So glad to be featured in @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social excellent video! High costs in Canada have been accepted as an inevitability - as projects are descoped & cancelled. ION & REM show that another way is possible… …given the humility to abandon our Anglo roots & learn from global best practice.

rallies were held in 70 canadian cities today. in toronto, 10k ppl showed up to draw the line ✊ reminder that your federal liberal government is planning to fund genocide, approve mines, deregulate oil & gas, roll back migrant rights, while cutting public services. canada shouldn't go backwards.

wish i lived in boston so i could pull off one of my dream costumes for halloween: an on-fire orange line train

We're counterprotesting a hate rally attempting to target trans kids' healthcare. Details in the poster.

parallel car infrastructure + access is so normalized, it's a shame advocates have to fight tooth and nail for the same granularity of access for bikes + transit. a nimby favourite line: "if street x has bike lanes, why does nearby street y need it?". the same q would never be asked about cars 🫠

santiago and cdmx both have successful metro systems originating from the 1970s. CDMX largely stopped building metro after 2000 amid austerity, opting for more BRT. metro-building costs have only worsened since. meanwhile, santiago continued building its metro, and costs are at record lows!

many write off REM's low cost, large scale, and quick delivery as a result of reuse of an existent commuter line, but this misses other important factors - how procurement incentivized effective and useful service, to optimized station design, public policy, and more. this piece dives into that:

“The time [REM] went from ‘doesn’t exist’ to [revenue service] is mind blowing...” A masterpiece from @hudsonyuen.bsky.social featuring @chittimarco.bsky.social & @englishrail.bsky.social. So proud to have played a small part. MUST WATCH for planners who believe the status quo is inevitable

a very new red-painted left-turn queue jump at yonge and eglinton 😊 buses were allowed to turn left here, but this treatment makes clear that the left turn lane is *only* for buses. when the crosstown opens it will be useful for the handful of remaining feeder buses that run on eglinton

calgary could build its own brentwood town centre if it locked in, just saying

we'll get a nofrills farecard before widely available transit fare sold at corner stores across the city 🫠 back when presto was being rolled out, metrolinx signed an exclusive deal with loblaws to be the only third-party vendor of presto cards (shoppers and nofrills are subsidiaries of loblaws)

line 6 finch west begins revenue service demonstration this saturday, the final stretch to opening. this process takes 30 days, meaning you can expect to ride the LRT in the 4th-5th week of october (barring any issues). so, line 6 is now officially ahead of line 5 to open. made that bet in 2022 🙃

Transit riders shouldn't be punished for making the right choice to fight congestion and tackle climate change - taking public transit. Fare capping is flexible, affordable, and fair. Sign our petition to call on City Council to implement it in 2026: ttcriders.ca/farecapping 7/7

Spending too much on TTC fares? Can't afford to buy an expensive monthly pass at the start of every month? The TTC is considering implementing fare capping next year, and we're happy to see it! Read through for a breakdown of what fare capping could mean for the TTC ⬇️ 1/7

nothing screams toronto in 2025 quite like grabbing shawarma from a street vendor at 11pm that goes cold because your subway home hit 5 slow zones, 2 "service adjustments", and entered a black hole

Good Emmys this year “Go birds, [redacted], and free Palestine”

mark carney's "nation-building" seems to involve a lot of oil & gas deregulation and green-lighting of controversial mining and pipeline projects where most benefits are reaped by multinational corporations. at the end of the day, a more polluted canada. sounds like nation-killing to me.

my work involves a lot of writing & comms, i love it and i've slowly grown more skillful at it over the years. but using generative AI as a full substitute for professional writing & comms is lazy and disrespectful, & people can tell it's AI, especially if within their subject matter 🫠

mumbai has a unique approach to tackling fare noncompliance on its suburban rail system - making every train ticket a daily lottery ticket. instead of punishing and policing riders who often have no alternative to transit, mumbai gives riders incentive to pay fare. a friendly, encouraging nudge.

dallas' silver line is opening soon across the north of the city, serving the kind of growing non-peak, non-downtown ridership that most rail networks don't serve - valuable in a polycentric city. except, it's operationally a commuter line with 30-60 min waits & service ending at 8p on weekends 🤷

when you spend your life spewing hate, division, a lack of empathy, and advocating for violence against groups of people, don't be surprised when hate, lack of empathy, and violence finds its way to your life

the TTC's fare-free student field trip pilot flopped. Only 28 of 531 eligible schools signed up in 2024-2025. it had a $500k budget, and only $6k was used up. then you look at the parameters for eligible field trips and it all makes sense why it flopped. who even wants to use this?

while playing hockey in the scarborough bus lanes that efficiently moves 50,000 people per day, i wonder if this city councillor candidate noticed that there's also no midday traffic on the car lanes (which carry far less people) either on eglinton, kingston and morningside. bus lanes work.

the POO spotted at spadina station

it takes a lot of audacity from the TTC chair to tell a transit advocacy group to muzzle basic asks we hear from riders. these councillors failed to advance new revenue tools we ask for, cry that there isn't money *every* budget cycle, then call basic transit upgrades "unrealistic". rinse+repeat.

