Greater Toronto Area Transit Map

Welcome

Thank you for using the Greater Toronto Area Transit map.  This is a hobby project by David Pritchard, pulling together information from various public sources to present it in a more useful digital form.

Map Legend

  • Red overlay lines – TTC subway / Scarborough RT
  • Green overlay lines – GO train and train-bus services
  • Blue overlay lines – VIVA all-day services
  • Backdrop – operator maps for each local transit service. See their maps for details on understanding,

Sources

The maps shown are current as of June 2018, except for the TTC bus network which is shown for December 2015. See the operators below for the latest maps.

Contact

Do you work for one of these transit operators? This map could be much more useful if I could get simplified versions of the maps that omit the underlying street grid and show only the transit features.  Contact me (e-mail drpritch at gmail) if you can provide better maps.

Google Earth Format (KML)

Google Earth-friendly versions of the map data are also available for TTC subways [KML], VIVA [KML] and GO rail [KML]

Discussion

More details and discussion of the origins and work on this map can be found in my blog posts.

12 thoughts on “Greater Toronto Area Transit Map”

  1. Pingback: Toronto transit map updated - davidpritchard.org

  2. Hey David,
    The transit maps are immensely helpful, especially for people who are new to GTA. It is very easy to relate to the actual places with maps. Thank you for putting this together. Appreciate your effort.
    Cheers!

  4. You’re right that UP Express would be worth having on here – particularly since the fares were lowered. I haven’t made it out as far as GRT – but that’s also a great idea.

  5. Hi Dave – this is amazing! Thank-you for all your hard work.

    The problem that brought me here is planning trips from East end of old city of Toronto to the K-W area.

    I am looking for a map that shows *all* the GO Transit train and bus stops on single map. i.e. a synthesis of the individual maps that appear on the front of each of the GO Transit route schedules.

    Might it be possible to add these maps to your map?

    I tried to use The GO system map (https://www.gotransit.com/static_files/gotransit/assets/pdf/TripPlanning/SystemMaps/201901-system-map.pdf.pdf – your link above is broken). But this map doesn’t show all the stops, and it doesn’t show the routes in relation to actual geography 🙁

    I’ve tried to use TripLinx, but again they don’t show all the stops.

    Help! 🙂

  6. Unfortunately, I can’t realistically mix in all of the GO bus routes – I’m relying heavily on the “nice graphic design” maps produced by the transit providers, and none of them produces a single map showing both regional (GO) and local (e.g., TTC, YRT etc.) routes at once.

    And further – GO doesn’t publish a good bus system map, for whatever reason. As a former Metrolinx/GO employee – I happen to know that there are good quality print and PDF maps of GO bus services, produced for the bus drivers. I’m not sure that even those maps actually have every single stop or are updated every board period, but they are great for understanding the route structure.

    If you do need every GO bus stop on a map there are two options:
    1) GO seems to have a Stop Explorer – you can enter (say) Guelph and see all stops in that area.

    2) The “GTFS” data that GO publishes does have a lot of detail. While it’s probably only an hour for a programmer to get this data out and show it to you… unfortunately, there appear to be few good maps already on the web with the information. The only one I’ve found is this one, which can show all GO bus stops: Interline Mobility Explorer.

  7. Wow that’s a cool job! I was wondering how far can I go by bus (except GO) from downtown Toronto and found this. This is really helpful.

    By the way, I think there’s another way to generate the map: you can download all bus route data from http://www.openstreetmap.org (which is opensource) and draw the map by using GIS techniques. I can help if you find this interesting too:)

  8. Hi David, greatly appreciate the hard work you’ve put to make this map – and is definitely very useful. I noticed that the KML file for the GO network doesnt have the Kitchener nor the Stouffville lines, while I can see them in the online viewer. It would be great if you can provided the updated KML file so I can take this awesome map offline.

    Thanks!

  9. Hi Terry – Yes, I know about the other data sources. The issues with GIS data are:
    – hard to show multiple overlaid transit lines in a visually attractive manner
    – hard to categorize routes in ways that are passenger-friendly (peak only / school route / high frequency / rapid / short turn branches)
    – hard to label route branches cleanly
    – often too geographically precise (block by block routing, one-way couplets) when a more abstract presentation would be clearer

    This is why I’ve relied on PDF maps from the transit agencies – to piggyback on all the hard organization and graphic design thought that went into those maps.

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