Let's make our cities better. More housing, more transit, more bikes, fewer cars.
@uoftengineering
alum working in renewable energy. Tweets are my opinion only!
I don’t normally make posts like this, but felt I had to make this one given the circumstances. Today, at 5:15pm, I boarded an UP Express train at Bloor station, because it was the fastest way to get downtown for a baseball game. I now realize that what I did… 🧵
was very unfair to passengers coming from the airport, as I used their special airport train for my non airport related travel.
I want to apologize and offer my praise to Metrolinx for the new UPX schedule, which will prevent nuisances like myself from taking up…
space that will be much better used from now on. I look forward to watching half the trains crawl through Bloor station at 10 km/h without stopping, knowing that those poor airport passengers won’t be burdened with my presence anymore.
Two small pedestrian areas were proposed for Kensington Market. Surveys showed overwhelming support generally (90%) and majority support (55%) from neighbourhood locals.
And so, naturally, the city is proposing to remove the pedestrian areas and do more consultation. Seriously.
Attended a planning meeting for my hometown of
#Barrie
tonight, regarding a proposal to turn 4 detached homes into 28 townhome units.
I was the only supportive voice after 2 hours of 20+ local neighbours speaking against it. Here's a short clip of my thoughts 👇
Most of Toronto had "decaying rust belt town" vibes in the late 20th century, and many of the people who recall it with deep reverence (while also lamenting anything new) do so because they were young back then, and being young is more fun than being old.
PSA: Toronto was uglier back in the day. You’re pining for a city that never existed. It was an ugly, boring, WASPy backwater with bad food and now it’s better.
Suburban councillors love to proclaim that people living on the edge of the city ✨deserve✨ to drive directly through more central neighbourhoods and into the core of the city without frustration or delay.
Here's a thought: maybe they don't deserve that.
Calgary has a dedicated transit street AND a fully pedestrian street right in the middle of their downtown. There’s no reason we couldn’t do something similar in Toronto.
@alexbozikovic
Becoming Paris would mean taking an area like this and having pretty much ALL of it become 6-8 storey apartment blocks.
We have single detached houses with front and backyards within a 15-minute walk of King and Bay…
Not just a miserable architectural exercise, but another blow to
#Toronto
's so-called Old Town neighbourhood, which at this point has pretty well been ruined by projects like this.
Why do we allow cars to even reach these speeds? The technology to prevent this is known: speed governors are already installed on big trucks and e-bikes.
There is literally 0 reason a vehicle on public roads ever needs to go 235km/h.
People sometimes point to the number of visible cranes as evidence that a city is building enough homes. This is very common in the GTA.
Out of curiosity, I compared the most recent RLB crane index to the number of housing units permitted in each city during the previous year.
People living in central neighbourhoods deserve slower speeds, safer roads and alternative transportation options. Those who want to drive through a neighbourhood to get somewhere (causing noise and air pollution along the way) should be prioritized AFTER those who live there.
Every online conversation I've been seeing recently about cyclists in High Park goes like this:
"Here are the facts and statistics showing how cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous to pedestrians than bikes"
"Okay, but I saw a spandex guy run a stop sign and it upset me"
The UP Express is such an effective transit option for people near Bloor and Weston stations, that it became the obvious choice over the TTC for anyone heading downtown.
Disappointing to see this. The response to heavy demand should be an increase in service, not cutbacks.
Starting late April: Every other UP Express train; one every 30 minutes, will be running express to and from Pearson Airport. UP Express trains will continue stopping at Bloor and Weston stations every 30 minutes. This is to allow airport travellers to use the service.
If you’re wondering where the patios are, city council killed many of them with bureaucracy just like affordable housing.
An outcome many feared when council passed over-the-top regulations for CafeTO.
Mike Harris' amalgamations were extremely effective at gerrymanding municipal politics in favour of conservatives. Toronto and Ottawa are now de-facto controlled by their outer suburbs. In Ottawa it's even more absurd, most of the city (by area) is literally farmland.
Looked at this
@BikeShareTO
placement again and thought, I’d be hella scared sometimes to use it because I’d have to step out into a live lane of traffic. It’s a busy street and the
#Ossington
63 bus travels frequently along here…Any Vision Zero feedback?
Tonight, TPS went to the most bike-friendly street in west end and targeted cyclists, ignoring traffic violations by cars
“well we were sent here to enforce the bikes disobeying the stop sign, not the cars"
This is absurd and pathetic
#BikeTO
Just travelled the same distance as Toronto to Montreal on a Spanish high speed train. Took less than 3 hours. Arrived at the station 30 mins before leaving, could have been 15 mins and easily still made it.
This is such a superior way to travel and it’s not close.
