Log 2016022701

In building the system map for the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority, I've got to be concerned with what the display will look like on the track manager in their GPS.  After, it orders by distance and this will be what the end user sees when their on any given block in Lucas County.  So, I started tracking their concurrent routes in Google Earth block by block.  That way, if there's three buses on one road between three streets, there will only be one track, but it's title will read (AGENCY) FR 01, 02 & 04.  Otherwise, 01, 02 & 04 would have separate tracks and I think that the user only needs to see one.

Log 2016012301

This is an image of the Winter 2016 System Map from the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA) with a track that corresponds to their Route 29 - Waterville Call-a-Ride against the route of the Buckeye (BT) and North Country Trail's (NCT) overlaid. Because of their color, the BT and NCT are very difficult to see.  But NCT is in blue on the lower left, while the Defiance and Pemberville Section's of the BT are in light blue and it's a little left of center at the bottom.

If you look and find where the NCT meets the highway that travels east into Whitehouse of Lucas County, a walk to the Kroger grocery store (on the edge of the Waterville Call-a-Ride's zone) is 4.1mi and barely disqualified to be mentioned in the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource (OTHR).  I downloaded TARTA's system map from their website, which comes in the PDF format.  I then used PDF to JPG online converter to convert it into a JPG image.  The reason is that Google Earth will only allow me to over lay images.

The conversion website allowed me to choose the outputs quality and since I have a powerful computer, I choose 300dpi (their maximum setting).  When I first overlaid the image on Google Earth, it had to be resized and repositioned.  To that, I lowered the opacity on each image so that they'd become more transparent.  And that allowed Google Map's main roads and highways to appear with TARTA's system map overlay that I used as a basis for the repositioning and resizing.

TARTA's system map is drawn to scale and that made things easier. But I wasn't able to get it to match perfectly.  That's OK, they seldom ever do anyway.  So what I'm going to do from here is it as a template to trace it's Call-a-Ride Zones using polygons, which are shapes of unlimited sides.  Once the polygon closes, Google Earth will assign a color and fill the shape with it.  I'll probably use whatever color TARTA has on their map just to make it match.

Last night, those two 300dpi images plus working on one polygon made my CPU overheat and crash my computer.

Log 2015011601

I'm contemplating recreating all 41 lines on the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority.  I'm not sure that I should because it might have to be maintained?  If I do, it's going to be a an off-year project to occur between editions only.  For those of you coming directly in from a search engine, if I were to recreate all 41 lines into GPS tracks, then others could download them (most notably on a smartphone) and use it to track their progress on a transit vehicle, or walk through Lucas County somewhere, wonder what the nearest bus line is, then tap and find out.  They can do all this with 3rd party apps.

On the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource (OTHR), it's beneficial for somebody who's from out of town.  Right now, TARTA isn't on Google Transit, nor does it have it's own electronic, automated routing system.  In fact, its the only metro along the Buckeye and North Country Trail's route in Ohio that doesn't.

It's my assumption that OTHR caters to an audience that doesn't ordinarily use transit.  And they might find TARTA's system map to be intimidating.  There may come a time when they need to replace a piece of gear and it entails mounting a search that's system wide on TARTA.  But with the new campsites at Farnsworth Metropark, compared to previous editions, they now have less need to use transit for lodging.

Log 2014051801

I'm still learning how to use my "Keep Screen On Free" app on my smartphone that I downloaded from the Google Play store for Android.  It has a selectable feature that allows me to keep the screen jammed on until I turn it off (with the power button). Well, I've been having problems as the screen has been shutting off while I thought the jammer was engaged. But I think the problem is on its "OK" button.  It's there to confirm the setting and have it take effect, like an "Apply" button on an IBM Based PC.

What's confusing is that this is an Android smartphone and with other apps, this isn't done anywhere else.

So, I'm on my way to Waterville of Lucas County to get a set of coordinates for a bus stop on T LTA (TARTA) HFR 24 & FR 24X.