A really good one methinks.

Ever wondered whats in the other half of the plane beneath the floor? Your travel companion and benefactor might be iPhones or Cod. open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

The Eglinton Crosstown has been open for six months, but it’s time to talk about unlocking its full potential. Here’s my case for a comprehensive Line 5 Upgrade project. open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

Having Slavoj Žižek (an AI impersonating him) review my goals and take me down a few notches was not on my 2026 bingo card

Not RMTransit, but a podcast-video thing from me and Jonathan English! This time on the Eglinton Crosstown. youtu.be/wgAlgu7BCoI?...

Since the Big Dig, North American cities have abandoned the idea of grand infrastructure endeavours. In today's blog, we talk about one such endeavour that was once considered for Toronto — burying the Union Station rail corridor. open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

Another podcast episode to end of the week! This time on Cinq Personnes, where we talk about technology and trying new things. cinqpersonnes.substack.com/p/the-cinq-p...

Anyone from CUTA follow me?

Its crazy that we didn't make building new infill and intensification possible at the rates we restricted outward growth in Canadian cities - while keeping very high immigration. It would have required environmental interests to reconcile instead of crushing young people.

We really need to move beyond thinking of transit projects as these exciting things — they need to just be regular things that we do on a regular basis. Read my latest article now: open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

Feels crazy

Quite a good and transit oriented album music.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Video! From me . . . With @englishrail.bsky.social nextmetro.substack.com/p/a-podcast-...

Regular transit column in the paper?

The focus of this article is how a huge portion of global commerce moves, but people seldom recognize its significance, and like many other modes of transportation China is doing incredible things. Learn more about inland waterways now: open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

Maybe it's time to write the book on transit, or transit in toronto, I'm not sure

Toronto proved it can be bold and move quickly when it rebalanced its streets in the first year of the pandemic with RapidTO bus lanes, CafeTO patios, and ActiveTO bike lanes. I maintain pushback arose not because we did too much, but that we didn't keep going. [I look forward to reading this.]

I've talked a bit recently about how I think Toronto could have a world-class transportation system, and in this post I try to begin outlying how I think that would happen in just the next decade or two. open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

I haven't read the entirety of it but as I understand it B98 is basically a transit service and fare integration bill. I get people being skeptical of this gov but come on, the TTC etc have had literal decades to come to some rational fare and service agreement and have not.

Fengate is doing a massive development between Spadina and Bathurst over the rail corridor which is cool but it's absolutely essential that we get the infrastructure underneath right before we go and make changing it incredibly hard.

So often, people waste time and money just because they aren't willing to do something or don't think to do something when everyone else isn't doing it. I talk about it in my latest article: open.substack.com/pub/cinqpers...

Here’s an idea for Zohran Mamdani to create more jobs in NYC: he could ask Julie Menin and City Council to relegalize the construction of new hotels, which Bill de Blasio banned citywide as a parting gift to the hotel workers union on his way out of office in 2021 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/n...

Megaprojects get an unreasonably bad rap, perhaps we just only remember the bad ones. Read the latest Infrastory now: open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

This is everything wrong with American railroads in one rendering. Just build high levels platforms once and order cheaper, normal single level coaches with double the seating capacity. But no, we get whatever the hell this is.

The Island Airport in Toronto is a really exciting idea... for Microsoft Flight Simulator pilots. Read my latest article now with a free preview: open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

Is that estimate for full-height or half-height PSD? That's an insane amount. Seoul and Hong Kong did their retrofit for just about $1m per station. I get that we're doing something "new" for the city, I get that there's been a bit of inflation in the past decade or two, but $50m!?

50m per station for screen doors isn't even so bad that it wouldn't make sense to do the two busiest / narrowest platform stations left per year. We spend more on less valuable things.

Toronto needs to get it together on transit, but something I've previously complained about actually seems like something we might be leading on in NA. Good job Toronto! Actually saw a few vehicles with recently. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Toronto needs to get serious about fixing the subway. It's notably worse than 5 years ago, I don't think you can say the same about driving and that's not good for the mode split.

Sometimes it has to be asked: is actually transporting people a priority or not.

Toronto is too slow. This subway line moves more people than the 401 and it appears to operate worse every single year.

I wish we had higher standards and just went and did platform screen doors like Delhi and Sao Paulo and Tokyo instead of throwing good money after bad

Toronto and cities across North America clearly need more regionally integrated transit systems, more on this in today's blog post! open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

The 3-star hotels I'd stay in on my New York trips cost $200-300/night, which was not much less than how much Berlin hotels cost during InnoTrans week. Not showing up if you're American, or not sending plenty of planners if you're an American transit agency, is a choice.

One of my biggest problems is not telling people what I *really* think consistently enough

“Once the agencies decided that they wanted to cooperate, the technical obstacles were all surmountable.”

Airport things

The Paris RER is one of the greatest transit systems ever constructed but it wouldn't have happened if not for a junket to Japan. Read the latest Infrastory now: open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

Paris’ RER is a perfect example of solving phone call problems. Instead of duplicating infrastructure because different agencies controlled it, Paris made sharing work. It saved a fortune and created Europe’s most impressive regional rail network. open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

An excellent paper that fails to consider one key fact: In New York, there are no telephones. We can only communicate with New Jersey via parlays and duels arranged in Weehawken from which survival is not guaranteed.

Wild that I got a CS degree and wrote 1M+ words for YouTube and could never touch type. But now I can touch type DVORAK!

Then there's Ottawa were we chose not to have driverless trains. Then, during this long weekend/tulip festival, a lot of train service was cancelled because of low staffing

:(

Automation improves so many elements of the transit experience. Significant automated rail in the form of the REM has opened in recent years and Torontos newest subway line is also going to be driverless.

My latest article is kind of a classic on why you shouldn't think you're better at investing than you are. open.substack.com/pub/cinqpers...

Ottawa/Gatineau is another fun example- in a sane world there’d be a combined transit authority for the whole metro area…

Another aviation post! This one on why New York should have had a major (think O'Hare size) hub in Newark, and why it doesn't . . . .weird political boundary ideology.

We naturally think of infrastructure as being solidly fixed and unchanging, but considering alternative histories allows us to consider the weight of our decisions today. infrastory.substack.com/p/new-yorks-...

I don't know the exact details of this provincial plan to have greater influence on the TTC, but I hope people are reflecting on how the TTC is currently run while they are forming their opinions on this

The Broadway tram folks ought to read