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Transit Toronto’s YouTube Channel Is Moving

James Bow has announced that the YouTube channel associated with the Transit Toronto website is moving to a new home. He asks that all subscribers migrate to it so that the new channel’s numbers will climb to a level ensuring YouTube revenue which is key to supporting the site.

The new channel is called Transit Toronto Main Channel with the handle @Transit-Toronto-Main. Content from the old channel will gradually migrate to the new home.

Transit Toronto contains a wealth of historic images and articles as well as current news. It’s well worth visiting and subscribing to the channel.

8 thoughts on “Transit Toronto’s YouTube Channel Is Moving”

  1. If you haven’t visited the website, well you should check it out.

    I find the “Route Histories” to be of particular use when trying to understand how and why a bus route is the way it is.

    Of course there’s lots more in the way of history and pictures. Definitely worth a visit to familiarize yourself with what’s on offer.

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  3. Never heard of James Bow or his channel. When it comes to Toronto transit, RMTransit by Reece Martin is your best option. Reece Martin knows more about transit than anyone else in Toronto, my hats off to him.

    Steve: Reece Martin goes off on tangents from time to time. That’s all I will say.

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  4. Reece and I have chatted a few times. I’m a subscriber of his channel and we’re Facebook friends. I’m happy to see his channel doing well. I don’t think this should be a case of either-or partisanship, however.

    For one thing, you’d be missing out on a whole heck of a lot of classic TTC footage from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

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  5. The fact that Steve Munro does NOT run a YouTube channel yet has “followers” and could be considered an “influencer” suggests that not everyone wants to watch YouTube videos. I certainly don’t watch online videos, YouTube, TikTok, whatever. I prefer text and pictures, kind of like Steve and the Transit Toronto website provide.

    On Transit Toronto’s website, I can e.g. check out the route history for 80 Queensway (went to Long Branch, went along Valermo (probably for the school that was there)) in a few minutes of reading. I have no idea how long a YouTube dissertation might take, assuming this YouTube genius knows anything about it. I suspect much longer, as part of the “influence”, that gets “creators” paid, is how long they keep the audience watching, no?

    The fact that the person shilling for this YouTube channel has taken the name of a convicted (and in my eyes disgraced) police officer certainly does not influence me to go there.

    Steve: It’s a complicated situation. There was a time when there was a battle royal on what was then called Twitter between my followers and Reece’s after he posted a piece with several historical errors. I was there and corrected some statements that had the ring more of surmise than research. Reece has improved over the years, and I don’t want to set off an us-and-them tiff again.

    As for video generally, I know that it is considered the medium of the current generation, but I also know from years of watching how the City Hall Press Gallery (among others) evolved, and the need for pictures and quick-moving on camera interviews became the norm. There’s a lot more production effort goes into those, and there is no room for detailed stories. It’s a different medium. The nature of what I’m covering does not lend itself to video treatment, and I stay with text, photos, charts, etc.

    As for comments left under pseudonyms, sorry I didn’t catch that one. I have fixed this.

    There are a few trolls who do that regularly, often with much more distasteful content, and I purge their “contributions” after saving an archival copy.

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  6. “Steve: Reece Martin goes off on tangents from time to time. That’s all I will say.”

    Sounds a lot like another transit advocate I know.

    Steve: Touché!

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  7. I was an early [Reece Martin] viewer and saw many factual errors and his answer was always “build a subway” with no consideration on what the ridership would be or the costs of various modes. Pointing out any inadequacies was not received well. Sure, he had some pretty moving pictures, but there was not a lot of substance about what it takes to make transit work. Particularly painful is his 2021 interview with Phil Verster, where he spends 20 minutes softballing every long-winded question.

    I like pretty pictures and I’m interested in transit, but I want substance and accuracy. Steve may be short on pretty pictures (unless you count those graphs), but there’s a lot of substance. He crunches the numbers, doesn’t just repeat what the powers that be say, and understands the players involved. Transit is a lot more than drawing lines on a map with crayons. Now, if some youngster were to partner with Steve and produce videos featuring Steve talking about key issues and have some nice video to go along with it, that’d be great. But I’d rather have substance than moving pictures.

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