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TTC Board Report Archive Vanishes

Updated August 24, 2023: Access to the pre-2022 agendas has been restored through a page containing a search function by meeting type and date. However the path to the agendas has changed so that links from old articles to the agendas will now bring a “not found” response because they have moved from a directory “public-meetings” to “All-public-meetings”. This is another example of the TTC’s web management insensitivity to the importance of consistent navigation.

Fortunately, the links to reports have not changed unlike the situation in mid-2021 when all links to reports on the TTC website changed.

Thanks to an unexpected side-effect of work on the TTC’s website, Board agendas and reports prior to January 2022 have vanished.

The agenda page used to be created dynamically, but it has returned to a static format with links to meetings listed in a table. However, this table only goes back to January 2022.

The TTC advises that this is a temporary problem. All of the reports and agendas are still on the site, they just are not visible.

Without going into the details, it was possible to reconstruct the index information from a publicly available index file (sitemap.xml) which is used by web indexing services. The page linked below is a directory, pro tem, to Board agendas from 2005 to 2022.

TTC Board Meeting Agenda Index Archive

Although the TTC will, in due course, restore their directory page, I plan to update this archive with a subject matter index so that readers can find, for example, all annual budget articles without knowing the dates of meetings when they were presented. Stay tuned. This is very much a “spare time” project.

For future reference, this page is linked under the “Reference” tab in the main navigation bar.

8 thoughts on “TTC Board Report Archive Vanishes”

  1. Thanks for the alert! Of course, as the TTC is clearly unable to operate their ‘primary service” – reliable transit – it is hardly surprising that they are incapable of designing (or running) a decent website – as you so well documented some weeks ago. The naive might assume the new Board will ‘fix things’ – the more realistic of us know that, even if they have good intentions, they won’t. Cutting ribbons will always win over good ‘management’ !

    Steve: What I want to see at TTC is a change in the Board culture that says “we don’t get involved in operational decisions”. Well, gang, if those decisions lead to bad customer service, this reflects on a core part of the TTC. Of course it suits management to have the Board take a hands off approach.

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  3. I wonder if it was ever scraped by “the wayback machine“? If their ROBOTS.TXT-fu was strong, maybe not, but my bet would be there is stuff there …

    Steve: My experience is that the wayback machine, like other crawlers, cannot deal with dynamic menus and does not reliably copy the TTC site.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. When Adam Giambrone was TTC Chair (December 1, 2006 – December 1, 2010), he had the TTC website redesigned from its first version. The 2nd version, he guided to build, was an improvement. Then, others took over and we have what we have now.

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  6. Steve said …. “we don’t get involved in operational decisions”.

    Well then what is their purpose? Bureaucratic stuff? Reduce the Board in numbers and get “boots on the ground”.

    Steve: Some board members confuse a “hands off” position related to day-to-day ops with setting policies and ensuring that they are carried out. The new chair has already made remarks about holding management accountable.

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  7. Have you received the memo for the September 4th board period changes? And will the Queen streetcars return to Long Branch loop?

    Steve: Not yet, but yes Queen cars are supposed to return to Long Branch as a separate 507 route from Humber to Long Branch. When I see the memo, you will see the memo.

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  8. “This is another example of the TTC’s web management insensitivity to the importance of consistent navigation.”

    You can substitute almost any organization for “TTC” here and it’s still true. More galling when it’s a public entity part of whose job entails making information available to the public, of course.

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