august 🍂

glad to be one of the half a million people who voted for four more years of woke gotham. god bless toronto, the best city on earth

election's today! the transit file: bradford promising 1000 cops, fare refunds for >15 min delays, while removing bus lanes that reduce delays in the first place 🤨 olivia's leading promise is 10/week fare capping. her record: installing more transit lanes than any mayor, building the scarb busway

entirely within her term, securing funding for the waterfront east streetcar, new subway cars, finally bringing effective transit signal priority to toronto for the first time, and raising service levels while investing in fare affordability. it's pretty clear who's more positive for transit.

took some end-to-end trips on the finch west LRT recently to see if signal priority and other improvements have been having an impact on trip times and red light delays trip 1 (video): 36 minutes trip 2: 37 minutes trip 3: 39 minutes decent improvement!

trains do not hit red lights as frequently as before. the reduction of overall trip times is quite great, it's nice to see progress made. phase rotation has been put in place at several intersections along finch. supposedly TSP work will be "complete" by year-end.

vancouver elects an overwhelmingly progressive council and mayor, and a week later BC elects its first conservative government in forever. can't have good things. bad news for housing, queer rights, indigenous rights, & potentially transit + biking. they'll cozy up to alberta's pipeline plans, too.

great when both sides of the political aisle can agree that fast, frequent rail is a universal good and there should be more of it where justified by ridership. plugging @fernkhahn.com's columbia rebuild concept that would allow full expo line service into surrey, making a newton branch feasible:

i'm sure parents who exhibit transphobia or homophobia aren't considered "traumatizing" or "abusive" by these authors who might want to distinguish "justified" estrangement. the development of this narrative isn't coincidental, at the same time as governments are attacking trans youth worldwide.

here's a prime example in scarborough centre of a high-polling candidate, ganesh uthish, who has a progressive-coded platform (better tenant protections, youth supports, food programs, etc). but anti-bus lane. many suburban candidates view transit users as an expendable constituency against drivers

the kennedy bus lanes were going away regardless with the opening of the busway. but there's a lot in here that demonstrates this candidate doesn't understand transportation - pure nonsense about express buses, and falling for the fallacy of peak only bus lanes easing congestion

peak-only bus lanes are such a spiteful concession to drivers. proponents say lower off-peak traffic volumes do not justify a transit lane. but logically that also means that car drivers don't really need that additional lane outside of rush hour either, since traffic is moving better then. so??

there's plenty of toronto political candidates running on this "balanced solution" of converting all-day transit lanes to be peak only. it's not based on any real outcomes, rather a political choice to coddle the feelings of drivers over road space at the expense of transit users

it's always surprising to me the number of liberal, democrat-leaning americans that adopt right-wing talking points and misinformation when it comes to canadian healthcare

i get medication and free healthcare in other provinces just by showing my card. pharmacare needs funding to expand but drugs in general are much cheaper here than in the US. MAiD has nuance to it, but the overblown vilification of the program has been developed over many years by conservatives.

watched a news clip about how the salmon run in ontario is doing amid climate change impacts, and half the comment section is finding a way to blame this on immigration. canadian racism is reaching some nonsensical levels

see also: ottawa raised single fares by some ~40 cents, eliminated its youth pass & discounts in the last 3 years. riders lose sight of any value of transit with worsening service and higher fares. people will find other options. suddenly a group ride-hail seems like good value as fares creep up...

arepa night 🧑‍🍳

there's something fun about stuffing balls of cornmeal with copious amounts of fresh cheese, rolling it up, and just frying that shit till it's golden. takes me back

if you've ever wondered what a map of toronto would look like if it were a city in the united states. the western arm of line 1 would've probably looked similar to the chicago blue/red line towards the city

the position of the new provincial government in quebec on high speed rail feels insignificant given that this government's term will probably end long before shovels even hit the ground; studies can begin regardless where possible until then high speed rail will outlast this blip of politics