work takes me to mimico today, which is quite far. taking the subway + go train there is 15-20min faster than subway all the way and catching a bus. but i am doing the latter because the go train is every 1/2 hour while the subway is every few minutes and the bus is every 10 min or less.

"a city within a park", was it?

i admit i don't understand how this differs from a regular watch

Nancy 5/30/26

I'd much rather have a Becerra-Steyer race about how to build housing and transit effectively than a Becerra-Hilton race about whether we should build housing and transit at all. I'm crossing my fingers that enough Becerra, Porter, and Mahan voters see that possibility and switch to Steyer in time.

Hello fellow Californians - if you haven't yet, please vote Steyer for a better path forward! Make sure you use a ballot box to ensure your primary vote counts!

I hate this loss, but city councillors can also blame themselves because they forced all new development onto Toronto's main streets. The shared city spaces take it by design. That isn't Ford.

they just get me

it's my first day this year going out in >25C and i'm already wondering how we all tolerate this for one-third of every year

a leafy, generally featureless square in downtown toronto has been peppered with cheap outdoor furniture in a seeming partnership between IKEA and the BIA, and the result is very pleasant. of note, most of the tables and chairs are taken while the cornhole setup gathers dust. activation is easy

thought i cut my bangs too short but they're growing on me

Spending time in France and Switzerland, it’s clear that the “missing middle” in North America isn’t townhouses and duplexes. It’s mid-rises. Especially mid-rise neighbourhoods. Our denser urban fabric (Montreal, Chicago, etc.) is still mostly 2-3 storeys, not 4-8 like is so common here.

new S(ubstack)-Bahn post: in the 1980s, Medellin was the "murder capital of the world" under the terror of Pablo Escobar. the city at the same time sought to build a metro system. what got them to start this ambitious project, and how did they finish? www.substack-bahn.net/p/how-medell...

jane jacobs who?

my listener profile is quickly outpacing parody. here's what i've been up to: april 23: most of the album "remain in light" by talking heads (first-ever listen) the next four weeks: episodes of lateral podcast with tom scott, exclusively may 20: most of "remain in light" (second-ever listen)

i'm working on it, sheesh

getting up from the couch to do dishes because this unimportant mid-season baseball game has my heart running fast… evidently the tachycardia isn't always postural orthostatic

The entire TTC bus network is designed to do exactly this!

From Safe Parkside: look what happened on Parkside Drive after Premier Doug Ford banned speed cameras.

decisionmakers could have saved us a lot of trouble by rebuilding a curve or two, modernizing line 3, and extending *it* across eglinton

this gotta be the most exciting moment for blue jays baseball since the season began 💙 daulton varsho

DAULTON VARSHO

here's a type of sign i didn't see at dufferin. i like the two-tiered list format. it's well suited to the branching exit structures in more complex stations. i wish it showed the way to the buses (even though they're within fare control), and i wish it showed which exit has step-free access.

nice scene on baldwin, a rare low-traffic commercial street (for a block or two, anyway). i didn't get a closer look because there was a small crowd enjoying treats from the shop in the ground floor!

wishing that the suburbs were more like the old city and that the old city were more like a city tuesday in toronto

vancouver's west end healed me as an entire district of medium + high density housing on a network of low-car streets (with some car-free treatments!) pleasant, quiet, but convenient to walk, bike and take transit. perfect. and illegal to recreate across most canadian cities 💔

i'm intrigued by these signals in bellevue, texas, where highway 287 meets a local street at grade. the lights on the through signals blink together, while those on the left-turn (?) signals alternate. apparently they've been here and behaving this way since 2008 at the latest. what is this?

i just got to participate in the census of canada for the first time! we got the long census, which i'm electing to believe means my data will expand to fill the gaps left by the short-census people. yes, north toronto is home to *multiple* transgender wasian-americans who grew up speaking spanish,

ok, i think i've earned a contrarian weather post. i am living for cold, damp may! no bugs, no thunderstorms, persistent petrichor… life is easy when it's not summer :)

Every freeway not paralleled by rapid rail should have highway express buses, privileged over general traffic for reliable runtime and headways. That can be implemented by simply funding regular 65mph bus operations out of highway funds, and building tailored infrastructure such as bus pads.

The teleporter-like benefits of freeways should be accessible to people outside of cars. Highway bus could be a capital-light way to fill gaps in the rapid transit network, and bring parity in the geometry of the city to non-car-owners. This doesn't require newfangled superbuses.

i like that i'm old enough to hear the names of the new children and think "they were not doing that back in my day"

signs of life from TTC wayfinding: exit codes have appeared at dufferin station!

toronto transportation services would probably tell you that pedestrianizing yonge street would have disastrous consequences on downtown gridlock. meanwhile, downtown yonge during afternoon rush hour:

highest and best use: yonge street on a monday afternoon

It's happening. On Friday, 5/15, we are soft-launching our Transit Priority Atlas 1.0 website. Come join us in person at 370 Jay Street to explore this knowledge-sharing tool and get lost in circulation planning layouts and intersection management strategies for better on-street transit.

blue jays have gone from 3-4 to 11-4 in the top of the 8th with no outs

Of all the ways to make a building more interesting - ornament, different materials, artwork - articulation has got to be the worst. Each of the extra corners from the building shifting in and out is a potential leak, and the yellow planes are extra walls that reduce energy efficiency.

Planners only want one thing and it's disgusting.

This is a pretty clear indicator of how effective cameras are, and how necessary they’ve become

Q: what has small hands and is made for small hands? A:

Did Canada’s 10¢/L cut to gas tax really lower gas prices? Earlier in April, gas averaged 69¢/L more in 🇨🇦 than 🇺🇸. After the cut (April 20th), prices immediately dropped about 10¢ relative to 🇺🇸! But then started trending back up again. Prices today are only 3¢ lower than before the cut.

i think it's funny that LA metro skipped F when lettering their rail lines bc "obscenity" and a couple years later they're doing this

anyone here got plans for my birthday tomorrow?

Run, don’t walk, to grocery outlet

many disingenuous assumptions about through-running rail in this report. i'll try to catch all. first, assuming that the case for through trips is built off ridership btwn specific suburban terminals is completely off the mark. reality: trips in urban trunks through NYC would drive ridership 1/

I don’t want NYC to become a museum. It should be a living, breathing testament to the working people of our city.

there's a fascinating alternate timeline to think about if ICTS got their way and canadian cities built a bunch of bespoke automated light metro systems in the 80s/90s, akin to what happened across mid-sized cities in france around the same time.

"once in a lifetime" is the earworm du jour here. it's not bad, honestly - david byrne is living rent free in my head, but at least he constantly acknowledges that this is not his beautiful house