Hamilton Hack Anniversary Letter to Council
Another letter to politicians, this time about the HSRNow web application. For background, HSRNow was a live map of all City of Hamilton buses and bus-routes on the city website. In February of 2024, the City IT infrastructure was hit by a bad ransomware attack and a tremendous amount of digital infrastructure was lost, including HSRNow.
comments powered by DisqusHi folks,
I just noticed that last week marked the 2 year anniversary of the city's hacking incident. While most of the digital infrastructure appears back up and running, the HSRNow webapp is still missing.
Two summers ago my son bemoaned the lack of the HSRNow webapp when he was working in Dundas on the weekend. I told him I was sure it would be back soon. He disagreed. I'm sad to see his pessimism was justified.
The bus stop posts still advertise the HSRNow webapp. There's still no lightweight way to view the bus routes - only the clumsy full-system map PDF file, or the small black-and-white print maps and schedules that are tricky to read. I've heard that the City recommends Google Maps, but Google Maps is a very rough interface because it only helps with route planning, not showing actual non-rail routes or live position data to help the user actually figure out the system. It's basically a map without a map.
I assume the city spent substantial money and effort installing the HSRNow product in the first place - I remember how long it spent in a "pilot" phase as "busweb". It seems very wasteful to discard that just to avoid the effort or relaunching the existing system. I know it's budget season and this seems like something that can be left out, but it's hard to see transit usability be treated as bottom-priority. Especially now that cell data-plans are finally affordable-enough that basically everybody has one (notice how the SoBis have been able to switch to QR codes instead of keypads).
I hope a plan can be made to bring it back.
Thanks for your time,
Martin Zarate
Ward 1 resident