License plates

[Orion VIII]

I've started a page called "Ontario Bus License Plates" which I intend on being an all-time list of bus plates in Ontario. I've started off in the BN1 range, but Ashton's codes will make it considerably easier to do, leaving us only to have to fill in the operator, unit number and date fields.

Please let me know what you think about the page.

[A. Wong]

Do your buses get different license plates often? Here in Edmonton they get changed so often it's worthless to keep track of fleet numbers. I only did the new LFRs because they would be constant for a while. It's just going to be a matter of years before they get replaced though.

[Orion VIII]

Do your buses get different license plates often? Here in Edmonton they get changed so often it's worthless to keep track of fleet numbers. I only did the new LFRs because they would be constant for a while. It's just going to be a matter of years before they get replaced though.

It's a matter of years here.

Ashton, could you start all the pages that Enzo linked to, using your script?

[railbus]

Where is this page? Do you have Bob's list? I put a considerable amount of effort into tracking a lot of MT stuff and all of it went into his spreadsheets.

[OC 8208]

i have always wondered WHY do public vehicles, Buses, Police, Ambulance, Fire, Snowplows, public works... have to have plates for, specially if they don't leave the city or province.

[A. Wong]

i have always wondered WHY do public vehicles, Buses, Police, Ambulance, Fire, Snowplows, public works... have to have plates for, specially if they don't leave the city or province.

If one gets stolen, it helps I guess. Plus they are motor vehicles and should not be exempt from laws.

(Trolleybuses in Alberta, on the other hand, are considered railway and do not need license plates.)

Ashton, could you start all the pages that Enzo linked to, using your script?

Looks like you beat me to it, no?

[OC 8208]

If one gets stolen, it helps I guess. Plus they are motor vehicles and should not be exempt from laws.

(Trolleybuses in Alberta, on the other hand, are considered railway and do not need license plates.)

Looks like you beat me to it, no?

i think government vehicles should have a separate lets say orange plate or black plate for use that never needs stickering yearly, as i think its a waste of time for the various departments to run to the Mot every year for a new sticker and or the MOT to issue them and then the various departments having to sticker numerous vehicles

[A. Wong]

Edmonton's (and I'm sure Calgary's) city fleet have a black sticker that does not need replacement. This is also available for privately owned fleets as well.

[OC 8208]

Edmonton's (and I'm sure Calgary's) city fleet have a black sticker that does not need replacement. This is also available for privately owned fleets as well.

cool, in Ontario every vehicle even Police have a yearly sticker that expires which i think is a waste of time and money and a sticker

[A. Wong]

I would agree... I hope buses don't need yearly replacement because that's a huge amount of vehicles!

For those fleet stickers they might cost more to have, and of course they would still have a yearly fee I would imagine.

[R. McConnell]

(Trolleybuses in Alberta, on the other hand, are considered railway and do not need license plates.)

Same for Boston's trolleybuses. However, Philadelphia's trolleybuses have one license plate on the rear -- I guess it's because of their off-wire capability.

[railbus]

cool, in Ontario every vehicle even Police have a yearly sticker that expires which i think is a waste of time and money and a sticker

This is only true for municipal police cars. OPP and other provincial gov't vehicles have a single perpetual non-expiring sticker on otherwise regular plates.

[OC 8208]

This is only true for municipal police cars. OPP and other provincial gov't vehicles have a single perpetual non-expiring sticker on otherwise regular plates.

they should have a unique plate for all levels of government vehicles

[railbus]

i think government vehicles should have a separate lets say orange plate or black plate for use that never needs stickering yearly, as i think its a waste of time for the various departments to run to the Mot every year for a new sticker and or the MOT to issue them and then the various departments having to sticker numerous vehicles

I agree and so does the MTO. Most provincial vehicles already feature the perpetual sticker.

