Give a nerd a chart or a map and they will waste a day. Teach a nerd how to make charts and maps and they will waste the rest of their life.

Having just visited Vienna for the first time, I found it impossible not to notice how much public space it reserves for car owners. Really confirms that if you don't reduce car lanes and parking spots at scale, your public space will continue to suffer, no matter how good your public transit.

Toronto’s transit cost disease has hit… metal fences. Just a reminder that $2M CAD is about the cost of half height PSGs for one platform in Hong Kong. Then we use NYC to justify our wild cost estimates for actual screen doors. The incuriosity and Anglo echo-chamber here is astounding.

Of all the North American cities studied, Vancouver's buses have the second highest variation in travel time throughout the day. This should set off alarm bells that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to making buses reliable.

Love Richmond's Asian malls? You can catch the new doc "The Golden Village" on YouTube, with lovely scenes of mall life and how migrants made them home. Directed by Karen Cho of "Big Fight in Little Chinatown", feat. me chiming in over pork chop rice! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tba1...

Infrastructure projects routinely spend billions of dollars to avoid difficult conversations. I wrote a new piece on Infrastory on how we need to be better at recognizing the problems that can be solved with a phone call rather than big infrastructure. open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

“The best-used euro is not to reduce the price but to increase the offer,” says Kehrer. “Because what’s the use of a cheap ticket if I still can’t travel when I want to?”

Building bike lanes at the same time as roadwork was supposed to save money, expand the network and reduce opposition. The reality is more complicated, argues Ruofan 🚎

While Vancouver drags its feet on improving four measly bus routes, a true world-class city, Vienna, is looking to speed up 29 tram lines and 135 bus routes, basically its entire surface transit network. The city will invest 2 million Euros annually until 2030 on transit acceleration measures.

This is a great opportunity for a lesson about the importance of picking a terminal when designing a transit route. This proposed ferry to Gibsons and Bowen Island will terminate in Coal Harbour near the foot of Bute Street. Here's how that performs: 1/3

Route 8 used to have twice as many trips during the busiest hours of the day. Longer wait times not only reduce the convenience of public transportation but also have very real impacts on people's lives (e.g., having to choose between arriving extra early or extra late to work/school).

From now on this is the only way i will travel

Dresden's tram museum took its MAN tram from 1913 for a spin today while the police demonstrated how the transitway helps them get faster to where they need to be. The #tram was converted and modernised into a single-ended tram in 1966. It was last used in regular service in 1975. 🚋🚍 🤝 🚓🚑🚒

Very happy to have collaborated with CSA Group on this report examining successes and challenges in transit project construction in Canada and the lessons we can learn for future projects. www.csagroup.org/article/publ...

So it’s broadly recognized that Vancouver needs more hotel rooms, that high room rates driven by high occupancy are a drag on the local economy, that the city needs to facilitate the construction of more hotels. All of this is true I want speak to the human importance of hotels

It's been almost 1,000 days since @sarahkirby.bsky.social brought forward an excellent motion the bring in some bus lanes where they're needed most. TransLink even agreed to fund it all. So where are they? 🧐🤷 @movementyvr.bsky.social dailyhive.com/vancouver/va...

Without fanfare, the BC Ministry of Transportation released a report that makes a strong case for a Westshore to Victoria rail line, writes Sam Holland

The City of Vancouver is proposing transit priority improvements for the Kingsway corridor, but there's so much more they can do. My thoughts: bettercolumbia.ca/2025/11/11/t...

I strongly believe in platform screen doors in Metros, but nearly all literature around it is WHY it should be installed. but it is the HOW that realizes the dream, and I stuffed this post with as much history and details as I can to help visualize how such a thing can be realized

Platform screen doors (PSDs) in Seoul were fundamentally a political issue. Once political support was secured, financial and engineering barriers quickly gave way. Loved this piece by @seung.bsky.social explaining how 200+ stations received PSDs in <10 years. www.substack-bahn.net/p/how-seoul-...

Guys have we mentioned there is total cash prize of $2000 👀🤪🤭 $1000 - Judge’s Choice $500 - People’s Choice $500 - Most equitable

Meanwhile for Douglas St in Downtown Victoria, with over 60 buses per direction per hour during peaks, it's taken a decade for planning work to actually start, a year for a lackluster 10%-conceptual design to show up, and likely will take years longer for anything to happen. We can do better.

It's no surprise that housing in Metro Vancouver is expensive. But it might surprise you that for some parts of our region, transportation costs even more than housing. 1/3

In 2023, Scottsdale bus exchange 🚌 outperformed 30 SkyTrain stations 🚇 in weekday boardings. By relocating it to the heart of the community and building transit-oriented housing, Surrey can unlock even greater potential for both transit and the people it serves. dailyhive.com/vancouver/tr...

Biked through North Delta again today and I'm still baffled at the number of maze gates they put everywhere on bike routes. Does someone's cousin own a company that makes maze gates or something? Even the railways don't use so many.

"If a third crossing were to connect to the North Shore, where would the 19,000 vehicles per lane each day go? Will Marine Drive be widened for them? East Keith Road? Grand Blvd? What should be demolished to widen those corridors?" Thanks @michaelhall.bsky.social! www.nsnews.com/opinion/opin...

22) “the Canada Line is Under-built” The Canada Line is not even half full to design capacity. Given recent outcomes the spirit of economy guiding Canada Line engineering is quite underrated

The other day, I was telling friends and family how a housewife originated these Tokyo Metro transfer and exit guides, and they thought I was kidding. It used to be a well-known story. If you don't know it, here's a quick summary.

In 2012, @translink.ca released some analysis showing what characteristics are common to the most successful bus routes in Metro Vancouver. I applied that methodology for 2024, and many of the attributes still hold true.

Most North American cities: we should allow cars to overtake buses at stops at any cost. Traffic MUST FLOW! Great transit cities: we should systematically prevent cars from overtaking stopped buses with median curbs because it's a hazard for alighting passengers and it delays buses.

Great video by @casualcommuter.bsky.social on how OC Transpo got so unreliable. Most important point to me is that good public transit can save people money in the long run. youtu.be/0QKjoO5HWCE

I made a map of population density (CSDs) in BC overlaid with the highway network, the potential of intercity public transit is much stronger than you might expect! teito7000.github.io/projects/202...

Great article on the origins of SFU Burnaby!

Metropolis did a good thing! They conceded the crosswalk between the bus loop and the SkyTrain Station to people, and blocked it to cars turning right out of the mall parkade. Kudos to them.

I recently visited Ottawa with some friends for a transit conference. Here are some thoughts about the O-Train LRT from my brief experiences... Shaky photos by me, others courtesy of @abbyfour.bsky.social 🧵 1/10