Much more useful than not having it, mind you -- I suspect behind it lurks a pragmatic GO employee who had a sense of bureaucracy and wasn't willing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
But I really do think this is a perfect example of the kind of role that Metrolinx and noone else is really well-placed to play, and that really needs doing. The role being sort of a CIO or information standard-setting authority for GTA transit systems.
There is tremendous value in having all of the regional transit authorities adopt common standards in which to store and publish (feed) their data. The cost of doing so is not massive insofar as what you're really doing is harmonizing how the information systems evolve. And the benefits are massive: by progressively requiring that transit authorities make certain data that they already have and store available in a common format, Metrolinx would be enabling a GTA-wide transit data environment. That data environment would allow third parties to cheaply and independently develop information tools, of the kind that facilitates transit use and identifies gaps in the system.
I can't help but wonder if the Metrolinx folks will become aware of the same screen capture. If they do, what they should be seeing is part of their mandate crying out to them. It's an information infrastructure or plumbing role, so it's not an "obvious" role like drawing GTA-wide maps. But, as an incremental measure rather than a sweeping one, it's no less important.