As far as buses go I do agree that they shouldn't bother plating them. What is accomplished by doing so, other than giving the provincial people the ability to see how many buses they have registered province wide. But as far as the vehicle ID function, it's nil for buses. If one cuts you off in traffic you complain to transit based upon fleet number, time and location, not license plate.

they should have a unique plate for all levels of government vehicles

That's more common in the US. In Canada, we've moved away from this sort of thing. Quebec did have plates for all 3 levels of gov't but they stopped the practice in 1989. Too many different plate types.

[Enzo Aquarius]

Interestingly enough, I was thinking of doing a license plate page the other day as well.

I still need to finish the license plate template. It'll have lots of pages where there are no vehicles with plates in the range, but I'm sure as the years go on, they'll fill up.

[Articulated]

Ontario buses used to have an extra set of plates for their Public Transit Vehicle registry or something (can't remember now). These aren't required anymore (just a regular license plate now, B-letter-number number-number-number) .

2036 still has it's rusted out plate, the rightmost platehttp://www.majhost.com/gallery/YRTeen/YRT/Orion/2036-a.jpg

[M.Wright]

*Bump*

Sorry to revive an old thread, but it is 100% related to this.

While starting the new series (xxx xBH), I realized for the individual pages that I would have to create 100 pages. As a result, I got annoyed after the 2nd one (which was 110 0BH - 119 9BH). Like most people, I have a job and a life outside of the computer, so I don't have time for this. So now I created a tool that all of us can use to make editing/creating pages much easier in the license plate section:

http://cptdb.ca/wiki...Plate_page_tool

Now instead of doing repetitive editing of the same stuff over and over again, all you have to do is edit the template on that page to the exact stuff you require and then preview it, and copy & paste to the page you wish to create/edit. For me, this will probably save lots of time, as now instead of 15 or however many minutes it took to do a page manually, it takes max 2 minutes (1 to go to the page and preview it, 1 to copy and paste).

Enjoy! I know I sure will be enjoying this tool.

P.S. I only did this for the 2009 series since all the old 1980 series (Bxx xxx) pages are created. So I don't see a need for this tool for the 1980 series unless we revert back to them.

P.S.S. Also the {{selected plate range}} thing, just ignore that for now, it's a thing I was thinking of implementing similar to a feature I previous implemented in the OC Transpo section. It does nothing right now but it won't hurt having it there for the future. Basically my intent of this feature was to make it so it'll turn the selected range of plates that you are currently viewing, into bold and black (similar to if you are on the actual page), but still allow you to click it. I don't feel like putting it in right now, but just ignore that feature for now. NVM, I got bored and decided to implement it. Took me a few minutes anyway.

Also this tool made the rest of the pages in the 1BH series super easy to create (and fun), so I won't hog the fun, someone else can enjoy the tool. I would do the rest since it's so simple, but like I just stated, I don't want to be selfish here.

[D40LF]

When I setup the pages I used notebook and the replace function which allowed me to do these pages very quickly.

Nice work by the way!

[Articulated]

I'm just wondering right now if there's an easier way we could do license plate pages.

We have a lot of pages for blocks of 100 plates and the templates are getting a bit confusing to navigate around (eg. you need to go into the BN1 template, then go to BN1 1xx or BN1 2xx pages).

A while back I modified the BJ1 xxx page and put all of the plates from BJ1 000 to BJ1 999 (so 1000 plates) instead of having 10 separate pages. This method is in use already, for example York Region Transit Bus Stops 1000-1999 or Ottawa-Carleton Regional Transit Commission bus stops 1000-1999, and I find it works well with it broken down into tables of 100 separated by headers.

It would be relatively easy to copy the information over from the existing 100 plate pages to the 1000 plate pages, just C+P and add headers. Let me know what you guys think about this strategy and I might have some time later this weekend to start the changes.

[D40LF]

I'm just wondering right now if there's an easier way we could do license plate pages.

We have a lot of pages for blocks of 100 plates and the templates are getting a bit confusing to navigate around (eg. you need to go into the BN1 template, then go to BN1 1xx or BN1 2xx pages).

