I don't want to shock anyone, but I don't think that removing the bike lanes is going to improve congestion. The provincial government is putting people at risk for a few parking spots in midtown Toronto.

This "priority removal section" for the bike lane on Bloor W demonstrates that Ford and Sarkaria were never serious about finding parallel secondary routes. Where is the parallel route here? They don't care. www.thestar.com/news/gta/the...

Even in its terribly debilitated state GO Expansion still is the infrastructure project with the highest BCR on the continent. Easily a top national priority. In any sane developed country this is a 5-year modernization program. Our incompetent institutions live in fear of doing literally anything

The Ontario premier either doesn't understand that speed cameras save lives, or he doesn't care.

The Ontario PC Party would love nothing more than to see our urban fabrics slowly evaporate into a suburban sludge, where every street corner is a half empty parking lot fronting a Shopper's Drug Mart.

I get a lot of stuff wrong but my early call on all of this was that it's simply wrong to engage in this as an argument over congestion policy. I said on the podcast that it is, instead, an argument over who has the right to public space — and the Premier has decided the allocation.

POLICING THE OPEN ROAD is really important reading. From the very beginning, we've had a deeply ambivalent answer to the question "should the law apply to upper- and middle-class people?"

periodic reminder that a) the TPA's land would return more to the city in tax revenue if its parking lots were redeveloped; b) it's "profits" are entirely the result of accounting fictions; c) it exists solely to subsidize car use and periodically give councillors a lever to placate NIMBYs

disband the Toronto Parking Authority

Notice that the mayor of Kitchener is not listed. @berryonline.bsky.social is on Doug Ford's side on this one.

You can understand why the special relationship between Canada and the United States has collapsed under Trump. All Canada did was be the largest trading partner and best and most reliable friend and ally to our US neighbour for ages. Evidently what we needed to do instead was buy Trump a gaudy jet.

"It’s really upsetting. It feels like it’s not a priority. Essentially, the driver, and the community, are being told that dooring someone doesn’t matter,” Dermody said. www.ctvnews.ca/canada/artic...

"Some say (speed cameras) punish low-income drivers at the same rate as the rich. OK, let’s make the rates income-based, and make wealthy speeders feel it too with stiffer fines." -Shawn Micallef

*cough* www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/w...

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later. harpers.org/archive/1941...

Everything — every single thing — in this city is downstream of policymakers using the power of the state to reinforce the status quo.

In an article about rapidly rising commercial rents, I think it would be very relevant to mention commercial properties are heavily restricted (the thin red lines on the map) and that less than a year ago the city voted against allowing more in neighbourhoods. www.thestar.com/real-estate/...

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How corrosive it is that public figures are--more and more shamelessly--ripping the copper wiring out of the walls. Integrity is for suckers. Abusing power is fun. Caring about anything bigger than yourself is lame. An elite class of evil toddlers

Hey Canada, Trump brought up his whole “Canada should be the 51st State” again today, for the first time in a while, to a room full of all the top-ranked military leaders in the United States. I’m sure that’s a coincidence. Right?

We should also remember that the majority of folks actually support speed cameras. "Nearly three-quarters of Ontario drivers (73 per cent) support the use of ASE in target areas such as school zones or near community centres." A vocal few are dominating the discourse. www.caasco.com/about-us/cor...

We need to decide two things: if programs that preemptively save lives - Vision Zero, in other words - are worth the investment, and if we can accept that the laws that allow us to have a free society are worth the trade-off of personal responsibility. For many people it's a resounding no to both.

If speed cameras are merely a revenue tool, why stop at getting rid of them? Speeding tickets are just a cash grab by the police, so adios! Corporations being fined for breaking environmental laws? No thanks, that's just Big Government with their hands in our pockets again!

Imagine if we treated any other form of safety like this:"We should only install outlet covers in day care centers on a case-by-case basis, such as where a toddler has stuck his fingers in an electrical socket."

Look the mayor of Vaughan and the Premier of Ontario have said drivers are hard done by. Give them a break.

