For those of you who collect variants on the subway map, here is the version that was published as part of the report to the Commission last week.
Many people seem to come to this page innocently looking for the real subway map. It can be found on the TTC’s website.
January 2007 does not bring much in service changes beyond the return of streetcars to St. Clair west of the Spadina Subway. Buses will continue to run east to Yonge Street until, it is hoped, the middle of February.
The RT will continue to operate with buses on Sundays to allow testing of the new RT signal system. As a regular user of this line, I am looking forward to it actually working on those cold mid-winter days (which surely will be here eventually) when the old system regularly froze up.
There are several minor changes in running times and a few added trips here and there, but nothing major in improved service. Current expectations are that we won’t see anything significant until the fall when sufficient operators, buses, and budget headroom will, in theory, be available.
Meanwhile, the list of services that should be improved or operated, but are not due to funding and other constraints, continues to grow. Continue reading
From time to time, I get emails or comments that go roughly like this:
I left a comment a few days/weeks ago, and it never showed up. What did you do with it?
Well, at this point, I have a backlog of about 50 comments on various threads, some going back into the summer. Not every comment deserves a reply (or even to be posted), and some deserve a new thread of their own. Alas, I have only so many hours a day to devote to this blog, and if a topic sits in the “in basket”, well that’s the way things are.
I’m hoping to catch up with some topics over the holidays and early in 2007 before a barage of major issues, especially the budget, hits the TTC and City Council in late January.
Meanwhile, the best of whatever holiday season you may be celebrating to everyone!
The first full meeting of the new Moscoe-less TTC took place on Wednesday. Nothing was particularly astonishing. Like all first meetings, we watched as the newcomers found their way around the agenda and the complexity of what’s going on. One can only hope that new Commissioners will learn to address issues rather than making speeches.
To his credit, the new Chair Adam Giambrone stayed on top of the agenda and moved business along as briskly as possible without visibly throttling debate. A few delicate interventions framing the sense of the meeting in a motion rescued us all from interminable rambling.
Meanwhile on the agenda: Continue reading
With the new Toronto City Council comes change at the TTC.
Long-serving and controversial Chair Howard Moscoe did not stand for reappointment, but has taken over as Chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee. Former TTC Vice-chair Adam Giambrone is now Chair, and Joe Mihevc is the new Vice-chair.
Other new commissioners Peter Milczyn, Michael Thompson and Anthony Peruzza. This rebalances the regional representation on the TTC based on the “old” regions to Toronto (3), Etobicoke (2), York (1), North York (1), Scarborough (2). Whether it will change the rampant desire for subways everywhere remains to be seen. Continue reading
I received the following comment from Karem Allen, and felt that it was worth putting in a thread of its own. Remarks here are all Karem’s (although I have tidied it up a bit). Continue reading
Howard Levine, a former member of City Council and one of the founding members of Streetcars for Toronto back in 1972, writes in today’s National Post about the St. Clair project. Howard and I sit on opposite sides of the St. Clair fence these days — I still believe in the scheme and wish it were done better, while he sees it as irredeemably flawed. I share his despair that what we fought for in 1972 took so long to achieve and was such a botched piece of design and community relations. Continue reading
Christopher Hume has a column in today’s Star about the St. Clair line (Click here) where he discusses the gap between theory and practice in major urban design/construction projects.
This morning, CBC’s Metro Morning had a discussion about the impact on businesses with the owner of the Retro Cafe (at Vaughan and St. Clair) and David Crichton, the city’s manager for design and construction. With luck this may show up later today as a podcast on the CBC site here. It may have been early in the day, but Crichton continued the city’s unhappy stance of saying “it’s too bad, but we have to rebuild the street” while ignoring that the design and the construction phasing have considerable impacts. Continue reading
The Waterfront West LRT Environmental Assessment gets underway soon with the first public meeting next Monday. The project’s website is at this link.
There are two separate processes here, and you can read all of the details on the project site. Continue reading
My friend Bob Brent put together a spreadsheet listing many TTC operating and financial statistics for 1988, and 1996 through 2005. Our ridership high came in 1988 just before the early 90s recession. Service was mercilessly slashed in the nadir of 1996 thanks to funding cuts.
By 2006, we may just barely get back to the 1988 ridership level, but funding is another matter.
Those of you who love mulling over numbers will have fun here, but I will talk a bit about the highlights. Continue reading
Steve Munro 