It seems Alto might be building huge tunnels to get into Toronto and Montreal, feels totally unnecessary and not the pragmatic way to actually get us high speed rail instead of creating another HS2 / CAHSR

I increasingly feel trapped because Toronto and Ontario don't appear to care about providing good transit to their people at almost any level. So I'm asking you, what questions do you have about public transit that I could talk about? What are you curious about? I'll write that!

"That thing is such a major destination, it should be located on higher order transit." "Actually I think they will like add a bus route to it." "Ok thanks! No problem then!"

Someone decided to share a post from me on the "lets scream at strangers but as a group! Forums" and it's pretty unfortunate. I was going to try to argue with each excuse being made individually but figured I'd just write it here instead. www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/c...

The Seattle Link trains look quite nice. Excited for when they do longer units

Weird framing, and super old pic

urbanism is very interesting in that it seems to be *the* way a lot of people are becoming politically / socially engaged

I think I may go back to email

An incredibly important video on the huge benefits of upzoning a North American city, and the risks that present afterwards: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVQ6...

That we still haven't removed the "you musn't go faster than 25 kph through an intersection" rule on Finch tells you a lot

I speak from experience when I say its a bit weird and bad that so many of the most passionate housing, transit and urbanism people in Canada aren't "in the tent" and don't actually work in the area.

Generations of Canadians are being crushed by housing prices so that older generations, and lucky young people can live without too many other humans polluting their cities. If you have a NIMBY family member, or someone moaning about their homes value atm, I hope you give them grief!

Oh the Urbanity has a great initiative to help them make more videos covering more cities and public transit. If you can help them it would make a big difference! youtu.be/IAqIet-HbMI?...

Watch this video as someone familiar with Toronto streetcars and try not be be sad / annoyed www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEkC...

Want to know what's broken with transit in Canada? Often the same things broken in other areas, government willing to charge taxpayers huge amounts to keep votes in select communities

All about this year's new goals. open.substack.com/pub/cinqpers...

A bit wild that I can buy a Chinese car in Canada soon, but I can't buy a Chinese phone

To be clear, the finch light rail being shut down because of snow in Canada is nuts. I personally had to dig my household out of probably thousands of pounds of it and it wasn't fun but this is a literal rail system! Just feels like an extension of the mismanagement.

The young, educated, ambitious people who want to live in Toronto and Vancouver are being forced out by high prices. We could build more housing for them, but we prefer our cities to become stagnant retirement communities. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

"LRT" . . . Sigh Part of why we don't get better is because our reporting is not very good. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Japanese Google Maps bug is back

V cool

Governor Hochul will announce an extension of the Second Avenue Subway to 125th and Broadway in her State of the State address on Tuesday. buff.ly/2qxRQs6

Rob Ford was famously very into subways, and people often take this to mean that there’s something wrong with subways. In today’s post, I talk about how even a broken clock is right twice a day. open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

Every time I come back to social media I'm reminded how happy I was when I was away

It's frequently weird talking about transit as a nonpartisan

Good piece from @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social (www.tvo.org/article/anal...) on transit debates in Toronto. But, I think the characterization of subways has the same issues it did in the 2010s - and one that the Ford brother certainly fell for - that they have to be underground!

Of my ~300,000 followers / subscribers 20% are Canadian - about 60,000 - Canada has a ratio of ~1500 people for every dentist, so assuming dentists are as interested in watching my content as anyone else I must have a bunch of dentist followers? Inquire for more 👀

Turns out having shoulder stations is important if you ever need to reduce or close your main station @rmtransit.bsky.social

Several people seem annoyed that I wrote something in the star saying "we need more subways and regional rail" and are going on about how thats not what we *really* need (apparently we *really* need signal priority and lanes) and how we need "all of the above".

Do you have social media savvy? I'm spinning up a sort of micro-advocacy group with a few other transit folks and we need to find someone who can run a couple social accounts (mostly just a post here and there!). Hopefully this will get some notoriety!

I'm involved in this project, if it takes off it would be huge. If you have money to donate / spend on results to change Canada / North America for the better I think this is the place

I want to sit policymakers who think these kinds of alignments are okay in front of a game of Subway Builder, so they can visualize what curve radius does to travel time.

Let’s avoid making another terrible transit mistake - read my latest article now: open.substack.com/pub/nextmetr...

People seem to think I don't think surface or local transit matters, nothing could be further from the truth, I just think we have the balance off in Toronto. The red lines on this map are local and surface transit, and the rapid transit ...

On indirect benefits. Read my latest article now: open.substack.com/pub/cinqpers...

Forget the SkyTrain, the MAX Light Rail moves less people than the RapidBus

as a local who is both an appreciator and a critic of portland transit I am fascinated by the role it plays in transit discourse outside the city. the consensus view here among advocates is that the MAX is doing badly and we need to make it more like skytrain

REALLY Important additional context, I've been aggressively advocating for all kinds of streetcar and Finch West improvements with some others over the last several months (and years) and think I played a serious role in getting this stuff on the map. But that only does so much!

Transit isn't only about speed, for sure, but if I can walk or cycle faster than a train (especially one dubbed as "rapid transit") there's a problem.

A huge market!

I had so many discussions over the years where people said "it's fine if lines like Finch aren't very fast, transit isn't only about speed!"

There’s a pretty obvious class dimension in how a whole generation of planners and politicians didn’t think “being able to get to work faster“ was a priority in transit projects

Especially because if you have decent urban cycling infrastructure thats also a big slice of the useful range of a tram gone.

Une lettre d’opinion importante de @rmtransit.bsky.social dans The Star sur l’importance d’avoir du transport en commun efficace dans des métropoles étendues comme Toronto ou Montréal, voire même des lignes en diagonales qui ne suivent pas la grille de rues. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont... #polmtl

The thumbnail photo highlights something important. We used to build subways affordably, but thats because even in the most affluent neighborhood in the city they were aboveground where it was workable!

The Finch LRT will hopefully force Toronto to reckon with two things: that street based transit will *almost* never compete with driving (especially in the burbs) and that people really care about speed. My new piece in the Toronto Star highlights that and makes the case for subways and railways.

Decision makers need to be transparent about the site selection process for major sites like hospitals, and full priority needs to be given to place them on the core transit network.

Good article, I just wish you had a "quick to the point" summary at the beginning of the blog post, kinda like what you're doing in this bsky post. Also, if you wanted a call to action, you can include this link to email all council members: www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regional-...

Waterloo Region priorities: Views of the forest > Good public transit connections One thing about North Americans is that we value the view/concept of nature over the actual sustainable practices & infrastructure that conserve the very nature we love.