow traveller, we were it. Of course there is a tendency in the weirdo hippie freak community to live in the country, so one wouldn’t expect a complete absence of cars — but I know that some of my fellow market-goers are “downtown livers” (as Catherine Hennessey calls us), so there’s some work to be done.

We walked back over to the Superstore for the 11:15 a.m. bus, which turned out, because I misread the schedule, to be the 11:30 a.m. bus. We were back downtown at 11:40.

The schedule is almost perfect for spending an hour at the market, and I would encourage my fellow downtown livers to give it a try.

I learned last night that one of the helpful “concierge-educators” that we encountered on yesterday’s trip is Charlottetown business impresario Mike Cassidy, one of the partners in the bus initiative. Kudos to Mike for a truly hands-on approach to business; sitting near the front we could see the bus service literally evolve before our very eyes as decisions were made to adjust the schedule and stops to accommodate the real world.

This Guardian article provides a good summary of plans for the service, including this:

A single bus will be assigned to each route at the time of launch, but Cassidy said they hope to build the fleet to as many as nine buses in the next 24 months so that they can pick up more people during times of heavy ridership. As Cornwall and Stratford decide whether to join the new setup, Cassidy said new routes will hook the suburbs to the city core.

If that pans out, I think we’ll end up with a very usable transit system, “ye olde” buses and all.

After deriding those who would “set off [by bus] to make a day of going to the mall,” this afternoon Oliver and I set off by bus to make a day of going to the mall.

We caught the 2:00 p.m. Winsloe-University in front of the Confederation Centre of the Arts. We both slipped our $2 in the fare box, only to learn that Oliver, being 5 years old minus a day, is free. Until tomorrow. So we got back $2.

Those of you hoping for the gritty experience of New York or Boston transit you will go away from a Charlottetown bus ride disappointed: in addition to the kindly driver, there were two on-board concierge-educators and we passengers were smothered with helpfulness and direction.

My jury is out on the actual buses: they are “ye olde,” and one doesn’t want to encourage the innate tendency of City planners towards that aesthetic. But now that I’ve a trip under my belt and an hour sitting inside the buses, I’m leading towards thinking of them as “Pee-wee Herman absurd” rather than “Benny Hill absurd.” I know the distinction is a fine one, but when you combine the faux San Francisco exterior with an interior that crosses city park with the set of Striptease (complete with brass-work and leather), it’s hard not to feel proud that we’re cutting our own crazy transit path and not following the footsteps of those lame conformists with regular old buses.

There were the usual bunch of rabble-rousers on board — “public transit advocates” and the like. And a half dozen people on the way to the Atlantic Superstore to buy groceries and a couple bound for the University of PEI.

The scheduling was a little rough around the edges, as was the “finding places to stop the bus that don’t block traffic,” but that’s to be expected on the first day. The wooden park-bench-style seating was, in addition to being ugly, mildly uncomfortable; the saving grace was a brand new suspension in the bus, so the ride was smooth.

We arrived as scheduled at 2:25 p.m. at the Charlottetown Mall. Unfortunately the Charlottetown Mall is about as exciting when you arrive by bus as it is when you arrive by car; fortunately the return bus was scheduled for 3:15 p.m. so we didn’t have a lot of time to kill. We went to Winners and Zellers, bought a birthday present for Isleen, ran into one of Oliver’s kindergarten friends and then, before we knew it, it was time to come back downtown.

The return bus ride was uneventful save for several additional episodes of staff niceness, including a heroic dash back to assist a man with a walker who had been waiting in the wrong place at the University. We got off the bus at 3:35 in front of the Jean Canfield Building on Fitzroy and walked up to the office. So now we know.

Transit user tips: they’re still getting used to the schedule, so it can’t hurt to be 10 minutes early at your stop, especially if you’re catching the bus somewhere other than the beginning or end of the line; the buses are quite low to the ground, and claim wheelchair accessibility (although we didn’t see any wheelchairs on board, so I don’t know how this works); kids 5 and under are free, everyone else (seniors included) are $2 each way, no change provided.

More photos over in the Flickr.

The Olympian reports on the fate of Harold Stephens’ old schooner Third Sea: Fabled boat’s journey ends as derelict in Budd Inlet.

It’s a big day here in Charlottetown: public transit has arrived (routes and schedules). And only 156 years after Upper Canada got theirs!

As our family’s car use has decreased almost down to nothing, with the remaining rationale being trips to Canadian Tire and the grocery store, that we can actually travel around Charlottetown on buses for the first time is a Big Deal.

The actual hardware implementing the system is a bizarre fleet of modern “ye olde” buses dressed up to look like trolley cars. You thought people made fun of us over the goofy Anne thing, just wait until they get a load of these.

Yet one doesn’t want to look a gift-bus in the mouth, so I’ll grit my teeth, don my waistcoat, and mount the trolleys just as if we had infrastructure not to be ashamed of.

The schedule presents something more of a challenge. Rumours were that the buses would run every half hour; indeed I had a city councillor in my office earlier in the week suggesting that missing one, and having to wait 30 minutes for the next one, might be a deal breaker. As it turns out, he didn’t know the half of it: the buses every two hours. While that might be fine for people who would set off to make a day of going to the mall, I can’t see how a schedule like that meshes with anyone’s real life.

Last night, for example, I needed to go out to Wal-mart. I thought perhaps I would wait until this morning and take the bus out rather than driving my car. So I looked at the schedule: if I caught the 10:00 a.m. bus at the Confederation Centre, I would be at Wal-mart at 10:30 a.m. I could get out, do my shopping, and catch the 11:15 a.m. bus back downtown, arriving at 11:50 a.m. Figure in time to walk to the bus, and it’s taken me two hours to do an errand which last night, once I decided to drive, took me 20 minutes.

But that’s not the worst of it: if I missed the 10:00 a.m. bus, I’d have to wait until the next one arrived, two hours later, at 12 Noon.

This morning Catherine walked out to the Superstore. She thought she might take the bus back downtown instead of a taxi. But she would have had to spend two hours waiting for the next bus to do that. She took the taxi.

Transit isn’t something you can do halfway. Buses that run every two hours aren’t simply “half as good” as buses that run every hour, or “25% as good as buses that run every 30 minutes.” Buses that run every two hours are “appointment” buses, not “transit” buses, and if I can’t think “I should take the bus instead of driving” and have a reasonable chance of catching a bus in the next 15-30 minutes, there might as well be no buses at all.

That all said, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief until I’ve had a chance to actually experience Charlottetown Transit first hand; I’m not unwilling to adjust my life to bend to the collective schedule, at least somewhat, so maybe this will work out. I just hope the City mothers and fathers have the patience to stick it out, and the tenacity to realize that before this is singing along we might need more rather than less.

The Zaurus arrived today, and thanks to help from Steven (who has a giant LCD monitor with built-in espresso maker and CF card reader), I’m wirelessly online from my couch at home. Details to follow. Cool.

I’ve switched to using Adium as my instant messaging Swiss Army Knife of choice. But I couldn’t figure out how to close the tabs that appear in the “each chat in its own tab” Adium window. Turns out the close feature is very elegant, but perhaps too subtle: hover over the icon in the tab and it morphs into a close button:

Upstart Stratford (Prince Edward Island) taxi company Taxi Taxi has added a Toyota Prius to their fleet. You can order it up by phoning (902) 393-9966.