Today, TTCriders is at Davisville/TTC HQ to attend the Strategic Planning Committee meeting! We'll be discussing fare capping, service improvements, wayfinding and more as the TTC plans its budget - and we'll be asking for ambitious improvements! Follow along ⬇️

Great short video by TransLink explaining “the empty bus lane myth”

north american zoning exists to protect wealthier homeowners who live on quiet streets in leafy suburbs from the externalities of the american city, the brunt of which is faced by renters (usually) in denser housing living on surface stroads subject to noise+air pollution, and traffic injuries👇

anglosphere cost disease strikes again. Sound Transit should consider cutting obvious low-value add-ons that weigh down capital budgets. parkades cost a lot, but benefit few. that land is more productive as TOD. feeder buses are much more efficient at expanding station catchment and every rider 1/

bus service in central hamilton is a beautiful mess, and the official map has just about given up on explaining it. networks like this benefit from grouping routes according to their behaviour in the core. here is my take, minimizing the number of discrete lines while preserving route traceability

The TTC built the entire Union-Eglinton subway in 5 years.

north vancouver's R2 rapidbus carries less than 6k people per day, a flop outperformed by local translink routes. one could quadruple ridership with zero additional infrastructure by extending rapid bus service across the inlet into burnaby, replicating the future skytrain line like so:

a new transit signal at richmond and york, that's more in line with the world standard. finally! since it isn't a green light, drivers can't possibly mistake it to be a regular traffic light as they often do on the king priority corridor or line 5/6.

line 1 at 11:30pm on a friday. true freedom is 6 minute or better train service outside of the usual work commutes, so people can use transit for living, not just for going to work. frequent night transit is one pillar that allows toronto to be fairly active at night!

this is an important bus route relied upon by workers, visitors, and people who have family and friends across the border. the mayor yaps about it being unfair that windsor pays for the crossborder bus service, but his move really is just an austerity measure + hand-out to private bus companies

lawrence station looks much brighter and spacious with its renovated main concourse and new vertical access points. elevators are now in place, and soon lawrence will become the 56th accessible subway station

Thrilled to see the TTC recommend fare capping as part of the Ridership Growth Strategy, something that we have long called for as a common-sense solution to making transit more affordable! This would replace an expensive monthly pass, that you need to pay for upfront on the same day as your rent.

winnipeg has no freeways at all, instead the road network is based on a few wide, pedestrian-hostile arterial roads that radiate out from the city centre (cutting the grid), usually as the only means for traffic to cross the rivers. they're also commercial corridors with curb parking

amusing how even in 2025 you can basically skip having a real public consultation and start building a billion-dollar highway without even sharing a budget or a timeline, but something as simple as red paint bus lanes has to have studies, months of consultation, & a cost breakdown. priorities... 🚗

summer in san francisco, '25

🍁taking transit in canada🍁 montreal: waiting in line for 5 years at the STM fare machine vancouver: waiting for the expo line to production way at night =/= robbed by the airport surcharge toronto: streetcar takes longer than walking ottawa: octranspo takes all your money calgary: where bus :(

biidaasige park is quickly becoming my favourite park in toronto. it's not just a manicured suburban green lawn with some trees. there's an attempt to replicate natural vegetation and the environment you'd expect around a river, and lots of activities to do at the park itself!

bloor street w yesterday evening☀️ bike lanes are still here, thanks to the advocacy of @cycletoronto.bsky.social and others, winning a charter challenge last month against the provincial government's attempt to remove them. biggest win of the summer. advocacy works! support your local 🚲 orgs!

atlanta's beltline has a great case given the existing right-of-way and demand for more circumferential rapid transit, but this service pattern is too obsessive abt 1-seat rides this could all be collapsed into a simpler network with a 10-min beltline LRT and a 10-min crosstown streetcar 1/4

TTCriders volunteers were at Jane and Sheppard today handing out flyers and chatting with riders about local transit issues and our upcoming Better Transit Workshop happening at Jane and Finch Mall on Thursday, August 28 from 6-8pm. Join us! RSVP at www.ttcriders.ca/shifts

The moment the union defied back to work orders was when power was truly shifted back to the workers and Air Canada realized they were screwed, forcing them back to the bargaining table. If employers expect the government to step in every time a strike happens, they'll never bargain in good faith.

most people in north america have been conditioned to believe cars = freedom, but it's a trap that we've built ourselves into, and grown up believing. the reality? being able to live in a car-free/lite environment is actual freedom!

the average brain cell on twitter when one suggests giving a train with 200 people more priority than 8 left-turning drivers

Trains with hundreds of riders shouldn't get stuck waiting at red lights for a few left-turning drivers. Transit Signal Priority is just common sense! Send a message to City Council: transit riders on the $2 billion-dollar Finch West LRT should get priority over drivers! ttcriders.ca/greenlight

this shit belongs on facebook 😭