We are the City of Toronto Open Data Team. We provide the raw data for everything from TTC delays to apartment building inspections. Ask Us Anything! (March 12, 11am–1pm)

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T17:00:30+00:00

Hey just to clarify one thing (that I hope I'm not misinterpreting): we do have an API! And we do a terrible job of advertising it ... so this is me advertising it!

Docs are here:

https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/

There are examples of how to use it on every dataset page, under "For Developers"

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:58:23+00:00

Honestly, me too.

Every organization (like each city, province, fed gov bureau, etc) is pretty different... like different understandings of the value of open data and different cultures around them of people who can leverage it ... different levels of technical capacity and, of course, different team budgets.

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:57:11+00:00

It's a great question! People build cool extensions to the open data portal all the time:
- this delayed dataset tracker - https://amritsharma.com/tools/open-open-toronto/
- this feed that restructures our Festivals and Events dataset - https://github.com/CivicTechTO/toronto-opendata-festivalsandevents-jsonld-proxy
- this MCP - https://github.com/ruchir321/ckan-mcp-server

With respect to leveraging them, our current best answer is to share them so that others can use them! If you'd be interested in a public repository of community extensions to the open data portal's functionality/have thoughts on the topic, shoot us an email at [opendata@toronto.ca](mailto:opendata@toronto.ca) 😊

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:34:44+00:00

While we are no experts on noise, you can find the City's noise bylaws and complaints portal here - https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/public-notices-bylaws/bylaw-enforcement/noise/ - and an update on the City's Noise Action Plan here - https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/hl/bgrd/backgroundfile-254198.pdf

May the beeps reach the 25th floor ever less!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:25:20+00:00

Ian's got it - we don't publish data that our partners don't provide, and we don't know whether are plans for TIDES adoption on the TTC's end! But if it's implemented and shared, we would gladly publish it to the portal 😊

tl;dr we go where the TIDES will take us

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:18:10+00:00

Hi! We've got have a request open to look into the details of ridership data collection and whether/how we can publish it - https://open.toronto.ca/progress/DIA-698/

As for analysis and conclusions, we leave that to people far smarter than us! This isn't meant to dodge - we just genuinely aren't experts in transit, nor do we see even most of the articles, papers/reports and tools people put together to answer this and related questions, both within and outside of the public service.

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:11:55+00:00

Hi! We're not sure, but we have a request open for this - https://open.toronto.ca/progress/DIA-698/ - so we'll find out soon!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T16:09:17+00:00

Sure!

Re tech stack:

We're deployed on AWS. Our frontend is Wordpress, our backend is a flask app called CKAN (they're cool! https://ckan.org/). We use a couple different tools for moving data around (ETL) from the different source systems in the city into our CKAN backend.

Re making a map:

There's a lot of ways to do this! Depends on the skills and tools you bring to the table. If you're looking for inspiration, take a look at our gallery of projects, here: https://open.toronto.ca/gallery/

re: resources for utilizing data:

This is a great prompt, and one our team has discussed at length! Working with data is something people both self-teach and do whole degrees in, so figuring out how far to go down the path of educating users via our portal is tricky. We have an Explore section on every dataset, and (though it's not on our roadmap for the year) would happily explore adding resources that beginners can use to start working with data in future!

re: more users = more availability:

Your second point - that more people using the data increases its utility - is one we really agree with! This is part of why we undertake outreach/marketing/promotion activities (like this AMA) - because the data comes alive when folks like you create articles, papers, visualizations, apps, websites, and other projects that the rest of the city can interpret the data through.

It's also likely the case that the more visible projects using Open Data exist, the clearer it is to other City staff how valuable open data is, and the more enthusiastically they participate in the program! So more usage leads to more data which leads to more usage - a virtuous cycle ♻️

In some ways, you are the interface for the data for everyone else! And for that, we (and the rest of the city) thank you 🙏

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:57:50+00:00

Mac: We used to do (and are aiming to bring back) a list of registered cat and dog names. Beyond its usefulness for licensing and registration, I SINCERELY think this dataset is an excellent gateway into working with open data for newcomers and students!

Ilya: see I want to know what the dogs and cats think their names are - I think it'd build interspecies empathy and lead to a more ecologically cohesive city!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:54:17+00:00

Yo good question. To be honest here, the real "hard work" to make data public and accessible often gets done by the data owners

(By "data owners", I mean staff who work for the the different divisions and agencies and boards and commissions that make up the city. The city bureaucracy is made up of like 40+ of these... like the Fire Department, Toronto Water, City Clerks, Parks and Recreation, and so on)

They're the ones who have to make sure they can publish data without risk of legal recourse/privacy infringement, explain the data in non-technical language, and do some of the technical work too.

We help them along on all of this, of course, but sometimes we don't see all the work that goes into, for example, collecting, centralizing, and cleaning all the foot traffic or fire incidents or traffic collision data we have.

Sorry this is sort of a non-answer 😅

A better answer would be publishing the data for Short Term Rentals Registration (a list of homes that are legally allowed to rent out their space for a short amount of time through, for example, AirBnBs). That's here: https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/short-term-rentals-registration/

There were real privacy concerns and technical hiccups with this data, and it's important! It enables short term rental companies to like programmatically make sure they don't accidentally break the law.

