Bike Walk Bus Toronto

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...

Hey everyone! Politicians love flashy projects. If there's an opportunity for a photo op, they will be there. However, this obsession with capital projects instead of operations and maintenance leads to big facilities that are criminally underused (if you're interested in the topic of maintenance of urban systems, I recommend reading A City is not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences by Shannon Mattern). Ontario is ground-zero for this projects: huge infrastructure that is seldom used. I argue that York Region is a particularly bad example of this relationship. As they say, every decision is made in York Region, and this political clout has led to a huge amount of money allocated for physical infrastructures and little for actually making them work. As construction on the Yonge North Subway Extension to Richmond Hill Centre is set to begin, I argue that York Region is not deserving of this. Using examples of the subway extension to Vaughan, as well as the new Cornell Terminal,...

 Hey guys! A lot of transit discussion in Toronto is on the busiest routes. They are regularly delayed, not frequent enough, and serve a large number of people. I brought this up in my last blog post, related to bus lanes. Little discussion occurs concerning low-ridership routes.  For the sake of argument, a threshold of 1,000 riders a day or less will be used. According to the most recent TTC ridership statistics , from 2018, seven routes qualify. An additional two routes are recent additions since then, and surely carry less than the threshold. As such, we will work with a total of nine routes. In preparation for this piece, I took eight of the nine routes, mapped below. The remaining route will be discussed further in depth later. Please note, none of the routes are in Etobicoke or Scarborough. I will speak to each route individually in the order I took them in, and then provide some conclusions about what should be done about these routes to improve their performance. 93 P...

  Hey pals! Today we are looking at one of the busiest bus routes in the city, the 35 Jane! This route operates with two branches: 35A Jane: Jane Stn to Pioneer Village Stn 35B Jane: Jane Stn to Pioneer Village Stn via Hullmar In addition, the 35A branch is duplicated entirely by the 935 Jane Express route. Let's get into it! The Route The two branches of the 35 are not all that different: they diverge north of Finch and rejoin at Steeles. 35A buses leave Jane Station via Armadale and Bloor, before heading north on Bloor. For short sections, the route is supplemented by the 26 Dupont and 55 Warren Park routes. Jane is lined with dense, single-family homes until around Woolner, where there are high-rise apartments. A mix of high-rises and single-family homes continue until Lambton Avenue, when the route passes through the Eglinton Flats. The single-family homes resume around Weston. After crossing the railway tracks, Jane becomes much more high-density. There are a number of apartme...

  Hey guys! Today's route is the 29 Dufferin, which operates with two branches: 29A Dufferin: Wilson Stn to Exhibition (Dufferin Gate) 29C Dufferin: Wilson Stn to Exhibition (Princes' Gate) There is also the 929 Dufferin Express service, which operates during weekday daytimes and early evening. It offers limited stops, and duplicates the 29A... mainly. Sometimes it duplicates the 29C when construction limits access to Dufferin Gate Loop, like what will happen in January. This route is notorious for delays and being very busy, which has led it to being described at 'Sufferin on the Dufferin.' It is really hard to argue with this statement. The Route All 29 Dufferin buses depart the upper level of Wilson Station via west on Wilson and south on Dufferin. The stretch of Dufferin until Lawrence is a mix of industry, big-box stores, single-family homes, and Yorkdale Shopping Mall. Personally, this is one of my least favourite places to walk in the city. South of Lawrence, the...