Mastodawn

Amelia Bellamy-Royds

Apr 12

Any Edmonton folks have an inside scoop on the details of the "Arc Card fraud" story?

Combining information from the CBC & Journal articles, the story seems to be:

One particular ARC fare card machine was either issuing or topping up Arc cards without processing payments.
Someone noticed & they/others used the bug to get 300 cards worth a total of $65K.
$45K of free fares were used before city staff cancelled these cards.

The parts not explained:

What was the bug in the machine? My guess is faulty communication between the payment-card machine & the main computer. Like maybe you type in the wrong PIN & transaction is cancelled, but the card is still issued. But it's not clear.
Was there actual fraud for profit, reselling these cards to unsuspecting other people? Or was it more someone telling all their friends how to get free ARC cards from this buggy machine? Based on the disinterest by police, I'm guessing the latter.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-bus-bandits-45000-transit-arc-cards
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-arc-card-transit-fraud-9.7160051

#YEG #YEGtransit #TakeETS

Bus fare bandits bilk city for $45,000 using unregistered Arc cards

Edmonton's Audit Committee hears 'Smart Fare' heist could have cost city $65,000 — police say they were unable to identify the thieves.

edmontonjournal

Amelia Bellamy-Royds

Mar 28

Ah, man...

Improvements to bus routes on Whyte Ave are being implemented in such a way that they're going to eliminate the "scramble" crosswalks (light-controlled crosswalks where all pedestrians in all directions walk at the same time, meaning walking diagonally is allowed).

(In order to keep moving the buses express, they don't want them ever waiting for a cross-traffic cycle plus an extended pedestrian cycle. They are adding sidewalk bump-outs & turn restrictions to help with the safety issues about drivers turning into the crosswalks.)

https://www.edmonton.ca/projects_plans/roads/transit-priority-measures
https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/default/files/public-files/transit-priority-measures-whyte-ave.pdf

via https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uk6b4z3pnfmjjve4x4sik236/post/3mi56kxw2zs2v
as shared by @HyL's bluesky account

Edit: I originally referenced "bus lanes" on Whyte Ave, but the current plan doesn't include proper bus lanes. The buses will travel in the middle lane, mixed with cars, and stops will be at sidewalk bump-outs into the parking/patio lane so that the bus doesn't have to pull over. (There's still future plans for an express route, though?)

#YEG #YEGtransit

Transit Priority Measures | City of Edmonton

Planning and design to implement new transit priority measures are underway for 7 key corridors in Edmonton.

Daveography 🇨🇦

Feb 5

The Edmonton Arts Council (EAC), on behalf of the City of Edmonton, is seeking artists/artist teams residing in Canada to create canopy art for six LRT stops on the Valley Line West LRT. One artist/artist team will be selected for each location.

https://www.edmontonarts.ca/calls-funding/calls-to-artists/public-art-call-valley-line-west-lrt-canopies

#yeg #yegArts #yegTransit

keithzg Jan 26

I finally got around to making a webapp for ETS nearby stop times, it's very rough and there's no realtime info yet because that's needlessly complicated (but I'll probably get around to that in a day or two at this rate). URL also likely to change, but if you're curious you can try it out at https://kloud.keithzg.ca/opentakeets/ and I'd be *very* interested to hear feedback (especially if there's anything you find missing from existing interfaces— though fair warning "trip planning" isn't something I've ever used in any era of my own transit use *and* it's conceptually kinda complicated, so any such requests will land far at the back of the todo queue).

For a long while now it has annoyed me that every existing interface to #YEGtransit is proprietary, which felt very fixable considering the ostensibly open data, and it feels good to have finally scratched my own itch here!

TECHNICAL INFO FOR NERDS:
Source available at https://phabricator.keithzg.ca/diffusion/TAKEETS/ and uhh right I should add a license file, it's copyleft-next which is compatible with GPLv3 and AGPL amongst possibly others (I forget at the moment, but it's a nice short readable license). Source extremely messy due to a few eras of abortive work on this, will probably get both less and more messy in the near future.

Right now it's a webapp requiring PHP and MariaDB (or non-union equivalent) to run on your server, and probably soon additionally Python for realtime data due to Google's protobuf format being quasi-proprietary junk, but I might get around to native apps where you don't have to send location data to some dork's server or run your own. A friend of mine is writing a version in Rust+SQLite, and like most Rust projects it isn't nearly as feature complete as the slapdash from-scratch implementation and can't currently compile on my home system running an up-to-date LTS Linux install so I haven't even checked out how far she's gotten.

#yeg #alberta #opendata #edmontontransit #opentakeets

OpenTakeets

Chad - X

Jan 1

Shoutout to the hardworking ETS drivers and peace officers for getting everyone to and from home safe tonight!

#yeg #yegtransit

Meg Dec 15

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-transit-arc-card-9.7007970

Discovered by accident today that debit/credit tap is now accepted on Edmonton transit arc terminals. :o

It even honors fare caps if you use the same card consistently!

Definitely thought this would take longer!

#yeg #yegtransit

Want to pay for Edmonton transit using your credit card? Now you can | CBC News

Edmontonians have more options to pay for transit as the city rolls out the ability to tap credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets to pay for fares.

CBC

WanderingHuman 🇨🇦Nov 19

Need some #yegtransit #DATS #disability advice.
My elderly mother does not want to (and probably shouldn't) drive in the winter. My lives in a care home halfway across the city. It's a 20-25 minute car ride between them, but looking at transit options, transit would be awful - 45-65 minutes, at least 2 transfer, including crossing 101 St and 111 Ave. In the winter. With a cane or walker.

CAN she take transit? Yes. Does this exclude her from using DATS? Probably.

Is it reasonable to expect an elderly person with limited mobility to take a 45-65 minute transit commute as described above, both ways, 2-3 time/week?

Any advice or suggestions?

(I really wish they hadn't place my dad where they did, it's too far. 😞)

Show thread

Amelia Bellamy-Royds

Nov 11

2/2

But both of those stores, relatively convenient to get to, are in neighbourhoods that I've never been. I would have never had reason to know they were there if I hadn't looked them up.

I could take the #9 all the way to the far northside. Never been there. I could see if there are actually any clear waters in Eaux Claires, which I know only as the terminus of the bus route.

Or I could take a shorter but 2-bus route to the Royal Gardens / Greenfield neighbourhoods just south of the Whitemud expressway. Not that far beyond Southgate Mall where I walk/bus regularly, but not on the route to anywhere I'd be going, except I guess now for the grocery store in the neighbourhood strip mall. It's even close enough (<4km) that I could walk one way if the weather was nice & only bus back. Look, there's a pedestrian overpass across the expressway, so I wouldn't even have to walk along the noisy roads. I've surely driven under that walkway, but it looks nicer from the pedestrian view!

#YEGtransit