From Australia:
"New research has found public transport fares have not been a decisive factor in pushing people to shift from car to public transport."
"Better public transport access, coverage, reliability, and travel time have a greater impact than price in changing long-term commuting habits."
Three years before speed cameras were banned in Ontario, the Ford government’s own researchers found them to be an effective safety measure, but one that risked being viewed as a “cash grab.”
Fast forward to 2025, and Premier Doug Ford himself evoked that same narrative.
Line 5's top speed is now 80 km/h in tunnels!
Removing unnecessary speed restrictions is 3️⃣ on our ten-point plan, and a great first step to put #Eglinton on the fast track!
Now it’s time for the surface section of Line 5, Line 6 and the #streetcars to follow suit.
See more here:
This raised crossing is extremely effective at reducing speeds where pedestrians cross.
Speed limit is 30 km/h on this local street but traffic slows to maybe 15 or so at the ped crossing.
Draper Street, Toronto
We're thrilled to see transit experts lay out a plan to revolutionize the streetcars!
When we held our Streetcar Summit, the most popular solutions among riders were effective signal priority, banning left turns, installing 2-point switches, & more.
Experts & riders agree - let's get on with it!
Excited to be helping on this! We need a comprehensive plan that can show how much the streetcars can improve.we can save Torontonians hundreds of thousands of hours a day.
Today FastTrackTO is officially launching and releasing our 10 point plan to modernize the Toronto Streetcar network. An iconic symbol of the city that could be fantastic with some achievable, common sense and low cost changes. The plan if implemented would transform the city.
fast-track.to
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The Transit Analytics Lab @utoronto.ca led by my graduate supervisor Professor Amer Shalaby is hosting the first ever Transit Data Challenge for undergraduate and graduate students across Canada. There is lots of under-utilized transit data out there that could improve transit.please check it out!
Free Transit Sounds Great. Here’s Why I’m Against It.
youtu.be/0L4g8AbfLTM
Public land should never be sold to private developers when there’s a crisis of affordable housing.
There’s much more we can do with this land than more of the same!
My thoughts about the future of Kitchener’s former downtown bus terminal in today’s Waterloo Record
www.therecord.com/opinion/cont...
Today is probably the first time I feel this thing is not that far away from being ready for prime time.
Still a lot of work, but I hope we can have this online by the end of April 🤞🤞🤞
I recently visited Chatham-Kent, a municipality that has operated rural transit for two decades now; it even runs a seasonal route to nearby beaches.
But it can only do so much; a provincial transportation strategy and sustained funding is needed.
seanmarshall.ca/2026/03/03/r...
I looked up the location of Gibbs Honey, the business profiled in the complaint against the high speed line.
It's almost right next to Highway 417, a four lane divided freeway.
www.thestar.com/business/doz...
Wow.
This is exactly what needs to change if we want our streetcar system to be around for much longer.
Appalling, really. And it does belong in a museum…because we should have efficient and effective technology on display, not ancient.
Toronto…*we deserve better*
The Hamilton premiere of 'Thinking Beyond the Market' will take place on Tuesday 3 March at 7pm at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Hosted by @robinlennoxmd.bsky.social & @sandyshaw.bsky.social this non-partisan event is free & open to all!
Register here: www.robinlennox.ca/thinking_bey...
The Line 5 launch went quite well in my personal opinion, and I'm going to have a detailed and I would say quite positive post on the line later today. But first I want to provide some things I really think should be fixed. The TTC to their credit was actually asking for this!
That’s quite the snow pile in the College Street bike lane.
Some winter scenes today of an LRT that worked well in the snow.
Greetings from Kitchener-Waterloo, with its ION LRT trains running every 10 minutes, on time, with full signal priority! 1/2
2045 average weekday trips from 2nd Ave Subway extension along 125th St
Conceptual design of Broadway station on 125th St Subway
Conceptual timeline of 125th St Subway
Location of St. Nicholas Ave station on 125th St Subway
Preliminary data about NYC Subway's 125th St extension from report released yesterday from @mta.info: www.mta.info/document/196...
—Project would attract ~164,000 daily boardings
—Stations would be deep to get under existing lines
—Project estimated at $7.7 b (2027$)
—Earliest revenue service 2032
Daily reminder that the primary benefit of railway electrification is not to reduce railway emissions.
It is to enable faster acceleration which reduces travel time and thereby increases frequency without adding operating cost.
That then attracts more riders and thereby more revenue.
🧠: gondolas for ski
🧠🧠: gondolas for urban transit
🧠🧠🧠🤯: gondolas for apples
The gondola connecting the central treatment hub of the largest apple producers consortium in Italy to the underground storage facility.
Opened last November.
"SlowFood/Flaneur Urbanism": making everyone's mobility more time-consuming is actually good because **reasons** !
Any econometric model, including C/B analysis: the single most important parameter that makes your transport project pencil out is the value of time saving.
An absolutely masterful explanation of the odyssey that lead Toronto from being a transit leader to a city opening rail lines slower than buses, hard comparisons against asian cities that build subways for the same prices, and a possible path forward (also puns): substack.com/inbox/post/1...
At the back cab of the Finch LRT you can see the speedometer, including the programmed speed limits.
It would be useful if a pair of transit advocates could film a full ride with both the view out the front and the speedometer at the back so we can document the speed limits
youtu.be/lectZKgdwTo
Lots of film screenings in the New Year:
Toronto, 11 Jan
Moncton NB 11 Jan
Cambridge ON, 15 Jan
Newmarket, ON, 19 Jan
Kitchener 25 Jan
Wolfville NS, 4 Feb
Guelph, ON 5 Feb
Kingston ON, 9 Feb
Cornwall ON, 10 Feb
Burlington ON, 19 Feb
London ON, 2 Mar
Info & links to register at www.housingfilm.ca
Be sure to report back
TTC Planning & Engineering has been proposing and implementing exactly this type of infrastructure for decades but they face opposition from the City.
Queue Jump Lanes constructed by the TTC include:
WB Lawrence & Dufferin
EB Steeles & Don Mills
WB Finch & Yonge
EB Finch & Markham
bus-only queue jump doing its job on eglinton, letting buses glide past long lines of left turning cars to enter cedarvale station.
sometimes its short, focused transit priority treatments like this that make all the difference!
That this is happening so quickly shows that this could have been done right at the beginning.
But this is still good – the public pressure worked.
skytrain detractors say it's bad bc it's "costly proprietary technology". in the grand scheme, that's irrelevant.
vancouver got metro service for cheaper capital costs which allowed continuous expansion (a north american outlier), more ridership than chicago, & cheap operations bc it's autonomous.
