august 🍂

Bluesky post from Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan: 1) E-bikes are a fun and eco-friendly way to get around, but higher-speed riders aren’t always following the rules—and that can put everyone at risk. Since 2023, there have been nearly twice as many e-bike fatalities as regular bike fatalities, even with fewer overall injuries.

Maddening to see such obfuscation from the author of a bill that will criminalize people biking while doing nothing to address unsafe driving.

The cause of the vast majority of deaths while biking or e-biking is drivers in CARS. If the Assemblymember truly cared about safety, she’d regulate cars.

(downtown and north york still better places but i dont always wanna go that far)

black and yellow "it's tea" bag held up in front of an underground crosstown station platform

line 5 has dramatically improved my access to midtown boba 🥰

*segment of guideway, not junction. this singular intersection is bookended by tunnel portals on either end, so no traffic interaction ever needed to happen if it were designed properly

it's a shame because, regardless of the signal priority situation (fix coming soon!), this junction at sunnybrook park could've just been at-grade at the south side of the road to avoid the intersection entirely.

one of biggest design blunders of this line.

$12 billion transit line that still gets caught at red lights. again, and again. even when the train is already waiting at the light, the left turn phase still goes first.

I rode the 510 for the first time in a while (College to Spadina Stn). The phase rotation was working at College & Spadina, but a streetcar still missed the green because it had to preform a stop-check-slow for the grand union. If the switch control system allowed, it could go through green nonstop.

most anti-bus lane advocates tend to be dishonest at worst, ignorant at best. in this case i think they're just dishonest, because this seems like a very obvious win for emergency vehicles

sprong

Councillor Bradford plans to introduce a motion at the next council meeting to add cops to every transit station.

This ain’t it, man.

The TTC has been getting safer over the past few years, and public perception is catching up.

i spent all summer organizing for dedicated transit lanes against typical toronto nimbys who claimed that "emergency vehicles would get stuck in traffic and more people would die"

anyways, here's real life:

selfie of august inside a light rail train

ttcmap.ca service alert on map: Line 5 Eglinton LRT No service from eglinton to don Valley (rip science centre) no service between don valley and eglinton stations while the maintainer fixes a mechanical problem. shuttle buses are running between don valley and eglinton

my luck streak with line 5 has run out, apparently there's a fire that's closed eglinton to science centre 🫩🔥💔

note how TTC communications (rightfully) makes it very clear that it's the maintainer's (private consortium) issue to fix, hah

oh sorry we dont have money to keep the science centre open or to staff hospitals but anyways here's my great idea to build a whole new landmass in lake ontario for the world's biggest casino and convention centre

what kind of donald trump ass idea is this 😭😭

girl you gon have to teach san jose about urban planning while ur there

students (including high school students) rallying against cuts to OSAP funding had to face a massive police response at queen's park today.

some students got beat up and arrested by the cops - just for fighting for their own access to education. doug ford's ontario 🫤

Me and friend holding signs ERROR 404 AFFORDABLE EDUCATION NOT FOUND invest IN STUDENTS NOT HIGHWAYS

They want us uneducated

Student Debt chained goose

Basket that says empty, thanks for

University of Waterloo student strike today, protesting with students across Ontario to OSAP cuts!

Begging all of u, especially non-students, to write/contact ur MPP, Post-Sec Minister Nolan Quinn, & Premier Ford. They need to hear that all of us care about education, & that students are our future

the answer is to be a suburban driver in an economically depressed city where there is more pavement and empty lots than city

the least congested north american cities per tomtom's report is wichita, tulsa, omaha, akron, cincinnati, etc.

incredibly sprawling cities where you have to travel further for most basic trips, and are hostile to non-car travel (which basically locks you into car-centric living)

this this this, is why i always roll my eyes at tomtom reports.

relatedly, the only reason canadian and mexican cities "have worse congestion" than their US counterparts is because canadian and mexican cities didn't absolutely ravage their urban areas with high speed grade-separated highways.

Vancouver tops Toronto, Halifax as Canada's most traffic-congested city Canada-wide, drivers only proceed an average of 8 kilometres in 15 minutes during the evening rush hour

This is your annual reminder to ignore the tomtom congestion index coverage because the methodology is car-brained.

"How far can I travel" is the wrong metric.

When things are closer together, you don't need to travel as far to get things done!

"How many things can I get to?" is the right metric

Whatever old city races there are (BEY plus whatever) will be fighting over small differences. The action *should be* in the suburbs where there are many bad councillors who need the boot and at least 2 good councillors who need defending.

“On the D1, the increase in costs to SEPTA are nearly as high as if every passenger had started evading the fare.”

anyways, another point to the lesson: don't install CBTC on a mixed-grade light rail line to begin with

the result is a SEPTA line that is only marginally faster than the bus. unlike line 6, this line is primarily off-street in nature, so results are a little better.

the author estimates ~21% higher operating costs to account for additional service hours to cover slower service.

this is a great read, and it has *a lot* of parallel to the situation here in toronto with line 6 finch west.

CBTC was installed on a SEPTA trolley previously operated LOS for "safety" with reduced speed zones at grade crossings, and it resulted in >40% longer trip times + higher operating costs

toronto when john tory drops out of politics, bradford loses (again) and is exiled from the city walls, daniel tate turns into a crusty gollum from years of ragefarming, and queen olivia chow ushers in a new century of woke 😍

closed off entrance to the line 2 subway at spadina. orange closure notice attached to a yellow gate by a staircase leading down

line 5 train at an underground platform

over the weekend, line 2 was shut down between st george and keele. after hopping off the 510 at spadina, i took line 1 up to cedarvale and line 5 to midtown instead.

was it faster than walking to st george & doing line 2+1? idk, but it was cold, i was tired, & it's nice to have network redundancy

this is no fault of LA metro, which opened their airport transit center last year, and are not responsible for either PPM project.

bus > K > bus is pretty rough. a direct shuttle bus from LAX to the stadium is better, which then connects the stadium to the K line to link to the rest of LA

blank white people mover trains and stations during testing

the LAX people mover has been delayed to late 2026 (which means it won't open for the mens world cup).

the inglewood people mover, which would've connected the K line to sofi stadium, is just a dream.

LA is about to become one of the worst cities for mobility this summer 🫤