Toronto Live Map · How it works

How the Toronto Live Map works

The Toronto Live Map is Toronto in engraved wood. A small light in every subway station. And the city's own open data, telling each light when a train arrives.

A train arrives: its station glows.
The train leaves: the light fades.
All day, the city moves on your wall.

Think of it as a live transit map made for the living room: an LED subway map of Toronto, drawn in wood, that you never open or refresh. It hangs like any other Toronto wall art; this page explains what happens behind the wood.

Where the data comes from

The Toronto Transit Commission publishes its subway data openly, for anyone to use. Apps use it to show when the next train is due. We use it to make art.

The data is a list of trips. For each train on Lines 1, 2 and 4, it says which stations it will reach next, and at what minute. The TTC refreshes it about once a minute.

The map connects to your Wi-Fi and reads that list by itself, every 20 seconds. Direct, from the city's open data to your wall.

What lights, and when

Every station on the map has its own small light, 108 in all. In Live mode, a station lights up when a train is arriving there or standing at the platform.

• Arriving. A short, brighter pulse as the train comes in. You can turn this flash off in the app.
• At the platform. The station stays lit in its line's colour.
• Leaving. The light fades out in about a second, and the station goes dark until the next train.

One train lights one station. So the map breathes with the day. At rush hour, around thirty stations can be lit at once in our tests. Midday, a couple of dozen. After midnight, a handful.

And when the subway sleeps? It closes roughly from 1:30 a.m. to 6 a.m., and until 8 a.m. on Sundays. Then the map rests with a few faint, still station dots: a quiet "the city is asleep". If the connection drops, the map breathes gently and brings the trains back by itself as soon as the data returns.

Watch it live, right now

Here is our map drawn in light, following today's subway: the same open data and the same arrival rules as the map on your wall, worked out by the map's own software every 20 seconds.

What "live" really means

We want to be exact about this, because it is the heart of the piece.

The open data gives expected arrival times, in whole minutes, rather than a train's exact position between stations. So the map lights the station a train is arriving at, or waiting in. Think "at or near this station".

Now and then the data runs a little late, or a train drops out of it for a while, and the map shows exactly what the data shows. That is the honest trade of using the city's own public data: it is the same data the trip apps use, with the same small gaps.

Which lines are live

Five lines are engraved on the map. Three of them are live today.

• Line 1, 38 stations: live.
• Line 2, 31 stations: live.
• Line 4, 5 stations: live.
• Line 5, 25 stations: glows in the colour modes, joins Live mode when its data is published.
• Line 6, 17 lights: glows in the colour modes, joins Live mode when its data is published.

Lines 5 and 6 are engraved, and every one of their stations has a light. They glow in every colour mode, and join Live mode as soon as their live data is published.

The colours are our own: vermilion, azure, amber, lime and violet, chosen to sit warmly on natural wood. Want the story of each line? Read our guide to Toronto's subway lines.

Light modes

Live trains when you want them. A calm glow when you want to unwind. You pick the mood from your phone, and the map remembers each mode's settings.

Live

Stations glow as trains arrive. Options: the arrival flash, a faint glow on empty stations, which lines to show, and a colour set: Vivolit, Warm or Mono.

Glow

A slow, breathing night-light in warm, candle, soft, rose or ocean tones.

Line tour

One line lights up after another, so you can trace each route across the city.

Rainbow

Four styles: classic, swimming, line change, and a wave that radiates out from Union.

Fireflies, Comets, Aurora, Ripples

Gentle animations drawn on the real shape of the map. Tap a station in the app and Ripples sends a ring out from it.

Sunrise

A sunrise, a sunset, or both, played slowly across the city.

Demo

A calm imitation of the trains: gentle movement, any time.

Brightness goes from a soft glow all the way to off. A night schedule can dim the map, or switch it off, between two times you choose.

Set-up, in three steps

1. Hang it. It goes on the wall like a picture: a 20 × 16 inch map in a wood frame.
2. Plug it in. One USB-C cable, included. Then open the free Vivolit app (iPhone and Android) and give the map your 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, once, over Bluetooth.
3. Watch it. The map starts reading the data by itself. After a power cut it reconnects on its own.

After set-up the map runs on its own; open the app to change a mode or the brightness. Software updates arrive through the app. Step-by-step help, and what each status colour means, is on our support page.

Subscription-free, private by design

The map downloads public train data, and that is all it does online. It is subscription-free, with no account to make, and private by design: no camera, no microphone.

Nine of its ten light modes run on their own, without any data, so it is always a working piece of light art.

Keep exploring

• Toronto Live MapThe engraved wooden map that glows as trains arrive, and the VIP reservation.
• The design storyHow we drew Toronto in wood: neighbourhoods, the lake, the lettering.
• The Toronto subway mapLines 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6, station by station.
• QuestionsEverything else people ask us.