OpenHalton

OpenHalton’s mission is to spark great ideas and projects that leverage open data and can provide value to Halton’s citizens. Below are current and planned projects undertaken by Open Halton:

In Progress:

HALTON TRANSIT

Project Wiki: http://miltontransit.pbworks.com/

Challenge: If you’ve evern needed to take a bus from Oakville to Milton, or even within one of Halton’s municipalities, you’re probably experienced the frustration of trying to read a printed map, or at best looking up .PDFs or HTML time-tables for bus stops and routes. The data is difficult to consume, and there are no web or mobile apps to speak of.

Objective: To develop a set of web/mobile applications using transit data from Halton municipalities, providing easier access to Bus route, Bus stops, schedule & other related transit information.

Notes & Considerations:

• Milton’s new bus schedule is effective September 7^th and provides an opportunity to use new bus route & stop data to build a Milton-specific bus route & schedule application
• In a recent Silicon Halton meet-up members surfaced Transit as one of the hot topics for Open Data, with Milton being a prime example of how Open Transit Data could make a difference.
• Most municipalities are at some stage of involvement with the Metrolinx initiative, with the end-objective a more “connected” transit system, with data made available in GTFS format
• Burlington Transit  is probably most ahead of other towns with its Transit information now available on Google Maps (but there doesn’t seem to be a way to access just the GTFS feed yet)

Status:

• Met and engaged in [informal] discussions with Milton transit lead on opening transit data
• Connecting with Milton council candidates to discuss how to get Milton to open their data
• Sent out an email to Milton transit lead to gauge interest in partnering on an Open Data project

Related Links:

• Summary of the Open Data brainstorm at Silicon Halton

Completed (!)

“WARD REP” MASH-UP

(kicked off on Dec 4th 2010 Open Data Hackathon Day project in partnership with OpenGuelph)

Application: http://WardRep.ca

Project Wiki: http://ohoghackathon.pbworks.com/

Challenge: As residents of Halton we should have easier way to determine what WARD you’re in, who your councilors or candidates are, and many other related Ward information (e.g. voting). Navigating ward / councilor info is difficult, using ward maps like this and this is not the most intuitive way to identify ward information, and could be improved.

Objective: To develop a simple mash-up replicable across municipalities to allow input of an address &  return Ward, Councilor, Election, etc. information in addition to dynamic (vs static) ward maps.

Notes & Considerations:

• Leverage PHP code from emitter.ca lookups by postal code, address, etc.
• Digitize / re-create PDF-based ward boundaries using mapping tools & save as KML (?
• Possibly leverage code from various “Trash” apps like VanTrash, OttawaTrash, upcoming LondonTrash to identify which ward/area you’re in
• Re-use transit app logic (above) to plot areas, details per ward on a base map layer

Status:

• Guelph, Milton & some of Oakville wards converted from PDF to KML
• Built service to identify which ward you’re in based on a lat/lon & geocoded map lookup
• PHP app under way (leverages emitter.ca code)

Related Links:

• Toronto Wards: http://app.toronto.ca/wards/jsp/wards.jsp