A Toronto software engineer has made it his mission to help visitors and residents of the city navigate the often confusing underground PATH system in the downtown core.
Jadiel Teofilo said he decided to create an app that maps out the underground pathway after he struggled to find his way through it when he moved to the city three years ago.
“When I heard about Toronto’s underground systems with pathways and walkways, I was like, ‘I’ve got to try to use it to get to work,’” he told CP24 on Thursday.
“That’s when I realized how hard it is to get there, to use it, and just find your way through it.”
Teofilo said it took him at least a week to figure out how to get to work and even longer to discover there was a shorter route.
“If I want to go to Union, not all the signs are going to have Union written on it, so you just don’t really know. You just have to go outside and give up,” he said.
Teofilo said the problem he encountered after first moving to the city “stuck” with him.
“I’m a software engineer, so I partnered with my friend from Brazil and we just started working on it (the app),” he said.
He said collecting the data was probably the most difficult part about developing it.
“There are no detailed maps out there so we knew we would have to build our own. So I had to walk the whole path,” Teofilo explained.
“I was walking 15 kilometres per weekend, just going around, taking pictures of the doors.”
The app, named Toronto Path, officially launched on the Apple App Store last weekend.
“It is starting to pick up now. We are getting a lot of positive feedback. People are saying this is something they’ve always wanted,” he said.
“I hope with our solution we can really see the path with different eyes.”