A while back I modified the BJ1 xxx page and put all of the plates from BJ1 000 to BJ1 999 (so 1000 plates) instead of having 10 separate pages. This method is in use already, for example York Region Transit Bus Stops 1000-1999 or Ottawa-Carleton Regional Transit Commission bus stops 1000-1999, and I find it works well with it broken down into tables of 100 separated by headers.

It would be relatively easy to copy the information over from the existing 100 plate pages to the 1000 plate pages, just C+P and add headers. Let me know what you guys think about this strategy and I might have some time later this weekend to start the changes.

If the pages get too long you get warnings about long pages from the wiki when trying to edit. I setup the templates to avoid that issue.

[Articulated]

If the pages get too long you get warnings about long pages from the wiki when trying to edit. I setup the templates to avoid that issue.

I used to get those warnings with the stops pages, but since the upgrading of the Wiki and the servers I've never gotten one of those warnings. Regardless, if there are warning errors you can edit each individual section of 100.

[D40LF]

I really don't like the way previous license plates are being changed on the pages, ie

http://cptdb.ca/wiki...ansit_9155-9160

This format is very hard to read, small text and light gray colour. There was nothing wrong with how it was shown before.

[Articulated]

I really don't like the way previous license plates are being changed on the pages, ie

http://cptdb.ca/wiki...ansit_9155-9160

This format is very hard to read, small text and light gray colour. There was nothing wrong with how it was shown before.

The "before" way (old plate below in black full-size text and brackets) did not give a clear enough indication that the plate had been removed, and I've seen multiple members question why a bus has two plates listed (they missed seeing or didn't understand the brackets). The other format of having two columns (one for Current and another for Retired) wastes a lot of space, especially if most units in a series are still on their first plate.

The smaller text and grey colour (I would hardly argue it's "light" grey, on my monitors it's definitely darker than the 'retired' grey backgrounds and IMO still quite readable) clearly indicate that the plate is no longer in use, when contrasted with the full size black text. This format has been in place on the OC Transpo Wiki pages for months now, and yours is the first complaint I've heard on this format since it's expanded out to other pages. I'd like to hear from other members first on whether they prefer this format before pages get reverted back based on one complaint.

[D40LF]

The "before" way (old plate below in black full-size text and brackets) did not give a clear enough indication that the plate had been removed, and I've seen multiple members question why a bus has two plates listed (they missed seeing or didn't understand the brackets). The other format of having two columns (one for Current and another for Retired) wastes a lot of space, especially if most units in a series are still on their first plate.

The smaller text and grey colour (I would hardly argue it's "light" grey, on my monitors it's definitely darker than the 'retired' grey backgrounds and IMO still quite readable) clearly indicate that the plate is no longer in use, when contrasted with the full size black text. This format has been in place on the OC Transpo Wiki pages for months now, and yours is the first complaint I've heard on this format since it's expanded out to other pages. I'd like to hear from other members first on whether they prefer this format before pages get reverted back based on one complaint.

Just because it is the format that is used on the OC Transpo pages doesn't mean that it is the format that should be used through out the wiki. If the background is shaded gray how do you think the info will present to readers. As it is right now what is being done is so hard for me to read, and I have 20-10 vision!!!

[vivablue5215]

Just because it is the format that is used on the OC Transpo pages doesn't mean that it is the format that should be used through out the wiki. If the background is shaded gray how do you think the info will present to readers. As it is right now what is being done is so hard for me to read, and I have 20-10 vision!!!

I'm wondering if the brightness of your computer might be set too high. I too think the grey in the roster charts seem to be of a darker kind, and I can definitely see it even if I'm far back (though I do wear glasses, but that shouldn't be a factor if you have 20-10 vision), and I've been on the wiki on my Macbook, desktop, the university desktops, two of my dad's desktops, and another laptop from a friend ever since we adopted this format.

Logic would dictate though that greyed out license plates would mean ones that aren't in use anymore, and black are the ones that are currently in use. However, there is a reason why I'm also trying to eliminate the (s) in the license plate column, as that would minimize confusion and readers would know the black one is the active plate while the grey ones were the previous plates.