Bike Walk Bus Toronto

Last week, I took a small trip to Glen Williams, in Halton Hills. To get there, I got off at Georgetown GO, on the Kitchener Line, a station I had only used once prior. I found the station layout confusing, and found that the station was functionally lacking. As such, I was inspired to rank every GO station. In total, I will be ranking the 69 GO stations, 67 of which I have used, from worst to best, across a few parts. I will not be ranking London, St Marys, and Stratford, since they operate only as part of a pilot service which is ending soon anyways. My ranking will be subjective, and there isn't a specific scoring system, but I will consider connections, walkability, and functionality principally. While GO train service will be considered, limited train services does not immediately mean a station is bad, especially if there are good GO bus connections. Additionally, I will shoutout a café that I like within walking distance, as applies. This post will focus on the worst nine s...

 I have talked about this regularly in past posts, but I hate when people visit another city, come back to Toronto, and say "oh, Toronto sucks!" I don't disagree that Toronto has many, very serious issues, but takes like this lean into what I like to call 'tourist vision'. You view Toronto negatively because you experience the short falls across the city, especially since you probably have to experience a commute. You view other cities positively because you are only seeing the curated image that the city puts on. If you spend all your time in Le Plateau, of course you will see Montreal only positively. You never have to experience a commute from Pointe-aux-Trembles to West Island, so you don't care to give those negatives space. The REV along St-Denis. While Montreal has had a lot of success with their pedestrian- and cyclist-first policies, uneven distribution of safe infrastructures across the city create a gradient of what parts of the city are more import...

With the recent service changes this past Sunday, TTC's seasonal service offerings are the largest they have been in many decades. In accordance with this, TTC has also introduced new branding to reflect seasonal routes: all are now numbered in the 200-series, with pink being the colour chosen to represent them. Having taken all four routes, I decided I wanted to give some of my thoughts on the routes, and how they can be made even better. While thinking this post through, I realized that the seasonal routes speak to a significant challenge that Toronto has had for many years. In this blog post, I will be providing my thoughts on the branding, each of the four routes, offer further suggestions for new seasonal services, and some comments on the broader implications of providing service 'seasonally.' The Branding As mentioned, the seasonal routes were all numbered in the 200-series, and are identified with a pink icon on stops, signage, and maps. I think this was a good idea...

 Hello! This blog post is a small break from my recent series about Montreal. It had been a bit since I visited the Waterloo Region, and since my last visit, the city has gotten Neuron-branded e-bikes and e-scooters. Since I had a coupon for Neuron, and the LRT was down through downtown Kitchener, I figured now would be a good time to try out an e-scooter. As well, because I regularly use BikeShare in Toronto and Bixi in Montreal, I would be able to compare the micromobility systems. Having taken my first ride on Neuron, from Laurier--Waterloo Park LRT Station to Charles Street Bus Terminal, I can say that I really did not enjoy the system. The focus on technology over functionality, and the overpolicing of mobility outside of cars makes the system unenjoyable, and quite the hassle to use.  In this blog post, I will outline some of my problems with the e-scooters, and offer suggestions on how to make micro-mobility work in Waterloo Region. Apologies for the portrait photos, as...

This is the second in a multi-part series where I reflect on my time that I spent in Montreal recently. There are few better symbols for the city of Montreal than an orange traffic cone. It does not matter where in the city you are, there are cones signifying construction right nearby. Some cones have even been around for sixteen years ! While the city's chamber of commerce hopes to see cone usage and construction delays reduced , summer being a season of construction is something that will stick around forever.  While every Canadian city has a construction season opposite their winter, Montreal's season is extremely disruptive. In this blog post, I will talk about some of the good about how the city mitigates construction-related issues, and some of the bad. The Good One thing that Montreal does really well is ensuring that any closures leave space for all road users. If a road has a bike lane, orange cones will mark out a rerouted bike path. If the sidewalk is blocked, then t...

  This is the first in a multi-part series where I reflect on my time that I spent in Montreal recently. I'm going to start by saying this, which I had said before: transit in Montreal is not  better than transit in Toronto. Yes, the Montreal Metro is better than the TTC subway, but the EXO regional rail network and the STM's bus services are, overall, not good. While I held that view prior to my most recent visit in Montreal, making the point of taking a wide variety of routes opened my eyes to just how many issues there really with the bus network in particular in the city. In this blog post, I will outline some of my reasons as to why Montreal's bus network is significantly lacking, and why it fails to live up to Toronto's. The reasons are as follows: Issues with frequency, span, and poor management; Incomplete network: dead-end routes and weird terminal points; Incomplete network: too peak-oriented; and Wasting of buses. This piece is a bit technical in nature, but ...

 If there's one thing to note about STM, it's that they rarely change routes. While there has been lots of growth in Montreal in the past decade, and travel patterns have quickly changed, there has been only one major reorganization in that time frame. So when STM announced that they were planning a full network redesign, noting the openings of both REM and the Blue Line, there was hope that the network would be filled it. Not long however, though, progress was stalled.  Earlier this week, the sector redesign for Île-des-Soeurs was released, as the island's new REM has an imminent opening. I was excited, as there had been lots of public participation, and the simple layout of this sector should have made the task relatively straight-forward. However, reviewing the plan, I find it is way too complicated, and there will be lots of confusion on day one. If this was the product that the planners developed on such a simple sector, I'm very concerned about the rest of the net...