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TTC Changes Site Navigation Again

Updated January 14, 2024: The TTC has implemented auto-forwarding of URLs that point to the azureedge site to cdn.ttc.ca. Links to azureedge should now work properly. However, links to reports created on the old TTC site will fail because the URLs have completely changed and auto-forwarding is not possible.

Across various sites including this one, the City of Toronto, and the TTC’s own site, there are many links to reports on the TTC site.

The last time the TTC reorganized its site, the URL for all reports changed to a complex string that began with:

ttc-cdn.azureedge.net/

This has now changed to

cdn.ttc.ca/

If you click a link and it fails on a “server not found” error for “azureedge.net”, you will have to manually change the URL to the correct server name. (Do this carefully so as not to disturb the rest of the very long URL for reports on the site.)

At least the remainder of the URL still works. The last time the TTC revised its site, complete file names changed and finding reports required tracking down their revised locations. This also broke all of the results from search engines.

The TTC appears to have updated links within its own site, but not within files such as Board reports that refer to each other. This is a recent change. Reports within the September 26, 2023 Board meeting agenda include links to the old server name and these fail.

Why this was implemented without an auto-redirect from the old name to the new one is a mystery. This is yet another example of a change that makes the TTC’s site less useable. This is not just a question for a blogger like me who routinely links TTC reports, but for all agencies including the TTC and City who embed links to TTC reports in their documents.

I have sent a query to the TTC asking if this problem will be fixed, and will update this article when I hear back.

5 thoughts on “TTC Changes Site Navigation Again”

  1. I suppose we could excuse the TTC because they are a transit agency and not an information service but then one remembers that they are really no longer a very good transit provider either.

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  4. The “new” URL is what it should have been once they moved their stuff to a “cloud provider” … not that they needed to call that out at all. At least this way, when they decide that Amazon Web Services is cheaper than M$’ Azure, they shouldn’t need to change individual pages.

    But you have presented no evidence that the TTC has any idea that they know what they are doing (or maybe the meaning what I typed above) … so … search/replace …

    Steve: Doing that across thousands of existing documents is a pain, no guarantee against another round of changes, and won’t pick up external links such as in news and other government sites or documents. As you say, they should have used a dummy URL that never changes to point to whoever is the provider-de-jour, and they definitely should have arranged for redirection from the Azure server’s URL.

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  5. The TTC needs to publish a CNAME DNS records so that ttc-cdn.azureedge.net/ is redirected to cdn.ttc.ca/ (which itself is a CNAME record that points to ttc-prod-cdn-duhnbrahg7b2ckcr.z01.azurefd.net). You won’t have to manually substitute in the future.

    References to cdn.ttc.ca should mean the URLs don’t break if the backend changes in the future.

    It’s a simple IT fix and surprising that no one flagged it prior to the change.

    Steve: It will be interesting to see how long this takes to be implemented. As of noon on November 11, it has not been fixed.

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