Digital : Development News

The city's web portal that allows both staff and the general public to keep up with all the construction and other public works going on in the city has been updated for 2013.

T.O. INview, which debuted last year, now includes work being done under the auspices of Economic Development and Culture, Parks, Forestry and Recreation and Cycling Infrastructure.

Though the map that constitutes the heart of the page is not especially intuitive, and perhaps was designed primarily with staff in mind, noodling around it can turn up some interesting information.

So now, if you check "Third Party Construction" and click on, say, the corner of Boradview and Withrow, you find out that there will be curb cuts installed to facilitate wheelchairs for the new and more accessible LRT vehicles coming to that route soon, You may also be surprised by the news that they'll be installing ticket vending machines on the street, and all along the streetcar routes throughout 2013.

According to the city, "T.O. INview provides details about the type of work planned, such as road resurfacing or watermain reconstruction, and is designed to improve the co-ordination of projects—with the goal of more efficient capital spending and greater convenience for the public."

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

Though it was quietly launched in December, traffic is only now picking up for the anti-graffiti and pothole-reporting apps, after the city officially announced it two weeks ago.

"I have a dashboard here," says Neil Evans, director of Toronto 311 and the man in charge of the app initiative, as he looks at his stats on the number of reports received. "On the 22nd [of April], we probably had about 30."

SeeClickFix, one of the open API apps the city is promoting, lets people take pictures of graffiti or potholes, asks them to describe the problem, and then automatically tags the location the picture was taken in using its GIS.

Once the report is sent from a phone, Evans explains, “it comes into our system and depending on what type of service request it is, it either goes directly to the service fulfilling division, or it gets viewed by one of our CSRs. It's only property graffiti ones that get received by our CSRs."

Part of the system involves checking the reported graffiti against a database of city-commissioned or city-approved graffiti, to avoid, as much as possible, city workers "cleaning up" public art.

It's early days, with little data on how effective this system will prove. When I tried it this week, sitting in the Future Bakery on the southwest corner of Bloor and Brunswick, the GIS thought I was at 415 Spadina, just south of College.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Neil Evans

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].