Bike Walk Bus Toronto

A few weeks ago, I went to Uxbridge. I made my way there by catching GO Transit's 70D bus from Mount Joy Station. This 33-kilometre route is a midday train-meet service to Stouffville, Goodwood, and Uxbridge. I assumed most of the ridership was to Stouffville, with a few stragglers like me going the whole way to Uxbridge. While this was mostly true, there were a few passengers that took me by surprise. One passenger asked me for assistance, as she was destined for Ballantrae, a relatively rural community. Since the bus turned off Highway 48, she had to Uber the rest of the way. In Stouffville, we picked up a man from a plaza. He travelled quite a bit, and then went up to speak to the driver. The driver let him alight on Highway 47 at Concession Road 2, just before Goodwood. I thought this was peculiar: there's no scheduled stop here, and, as you can see below, not very much in the vicinity. We pressed on, and passed Goodwood. At Concession Road 4, we pulled to the side of the h...

 Hey everyone! Early this week, TTC began their consultation period for some of their proposed changes for 2023. While this doesn't include every potential change, these tend to be bigger items. In this piece, I will provide some initial thoughts about them. Spoiler: they are... peculiar! Changes related Line 3 Scarborough RT Shutdown Towards the end of 2023, the TTC will have to shut down the RT. I won't bring my thoughts into this here, because they are extensive, but overall the TTC has had its hand tied in this issue. The initial plan approved by the board will extend a number of routes from Scarborough Centre to Kennedy, via Kennedy and Midland in opposite directions. Once the RT tracks are ripped out, it will be replaced by a busway. These changes proposed have the goal of bringing more isolated parts of Scarborough, like Malvern, Armadale, and Morningside Heights closer to either the subway or GO train by extending some routes. I will first show the changes I strongly ap...

 The TTC has long struggled with how to manage construction and other events along routes. There are pronounced issues of lack of proper communication between management and the public, as well as with operators, but there are also issues with how they are planned. In this short piece, I will speak to how TTC has failed to properly adjust service to meet temporary challenges, and how it can be improved. Example 1: 36 Finch West during the culvert washout, 2005 In 2005, Finch over the Black Creek, was washed out during a rain storm. As repairs would take months, the TTC devised a plan for temporary service in the area. The 36 Finch West route detoured off of Finch via Driftwood, Grandravine and Sentinel, shown in the map below with the red line. They also began a short local service, shown in purple, that connected customers closer to the washout to local shopping centers and other services. What this plan showed was that TTC was willing to find a way to service isolated areas when ...

I love Ottawa. Sure, it gets a reputation of being a boring city, but it's where my family is from so I love visiting. Every time I do visit, I make sure to spend some time exploring, and learning about places throughout. Obviously, I do not drive this, and taking transit everywhere in Ottawa is... difficult at best.  In this piece, I will argue that Ottawa's development pattern has had, and will have, significant impact on transit planning and transit operations for decades to come. Decisions made back in the 1940s and 1950s have made mobility in Ottawa incredibly difficult. Past literature has focussed on the obvious of car-centric mobility; this will be more specific to the unique Ottawa case. Understanding Ottawa I assume most people reading this have little-to-no understanding of Ottawa. So, for the sake of this article, I have very-roughly divided the city as seen below. In green, is Centretown, as well as some of the older streetcar suburbs, like Vanier and Hintonburg. C...

Hey pals! Many people spend their shopping days out at the Toronto Premium Outlets, located just off Highway 401 near Trafalgar Road. The allure of an outdoor mall and the possibility of deals makes it a worthwhile destination. I have never been, however, and I am a hater of this mall. In this piece, I will explain why the Toronto Premium Outlets should not have been built, and why the municipality of Halton Hills acted with malice by approving it. Shocker, it will focus on transportation. The Context The Toronto Premium Outlets opened August 1st, 2013, to a bunch of fanfare. This was the first mall of this style in southern Ontario, and many equated it to many American outlet malls. This was not quite the case, but every weekend, people head there for some shopping.  It doesn't take long to find webpages speaking about  issues with traffic and parking at the mall . In fact, there is a huge sector of parking dedicated just for employees, which is a key focus of this article. T...

Yesterday, President of the Blue Jays, Mark Shapiro, penned a letter to mayor John Tory asking them to end the ActiveTO road closures on Lake Shore West. He cited the fact that many fans heading to games at the Rogers Centre 'do not have options' for getting to the stadium, and that cyclists and pedestrians have plenty of options other than Lake Shore West. I won't like the letter, but because it's pitiful. While this piece will go more in-depth as to why Shapiro is wrong, and why Tory is wrong for even giving his suggestion considerations, I will start with two basic themes that refute Shapiro's above points: There is a difference between 'having no option' but to drive, and 'not exercising your options'; The assertion that there is plentiful space for cycling in the city proves how out of touch Shapiro is with the city he supposedly serves (he's an American transplant, I expect no less, but still). The Rogers Centre. I wonder what those tracks ...

 Hey besties!  As many of you know, I spent the week in Montreal. This is the first of two posts that explore some observations I made on my trip. On my trip, I took the 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu route from de l'Acadie to Station Côte-Vertu. This trip was slow, overcrowded, and was far from an acceptable service. This blog will speak about some of the issues with the route, what STM plans to do to improve service, and why I think this plan is lacking. Current 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu map, courtesy of Moovit. The Issues The big issue at hand, quite simply, is the route is obscenely busy. Despite headways of up to every six minutes during peaks, buses are regularly packed. This 121 is: The furthest north route connecting the east and west sides of Ligne Orange; Lined with high-density housing and important shopping destinations; The most frequent service west of Décarie. On my specific trip, I noted a few things. Firstly, the headway is assuming that all buses are articulated, 60-foot ve...

 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...