Whatcha doin' there eh neighbour?

$25-40k for the sensor/computing installation and this sounds like something might actually start to make sense for transit purposes.

A gentle reminder that the social media savvy realtor is not an expert in economics

The problem is that "smaller metro area" where a tram-like LRT can perform the role of higher-order transit spine in North America means places like Québec (barely 1M) or Waterloo (1/2 M). Everything else is either too small and weakly centered for rail or too big for low-speed LRTs.

There’s some nice light right now

Waiting for the transit boat

My property assessment went down another 5% this year

brutalist at its best would seem to be a platform for the display of plants

BRB going to start an openstreemaps revert war by reflagging the Finch Line as a tram

Given such limited coverage wouldn't the night bus make more sense as something of an express rather than an all stops local?

Some people get mad at me but I think it's good that the Province have thus far resisted demands that pets be required in all rental apartments.

“Starter home” has got to be one of the more infuriating terms in housing discourse . Like that’s not a starter home it costs one point three million dollars

There will be so many cars that none of them will be able to move

The mist

Happy new year!

Note: 17 minutes from Pacific Central to Sapperton

Ahh, the mysterious New Year’s Eve sink leak

It’s amazing to me that people can live in the year 2025 and think automated metro trains are bad

An app that exists “This app tells you the name of every tree planted on Vancouver, BC's city streets.”

it kinda seems to me like the planning profession developed this as a best practice and starting codifying it into law well before any kind of public anti density backlash happened

IKEA should make everyone use Robertson screwdrivers

From back when plastic doodads were built right here in Vancouver

I was on the Early Edition this morning to talk about the year in housing, along with Michael Geller! Link to the full interview below. I'm always trying to articulate what matters most to me when it comes to housing: values, and people. Here's what I said about those today:

I appreciate that a clickable dot map can only fit so many cities in it but the distribution of 'world cities' here leaves something to be desired Vancouver should be so flattered though

Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans

why in gods name do I have two imperial-only tape measures?

Here's a few to start... (rough calcs) London 14M (1.556) Singapore 6.9M (1.129) Tokyo 40M (1.081) Buenos Airies 13.5M (0.985) Paris 11M (0.887) Madrid 5M (0.714) Vancouver 1.56M (0.639) Bogota 4M (0.364) Curitiba 1.1M (0.314) Mexico City 4.5M (0.205)

Nothing ill can come of this

Approximating this methodology using, Translink's average daily 1,551,339 mf boardings over a Vancouver population centre 2021 population of 2,426,160 we would arrive at 0.639 riders per capita

The spectre of cheap bus frequency would really be liberating for much of urban life in a lot of ways.

It all sorta worked as long as the workhorse for accommodating housing demand was paving over farm fields and clearing forests somewhere out of mind and out of town.

Doing a dry run

Hear me out: Knight street container gondola

A hazard to navigation

Big weird boat

Say what you will about the Cowichan decision but the economic damage is mostly going to be from the telephone tag version that business people are hearing about rather than any actual implication of the ruling or any of the principles invoked

I think you’re tryin’ a little too hard their bud. Dial it back a wee bit

I find it underdiscussed how much worse service is (as well as how much worse ridership is, not unrelatedly but also not necessarily consequentially) since Covid

Whether you work in metric or imperial is highly context specific. For instance, real estate and construction are extremely imperial

a jolly boxing day to the rest of you

since we’re on creationism as a topic, here’s a grenade into the discourse: attributing conscious intentionality to social forces like capitalism is in many ways a form of creationism or at least adjacent to it

Chinook salmon in phyllo with spinach cheese sauce

As long as we’re not afflicting new housing with the cost of this sure knock yourselves out, float all the old houses up province where they can run and play

There's something in this history that speaks to the frivolous aesthetic priorities of Oughts-Era Canadian Urbanism

I have not been shy on my coverage of transit issues in Toronto. With the disastrous opening of the Finch West LRT in early December, I have some thoughts from Hong Kong using my historical experiences with Toronto in this longform post.

Merry Christmas everyone!

the funniest part of this thread is the kitsilano people at the bottom disputing the "west end is canada's greatest neighbourhood"

some of my favorite photos from 2025