We don’t have a housing supply issue, we have an affordability issue.
Housing starts & completions are down because families CAN’T buy.
Build affordable housing and people will buy.
Start with restoring purchasing power to our currency.
There's nothing I hate more in municipal political discourse than the idea that those damaging and disrupting a place while taking their large metal box from A to B should be coddled and prioritized over those who live in the areas they damage.
It's not like the High Park situation, no "lycra bros" are doing loops of Shaw. These are people just trying to get from A to B without being mowed down by an SUV
Ticketing the tamest cyclists in the city, on the calmest corridor
Any remaining façade of reason is crumbling
Interesting discussion in the newsroom about what are the boundaries of downtown Toronto. Quite a range of views, it turns out. City staff make it Bathurst to Don and lake to roughly Dupont. What are your boundaries?
While the intention was to provide a faster option for people travelling between Union and Pearson, I’ve heard riders’ concerns about servicing Weston and Bloor stations along the UP Express line.
I’ve directed Metrolinx to not proceed with these changes.
Hey
@IKEACanada
why are you only offering this benefit to people driving to your downtown location? Round trip fare on the TTC would also be about $7.
It's not very sustainable or equitable to give discounts to people driving and nothing to people taking transit.
Housing isn’t illegal to build, you just have to go through an expensive, uncertain, labyrinthine process to earn your bespoke exception to the multiple laws we wrote specifically to forbid anything larger than a two story detached house. Try to be honest next time, YIMBros 👍
My father-in-law is a TTC operator. He is insanely gifted. We were looking at European tram together years ago and I asked him what it would cost to give it signal priority in Toronto. I will never forget his answer… 'We can’t, we don’t know how to do it.'
An example of how to implement a "zero-delay" approach to transit priority. This tram section is Zurich has an 80m queue-jump lane before a major intersection. Traffic lights upstream are regulated to keep the cars queue below 13 vehicles, ie the length of the queue-jump lane.
Among the reasons for removing the pedestrian areas:
- shops will not be able to operate
- gentrification
- noise, litter, traffic and "other issues"
I guess pedestrians hate shops, and the confused SUV drivers on Augusta are helping reduce noise, traffic and gentrification.
Going after Shaw makes a lot of sense, provided your goal is to specifically single out cyclists and ticket them for existing
Parking a cruiser at the one part of Shaw that only lets bikes through... they're not even being subtle about it
Toronto’s downtown streets were completely broken yesterday. People stuck in cars for hours and barely moving. Only sensible option was to declare bankruptcy, get out, and walk or cycle. That’s what we did.
#TOpoli
The more I pay attention to Toronto politics, the more I learn that a dimly lit hall with a small number of mostly white & elderly local residents is where everything good goes to die
A friend showed me this picture today, from
@CityKitchener
. Being so deep in the Toronto bubble, I had no idea they'd approved 10km of cycling improvements through downtown, including 2.8km of fully separated, protected lanes. Look at this! 😍
One the one hand, Olivia Chow has a decades-long track record of pushing for progressive policy at multiple levels of government.
But on the other hand, she was in the same room as John Tory a few days ago. Can she really be trusted anymore?
I love it when the city ignores the support of 1,400+ people (including 68 who actually live in the area) in favour of 35 very unsupportive people. Local democracy in action!
Democracy is when the smaller number of people get their way, right?
Consultations for yongeTOmorrow (public realm improvement project for Yonge St) began in 2018. After 3 years of consultation, 2 years of design and 2-3 years of construction, it is scheduled to be done by 2027 or 2028.
Since so many people seemed to enjoy the Mexico City pictures I posted yesterday, here’s four more I took while walking around Roma Norte. The city is a beautiful place with an incredible energy.
I think the pedestrian experience in Toronto could be improved a decent amount if we banned right turns on red like other cities do (ie. Montreal). It's stressful having to constantly watch for a right turning car blasting through while you cross.
If you think cyclists on Shaw are a threat to public safety worthy of a Toronto Police ticketing blitz, I'll have whatever you're smoking
At least that way I can fill my head with nonsense and not have to think about the absurd reality of life anymore
please join me at the northeast corner of sherbourne & front as we pour out a litre of regular unleaded in commemoration of the gas station we lost for this neighbourhood-ruining condo 🫡
I know these things sometimes come across as being too negative about something that's an overall good, but why can't we have just a few small streets in this city that are car free?
Even at the excellent new Mirvish Village site, cars can drive right through the middle of it.
First speaker at the consultation for 1425 Bloor St W, from the local resident's association: "the height is higher than residents want to see."
As a nearby resident, I disagree.
