Bike Walk Bus Toronto

 Happy Canada Day! I have previously wrote about seasonal routes  on my blog. TTC is not the only agency in the GTA to operate them, and Durham Region Transit implemented their three seasonal offerings. I had never taken the 100 Waterfront Shuttle, so I took a trip to the Pickering Waterfront today. I think that while providing transit here is commendable, Durham Region Transit's target customer for this service means that it will be underutilized and will not resolve the issues that they themselves identified at the waterfront. The Route Route 100 operates a loop route from Pickering Parkway Terminal to the intersection of Liverpool and Annland. At Pickering Parkway Terminal, passengers can connect to other DRT routes, including the 916, and may walk across the pedestrian bridge to reach Pickering GO Station. The route operates on weekends and holidays only, from 12pm to 9pm. Service is every 20 minutes, and is not timed with the GO train. The route does not charge a fare. Si...

In April 2025, GO Transit extended their route 15 to two geographies that it had never been to before: Six Nations of the Grand River and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This fulfilled a wish that both First Nations had long asked for, and has improved access to and from the first nation to nearby cities. On 17 May 2025, I took the new 15B route to Ohsweken, the largest population center in Six Nations both because I can, but also to understand the route from the ground. This blog post will act as a trip report for the 15B, as well as a general log for my observations taking this new route. Background Six Nations of the Grand River (SNGR) and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) are two adjacent reserves located southeast of Hamilton. SNGR is the largest reserve in Canada by population, with more than 27,000 members, more than 12,000 of which live on reserve. For many years, the two First Nations had been asking for transit service that would connect the reserves to ...

Recently, we have seen unprecedented levels of rainfall, causing dangerous and disruptive flooding. Impermeable surfaces are often cited as a reason why our cities flood. We also have answer for where  cities flood as well, because the land remembers.  There have been numerous recent examples where former environmental features have become present during a major flooding event. In Abbotsford, a flood in 2021 matched the location of Sumas Lake , which was drained in the 1920s for farmland. Just last week, a flood in West-Island revealed numerous filled waterways . Toronto is no exception to this rule: as you can see in the map below, Toronto had a significant number of waterways crisscross the City, with most filled in by 1949. Only the waterways in blue still exist. You can explore this map here . While many of these waterways really only make appearances during floods, one particular waterway influences geography in Toronto today: the Garrison Creek. Filled between 1920 and 1...

Yesterday, I decided to take a quick day trip up to Barrie, where I hadn't been in quite a while. The trip was my first experience of Barrie being a lively, fun city, and I think things are only looking up. In this blog post, I will take a look at some of Barrie's positives, and what they can improve upon to make the City that much better. The Good Good Geography Barrie is situated on Lake Simcoe's Kempenfelt Bay, and the City wraps cleanly around it. This helps the City's focus point be towards the water. Any city that has a downtown closely integrated with a major body of water is a city I want to go to. The presence of water allows for additional activities: Barrie has a beach, boating, and fishing, as well as an inflatable water park in the bay. I saw a pirate ship doing boat tours, and people actually catching fish, right downtown. Additionally, downtown's centrality in the City makes it close to every part of the City. Nowhere is truly 'far' from downt...

Recently, I was reading through Sean Marshall's attempt to visit every city hall in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, which included a blog post about his experience with on-demand transit. Despite using transit extensively, I had never found the need to use on-demand service. This, coupled with me realizing that I had never adventured to two of the twenty-six municipalities in the GTHA, inspired me to venture to some of the region's more rural locales, on public transit. I think my conclusions are similar to Sean's, but I have some more particular thoughts about the services I used. What is on-demand transit? On-demand transit is a catch-all term for all transit that does not operate on a traditional, fixed schedule. Passengers are required to use an app or call a number to order a vehicle, which is usually a car or van, but can sometimes be a regular bus. On-demand transit, also known as dial-a-bus, can take a number of different forms: Door-to-door, which can inclu...