What started out as a small group message board about public transit that focused around the Greater Toronto Area and the province of Ontario has now become one the largest, and most popular public transit discussion boards on the internet - The Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board.

The CPTDB was originally created by Stephen Kwan in 1997 in an effort to bring together enthusiasts from all over the province to discuss different transit systems in surrounding areas. It was affiliated with the Transit Fans Ontario Yahoo! Group and the Ontario Transit Association. The message board grew more and more as the years went by, and began to attract people from all over Canada.

As the board grew, Felix Tse hopped on board to assist Stephen Kwan as a moderator. Gary Pang came in as Stephen Kwan exited the scene. Mike Vainchtein and Jan Boic were brought on as additional moderators as the forum grew even further.

On July 21, 2004, Ashton Wong launched the next generation of CPTDB. It used advanced software and would allow for multiple forum sections. At the time (and continuing past January 2006), the administration team consisted of Gary Pang, Felix Tse, and Ashton Wong. The old board continued to run parallel with the new board, with users encouraged to register on the newer software.

• September 2004 - The original CPTDB ceased operations with its service provider.
• September 2005 - Felix Tse stepped down as administrator.
• November 2005 - Jan Boic, a moderator on the old CPTDB, joined the administration team on the new CPTDB.
• February 2006 - Gary Pang stepped down as administrator. Adrian Badaraco joined the administration team.
• August 2006 - The CPTDB underwent a major software upgrade.
• October 2006 - Kevin Lo joined the administration team.
• November 2006 - The CPTDB became its own entity on the internet. The domain name cptdb.ca was registered and implemented.
• June 2007 - George Prior joined the administration team.
• June 2007 - Official launch of the CPTDB Wiki.

The CPTDB Wiki launched a new era of collaboration and tracking. Thanks to the effort of WIki Editor members spending countless hours of time, transportation fleets across Canada and the United States are recorded and tracked in one central location. It has become a huge source of public transportation information, listing anything from transit agency bus routes to vehicle manufacturers/models. It has grown to cover international items though the focus remains on North American fleets. Edits are made daily and CPTDB members continue to contribute their knowledge and consolidate it in an accessible format.

• February 2008 - Shanake Mario Seneviratne joined the administration team.
• November 2009 - David Vincent joined the administration team.
• December 2011 - The CPTDB underwent another major software upgrade, introducing real-time chat and mobile application for smart phone users.

Today, the CPTDB has over 3,300 registered members, who have posted over half a million messages. It is Canada's largest online public transit forum, has expanded worldwide and continues to grow and attract people from all over the world.

In 2011 we had over 490,000 unique visitors and over 83 million hits, using up 628.46GB of bandwidth - that's over half a terabyte!

Our statistics for 2008 to 2011 can be found below (2009 is missing a few months due to server switches):

Special Thanks goes out to the following people for making CPTDB a huge success:

• Stephen Kwan
• Felix Tse
• Gary Pang
• Mike Vainchtien
• Jan Boic
• Ashton Wong
• Adrian Badaraco
• Kevin Lo
• George Prior
• Shanake Mario Seneviratne
• David Vincent
• Dennis Tsang
• Kevin Lafreniere
• and all of our valuable members and contributors!