I’m seeing a lot of doom and gloom about the Gardiner, but not a lot of discussion on why the uploading is so bad. Because it will get built? Toronto was already building it! It was an astoundingly large item in the capital budget. What was lost here?
A bunch of the American YIMBYs are dunking on this tweet, and I agree it’s using over-the-top reactionary language: “ruin a country”, “obliterated social cohesion”.
But I also think those dunking haven’t been paying much attention to the specifics of our population growth here
There are 3 types of Toronto urbanist: Osgoode Hall tree defender, Ontario Line construction booster, and Fence-Sitter using vague and snarky posts to position themselves as smarter than the other two.
These are all the types. I will not be taking suggestions. Thank you.
- create a housing task force
- they give you 50 recommendations
- "whew these look kinda hard actually"
- toss a couple softball changes into a bill or two
- jobdone.jpg
- spend the next year sorting out corrupt deals to make your boys even more rich af
a doug ford masterclass
A bunch of business owners in Kensington Market are making heartfelt pleas to community council today, to keep their neighbourhood... *checks notes* ...like this. At all times. Cool.
So now, while the streetscape will be improved with pavers and widened sidewalks, the pedestrian areas have been removed and a "pedestrianisation pilot" will take place in 2024, along with another round of consultations. Because the previous rounds weren't enough, of course.
Calling out a politician's record is fine, if factual and accurate. Bradford deserves to be dragged for his bad votes.
I just wish we had a progressive candidate who can actually challenge him on broad housing policy. Developers bad, 100% affordable, no-math-just-vibes ain't it.
Hey
@DenzilMW
I've lived in Don Valley East. The reason "no one" bikes in your ward is because choosing to do so is tantamount to choosing death. People still do, of course, but only the ones brave enough to mix with cars going 80 kph on 6 lane roads.
left: thinking about the 5 customers a day who drive to Kensington Market and complain about parking
right: thinking about the 200 customers a day who walk or cycle
I am very good at business
"There’s also the physicality of a massive tower going in next to a house"
"It's like a village"
“It’s neighbourhood busting"
"They are keenly aware that they will be called NIMBYs"
@globeandmail
Love when NIMBYs point to successful opposition of highway projects in the 1960's as some sort of vindication of the position. You're opposing apartment buildings during a housing crisis, Craig. Let's try not to mix that up with urban freeways 50 years ago, ok?
Anyway, it seems to me that the number of cranes in Toronto is a big outlier and isn't really representative of the overall number of homes being built. I'm not an expert, but it seems to be a quirk of our construction industry. We really like our cranes.
Based on this tweet, I added a few more cities to the list. Vancouver follows Toronto's pattern. Texas cities win in overall unit count, but a ton of it is sprawl. In general, there's basically no pattern between cranes and new housing.
Reddit threads about housing in Toronto are exhausting. The most upvoted comments always involve some combo of:
- Tax flippers/speculators
- Tax corporate buyers
- Ban foreign buyers
- End blind bidding
Then the comment "What about building more houses?" gets downvoted.
So while I still detest the Gardiner with every fiber of my being, getting it off the city’s books and into the province’s books (where it belongs) is still positive. Our fantasies of tear down were, unfortunately, just that. Fantasies. At least for now.
Memo to Pierre Poilievre - you need to re-do your housing hell video in light of Economist magazine finding that the most livable and cheapest cities in North America are in Canada!
#factsMatter
#cdnpoli
@CanadianGreens
Here's almost all of council ignoring a very basic mathematical fact: despite Toronto's "fast growing" [citation needed] the areas around Toronto are growing much faster. That's the only reason Toronto is losing a riding.
Allow more growth and this won't be an issue.
Toronto is the largest & most diverse city in Canada, facing challenges that require strong representation at all levels of government.
I signed a letter with my City Council colleagues opposing the Federal electoral district redistribution that eliminates one Toronto riding.
Councillor Lily Cheng says the difference between fare evasion and getting a parking ticket is a question of intent. People choose not to pay their fares, but with parking tickets maybe they just ran out of time on the meter.
Latest environmental buzzword is '15-minute cities', meaning: 'A residential urban concept in which most daily necessities & services, such as work, shopping, education, health & leisure, are within an easily reachable 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city.'
The province always had final say over what would happen with our cursed concrete scar. But now, finally, the 905 car commuters have to help foot the bill, as they should.
Really cool how the Alberta government is buying full wrap TTC streetcar ads to promote their clean energy alarmism/soft-misinformation campaign. Do one for the Alberta Pension Plan next!
I made this because it's tiresome when journalists, politicians and housing "experts" trot out the semi-annual crane index as if it says something meaningful about overall housing supply in a given city. Hopefully this is more of a concrete (hah) demonstration of why it doesn't.