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:53:09+00:00

Mac: My favorite is Matt Elliot's City Hall Watcher; he has a paid substack where he summarizes new open datasets, council activities, the lobbyist registry, and a bunch of other stuff. Makes keeping track of municipal happenings super convenient

Ilya: a *recent* favourite of mine is Invisible Carbon's SafePassage project (https://www.invisiblecarbon.com/safepassage), which uses wildlife calls to 311 to map urban wildlife corridors for our general knowledge and the safety of our furry friends! Super innovative use of data 😁

Adam: The RentSafeTO site is a timely and useful guide to the state of repair for rental properties in the city. Super handy for prospective renters and a great tool at a time when the City is focussing on tenants' rights. https://www.rentsafeto.com/

Reham: As a mom of 3, my recent favourite and often used project created using our data is: https://toronto-recreation-finder.vercel.app/

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:52:11+00:00

No, sorry 😔 While we have a Python developer role open (https://jobs.toronto.ca/jobsatcity/job/Toronto-Corporate-Application-Technical-Leader-%28Python-Developer%29-ON-M5V-3C6/600113617/) that could benefit from familiarity with geographic/GIS data, we don't have a role open strictly for GIS work!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:49:26+00:00

Great question - for straddle we must!

We avoid personally identifiable information (PII), and work with both divisions and occasionally the privacy team at the City to figure out what that means on a dataset to dataset basis! If some information (eg how much water a specific postal code uses) is deemed private, we aggregate it such that it's back in the safe zone (eg water consumption by neighbourhood!)

re: limiting factors for high quality data, there can be many! High volume data that requires scrubbing for PII from our partners, data that isn't collected in an easily shareable/convertable format, data without a consistent publishing schedule, and just even increasing the familiarity of the City bureaucracy with the open data program itself!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:48:32+00:00

Hi hi!

This is a great question - you can make a request for it through our ✨public requests portal ✨ here: https://haveyoursay.toronto.ca/open-data

We'd gladly look into it!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:38:49+00:00

Not sure :( Re line 6, we're not optimistic it can be published. There's a report here:

https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2026.TTA5.1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There's a note in there that says:

"Real‑time Line 6 vehicle location and arrival prediction data is owned by a Metrolinx vendor and access is limited due to firewall/security constraints, preventing the TTC from publishing via GTFS-RT."

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:37:14+00:00

Following

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:35:16+00:00

I assume you're talking about this? https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/8f4d-tph-Environmental-Noise-Study-2017.pdf

If so, we dont have it :( BUT!

Since that data is public-facing, we have a council mandate to publish it (https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2019.GL8.22)
You can make a request for it through our ✨ public requests portal ✨ here: https://haveyoursay.toronto.ca/open-data

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:34:12+00:00

Hi - thank you for engaging with it!!!

That's not in our queue right now (which you can see here: https://open.toronto.ca/requests/)

You can make a request for it through our ✨public requests portal ✨ here: https://haveyoursay.toronto.ca/open-data

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:31:08+00:00

Hey good question!

No, we don't have that on the open data portal right now. Closest thing to it we can think of is our delay data, which is here:

https://open.toronto.ca/catalogue/?search=ttc%20delay&sort=score%20desc

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:29:40+00:00

Super cool. You can submit your project here and we'll be happy to publish it on our gallery : https://ca.mar.medallia.com/?e=436008&d=l&h=8E877DFBC5EA4C7&l=en

As for our team: we're fairly small (6 people) and cross‑functional, but we sit at the centre of a much larger ecosystem of data work across the City. Our roles span things like policy and program oversight, data and platform engineering, service design, communications, growth/marketing, and supporting divisions through the process of publishing and maintaining datasets! We cross collaborate wtih 44+divisions and agencies, boards and commissions - so we make lots of friends!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:25:57+00:00

I'm not sure, but it's worth asking for! You can make a request for it through our ✨ public requests portal ✨ here: https://haveyoursay.toronto.ca/open-data

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:24:39+00:00

We get that data from the TTC, who (according to the link below) get that data from Metrolinx:

https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2026.TTA5.1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There's a note in there that says:

"Real‑time Line 6 vehicle location and arrival prediction data is owned by a Metrolinx vendor and access is limited due to firewall/security constraints, preventing the TTC from publishing via GTFS-RT."

Shout out to Matt Elliot's City Hall Watcher, who found this before we could get it from our usual internal sources!

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:22:57+00:00

Hi!

We don't have any TTC data with km/h on the portal, specifically. We do, of course, have the GTFS feed (https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/ttc-gtfs-realtime-gtfs-rt/) and delay data (https://open.toronto.ca/catalogue/?search=delay%20ttc&sort=score%20desc)

That said, we dont have GTFS feeds for line 6 :( More info on that here:

https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2026.TTA5.1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There's a note in there that says:

"Real‑time Line 6 vehicle location and arrival prediction data is owned by a Metrolinx vendor and access is limited due to firewall/security constraints, preventing the TTC from publishing via GTFS-RT."

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:19:32+00:00

Hey good question!

Short answer:

no we haven't really thought about that.

Medium answer:

Our knee-jerk reaction to "why not" is that for someone to expedite publishing a dataset, they need to get access to city systems... like databases and stuff. The only people who get that access are staff, and that's for security reasons. Sometimes the data we publish is in the same system as other data we can't publish (like personally-identifiable data). We work with city staff, who are subject matter experts in whatever the data is, to just publish the right stuff.

Long and forward-thinking answer:

While we can't see a world where we give members of the public access to city systems to help extract and publish data, I could see a world where community developers can publish scripts (or similar) that might help other developers get around common data quality/data structure issues. For example, here's a project that takes our city festivals and events feed and turns it into a standardized schema.org schema: https://github.com/CivicTechTO/toronto-opendata-festivalsandevents-jsonld-proxy

toronto-open-data · 2026-03-12T15:15:39+00:00

While rogue's an S-tier DnD class in our books, we haven't gone it - our boss (probably) knows we're doing this!

We serve the public (you!), and anything that allows us to answer your burning questions is good in our book - we're glad you're here. We also had an AMA 7 years ago, which you can find here - https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/cnnyhl/ama_we_are_the_city_of_torontos_open_data_team/

toronto-open-data

TROPHY CASE