Recent content by SteveMunro

The many comments about accuracy of counts is very important here. On surface route counts, I have seen five years elapse between updates, and yet the ancient counts are used in the so-called route performance measures in the annual (more or less) service standards reports. People who are...

Earlier tonight I was sitting in Roy Thomson Hall, a building that sits on what used to be a railway yard. Everything south of King was industrial land. One thing I do feel about the city is that the media war on City Hall spills over into the sense that "the city doesn't work", and last...

Yes, Professor Ted Spence was quite a fixture at TTC meetings for years as the ever-present face of York University. There's a vague resemblance between the two of us (older white men with beards and longish hair), and on one occasion a less-than-attentive member of the Commission started...

In the aerial illustration above, the line with the LRT on it looks to be four traffic lanes plus the LRT lanes plus the sidewalks. The circle itself is roughly five times the size in diameter. How much of the city do you plan to demolish? Mind you, I love the intersecting boulevard with...

My sources of information are the same as yours -- public documents. I don't get internal TTC papers, and myself have big issues with the way both the TTC and Metrolinx does their financial projections. Like SOS, my concern is with politicians and the public who must deal with competing...

Yes, the article is wrong. I don't know where the writer got that info, and suspect she may have conflated the SRT and the SMLRT projects. The SRT project is funded, the SMLRT is not, although some are lobbying for it to get bumped up in support of the Pan Am Games. I happen to think that...

I thought hard about that, but decided to leave it in. If someone is going to talk about a basic transportation concept and cannot even spell it correctly, it undermines their credibility. The BRT proposals are the weakest part of the entire paper. They trumpet BRT as an alternative solution...

I know that folks here will read multiple threads, but given some of the comments, it seems appropriate to advise everyone that there's a commentary on Move Toronto up on my site. http://stevemunro.ca/?p=3276 I have cast only one vote in favour of "my" plan. Seems only fair.

The photo a few posts back shows a remnant of the interurban railway system that once blanketed the midwest. The closest we ever had in Toronto was the radial line to Jackson's Point on Lake Simcoe. There is now a long commentary on the SOS Move Toronto scheme on my website at...

Yes, The Mark II cars also won't fit through some of the existing structures, and that makes the Mark I to Mark II conversion take longer than the TTC originally estimated. The new LRVs are low floor vehicles while the ICTS cars are high floor. This means that the relative position of the...

Aside from the age of the Mark I cars in Vancouver, when Toronto asked about buying them, Van said "sure, just buy us replacement sets of Mark IIs". This would have meant the TTC buying old Vancouver cars at the price of brand new ones just to keep the SRT alive for a while longer. Saying...

Just a comment on which lines have shovels in the ground and why: Sheppard was easy to start because there was some watermain work needed anyhow, and the grade separation at Agincourt has to happen for GO service expansion, LRT line or no. That's what is happening so far. Eglinton is at...

I am calmly preparing a post on my own site where I can moderate the responses, and send the insults where they belong. It's important to recognize that it's not a Steve-vs-SOS debate because we actually agree on some things. My biggest concern is the desire to create a zero-sum arrangement...

My vast influence is overstated I have mentioned the social aspects of Transit City as simple reportage, although transit generally exists to support a variety of planning and city development benefits. It's odd that it's ok to talk about how a subway will stimulate development, but when...

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