Never ever let Conservatives claim to be tough on crime -- they're the ones ensuring charges routinely get dropped en masse.

From yesterday, my Toronto Star op-ed on the notwithstanding clause. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Frankly, it should be illegal to have five day work weeks in the fleeting weeks of autumn, when we hit the Goldilocks zone of perfect weather that our summers increasingly lack. You're telling me we should be indoors closing loops and circling back when we should be outside with family and friends?

The fact that cross-border traffic from Canada is down by only one-third is a gd mystery. Not exaggerating to say that it’s possible I will never again go to the US

Nobody ever refers to a detached single family house with a garage and a yard as “luxury,” despite it being an order of magnitude more luxurious than ~98% of apartments.

Whenever people talk about "luxury housing," I remember there are literal mansions in Hartford, CT that are now selling for less than it costs to buy a starter home in Silicon Valley. If we judge luxury by market value, there is no housing that is intrinsically, permanently "luxury housing."

15min is probably a more reasonable estimate. I was going from memory when I said 40 min above, which is probably both wrong and misremembered. Still not ideal, but certainly closer.

The problem with left-wing NIMBYism youtu.be/tvTa-GXKxak?... #onpoli #housingcrisis #YIMBY

Seeing some dooming about Ford and speed cameras. I think he's made a mistake here. Speed cameras have 73% support with Ontarians. Conservative councillors are against removal. Ideas about implementation might vary but a ban is a mis-step from Ford. This fight is winnable. 1/4

"Growth should pay for growth" is a political choice to socialize the benefits of immigration while privatizing its infrastructure costs onto younger cohorts, insulating established homeowners and corporations from financial responsibility open.substack.com/pub/missingm...

It’s also dishonest to present these two issues, in the same breath, as some kind of zero sum prioritization. The beauty of the speed cameras is, once installed, the job is done! If anything, they free up police resources so more focus can be paid to violent crime. It’s foolish, bad logic.

Violent crime is more rare, shocking, headline-grabbing. We treat it as an intolerable aberration from the norm. And we should! But that suggests that road deaths and injuries are the norm and are therefore tolerable. No politician will say that out loud, but watch what they prioritize.

In a statement, Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca pivoted from speed cameras to violent crime, suggesting we should spend more time focussing on the latter. That’s illuminating. Vehicles obviously present the bigger statistical threat, especially to children. But we accept those injuries and deaths.

Mass Timber is the way, we’re working on several and it’s proving to be beneficial; faster, durable, beautiful and boosts Canadian manufacturing and talent. What’s not to love? 1/

There were already SO MANY REASONS for cities to get big into Mass Timber building construction. For Canadian cities, and for allies of Canada, Trump starting an illegal trade war with Canada gave us another really BIG reason — Canadian wood helping the Canadian economy. #MassTimber

Former Prime Minister Harper, come get your boy.

Canada has an opportunity to pick up the slack in North America’s research ecosystem in the wake of sharp drops in support for sciences in the United States. www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/0...

The Ford government is forcing municipalities to ditch speed cameras. People will die. I make the case for keeping the cameras, and saving lives. www.davidmoscrop.com/p/life-in-th...

Trans bans are always about policing women. Always.

Taxpayer subsidy of a dying industry to preserve votes. The taxpayer rhetoric of Ford, which he snakes into everything, even life/death speeding, is all bullshit and so easily pierced. This is on the Ontario voter who seems will to endless eat shit.

Man who meddles in the absolute minutia of municipal life has a thought about a higher level of gov't.

I think this is the year that we should finally retire the word "gentrification." You can't measure it and you can't define it, so how do we know when it started and if it stopped?

"come to our cookout and meet other interesting nerds" is a SHOCKINGLY high-value proposition in this saturated media environment!

the cultural crisis is straightforward: there are no longer any formal consequences for blatantly anti-social behavior, and the rest of us are constantly just getting lectured that we have to put up with these assholes making our lives worse

Extremely wrong, and Mayor @berryonline.bsky.social knows it.

Why should I have to pay to prevent drivers from speeding rather than having the speeders pay?