@how-sen.com
Toronto urban environmentalist. 20+ years in climate activism. From Etobicoke. ADHDer. Fancy degrees from McGill and Yale. Posts my own. Energy and transit should be free. Cars should be an option, not a necessity. https://how-sen.com/link
We have a great opportunity here.
And the way to get there isn’t just to put good use to this building: It’s also to turn the entire area around Old and New City Hall into a pedestrian-first area.
Oil and gas companies fuel climate change.
Oil and gas companies fuel conflicts.
Oil and gas companies fuel imperialism.
Oil and gas companies fuel anti-science misinformation.
Oil and gas companies fuel civil strife.
It’s time to get off fuel and gather and store electrons instead.
Totally agree.
But it won’t get there if Bay St continues to prioritize fast-moving cars.
We have an opportunity to make one continuous plaza between Old City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square.
We should take it.
We need transit signal priority.
But transit signal priority is not effective against drivers who don’t respect traffic lights.
The benefit of the co-op model is that it automatically organizes a base for continued advocacy. Something that a pure government or market system doesn’t do.
So let me get this straight… we live in a world where one of the key sources of energy enrich dictatorships, burn our climate… and when there’s a global conflict, the privately-owned oil and gas corporations get *richer*?
If only there was a source of free ‘fuel’ that’s received by almost everyone…
The Bay du Nord oil and gas platform is situated *outside* Canada’s territorial waters.
So instead of shutting it down, the federal government will be covering the fines… which could be up to $1 billion.
And way more people would be able to use that carway if it was instead cleared for more buses.
It’s almost as if they’re just making up different ways to dismiss cyclists.
Schrödinger’s Cyclist:
“Rich” and “entitled”.
Yet somehow also “too poor to own a car”.
Just as weather is getting less predictable and more severe, Environment Canada is shutting down a vital weather service — notably as Ottawa is cutting budgets to essentially every budget but the military.
youtu.be/zqu4Nauyx3k
Rising global carbon dioxide levels can now be detected in human blood.
Governments continue to let oil and gas companies poison their constituents even as fuel-free energy like wind, solar, and battery storage has become the cheapest form of generating power in human history.
Emergency sirens are loud enough to physically damage hearing… and they’re only that loud because private cars are both (a) insulated from outside noise and (b) always blocking the way.
Toronto, like other places around the world, is facing more and more extreme weather events as oil and gas companies continue to burn up our climate.
Perhaps this is a model that could be used to employ more people for other types of climate-related emergency events as well.
The program is interesting because planning and budgeting for snow emergencies is difficult. Already there are quite a few years where Toronto doesn’t use up its full snow clearing budget (though that probably won’t be this year).
Today I learned that New York City has a program that pays everyday New Yorkers to shovel snow during snow emergencies.
Funnily enough, I first learned about it from a right wing rage-farming account claiming Mandani wants your ID (you need ID to get paid by NYC).
www.nyc.gov/site/dsny/ca...
We all know that phone and online scam calls are everywhere. It turns out that many of those working in scam camps have been kidnapped and tortured, lured into the middle of nowhere by fake job offers.
(Source: Deutshe Welle, Germany’s public broadcaster)
Absolutely true.
And Toronto may be too big to be able to discern the kinds of data signals they’re finding in Merrimack Valley.
But it does speak to the benefits free transit would have for many people outside of cost savings.
When the Merrimack Valley Transit Regional Transit Authority ran fare-free buses, they found savings like reduced farebox maintenance, significantly reduced rider complaints.
They also found evidence that more people were going to school, to medical appointments, and to local businesses.
Toronto’s climate plan calls for transit to be free to use by 2040.
Public transit routes that are free have a whole slew of benefits, including reduced policing costs, faster vehicles due to reduced loading times, and reduced violence against transit workers.
Here’s @toenviro.bsky.social’s assessment of the City of Toronto’s 2026 Budget: A lot of good things… with some more things we need.
“…for a long time it wasn’t crazy for Toronto, like Chicago, to have a radial rail network (designed mostly for trips downtown) fed by buses that followed the arterial grid.
But it’s crazy now.”
What causes rush hour traffic?
During rush hour:
1) The average public transit vehicle holds the most number of people it will see in a typical week.
and…
2) The average car will hold the least.
(not counting any of the 95% of its lifespan it’s parked and empty)
The Olympics are opening!
I visited Milan for the first time last year so it’s a good time to repost many of the interesting things I saw and experienced while I was there.
Subway ad encouraging people to take a ‘train ride’ to Vaughan.
There are a lot of challenges with Toronto’s transit systems. But the fact that this ad even exists is something I could never have imagined as a kid here in the 90s.
Relevant:
Here’s my cynical question about all this:
How much longer would this have gone if they hadn’t conspired to murder a corrections officer?
#topoli
This is great news!
Fantastic review of the science behind the snowstorm that just hammered Toronto.
"As counterintuitive as it seems, the record-breaking snowfall in Toronto is in line with what we'd expect from these kinds of conditions and this setup in a warmer world.”
#topoli
Snowy winter days in a city like #Toronto are interesting because they show how well a city can function when car lanes are reduced, turning restrictions appear, and street parking disappears.