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Huh. Wow. The GTA has high standards for frequency. In Ottawa, half-hour weekdays, hourly evening & weekends is actually the norm for almost all suburban routes. In places like Orleans and Kanata, all routes other than the main trunk route through the middle of it, have that frequency.

"Kanada" in the modern Iroquoian alphabet would actually be pronounced as "gaaa-naaa-taaa'. Each 'aaa' represents an 'a' sound that has to be drawn out to take a long time to say--length of time vowels are drawn out for actually has meaning in the Iroquoian languages. Appending a vowel with an...

Traditionally, native languages in Canada are oral only. Meaning they have no written form and thus no spellings. In modern times, alphabets have been devised for native languages. These typically adapt the Latin alphabet to match the phonetic patterns of the language.. resulting in words...

Only if Metrolinx seized it without fair compensation. Because the expropriation process includes compensation arrangements that wouldn't happen. Also, the federal government is always the one at fault with NAFTA 11, even if its a province or municipality that did it. Newfoundland did...

If there's ever been a solid argument in favour of P3 financing and against TTC control, this is it. Everything the TTC does in-house gets delayed and cost-overrun. All future transit projects in Toronto better be P3.

I'm an outsider looking in, and Toronto doesn't plow sidewalks??? Holy geez. Every other city does... Kingston does despite getting way more snow than Toronto and having plenty of narrow downtown streets that are apples to apples with downtown streets in Toronto.

A bit late, but first off, the Kingston-Toronto air route is NOT a good way to judge service demand between Kingston and Pearson. Adding a leg to Kingston Airport always causes a journey to go up by hundreds of dollars (Kingston-Toronto-Rome would be $400-$500 more than simply Toronto-Rome), so...

Prices have gone down in the past few years. They've shifted to a YM model instead of the old price-per-km model. Under this new model, fares for less popular trips are sold at a new discounted price to drive away demand for more popular trips which are sold at the old regular price. This allows...

Check again. VIA ridership on the Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa route increased by 38% in 2013. Number of trains per week up from 64 in 2011 to 96 today.

I also fail to see how HSR would be the target of a fiscal axe because of this specific shortfall.. the funding for the project (if it happens) will come from the Move Ontario Forward fund which would be close to the last thing Wynne would cut. It's too precious to her political career.

It's not anything unusual. Budgets have a history of being way off. In one recent federal fiscal year (I think it was 2012-13 but it might have been 2013-14) the year end deficit ended up being something like $6B off from the budget originally planned. A $300M correction halfway through the...

People often forget that Via IS improving service, just very slowly and gradually. The Ottawa-Kingston-Toronto route is constantly being improved with more and more trains being added. Just last month they added another set of round trips on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. We're now at...

The Fall statement also said that expenses have been about $200M lower than expected. So all in all we're out $300M relative to the budget. Not a big deal at all because the budget already had a $1B contingency fund in it. The 'actual' budgeted deficit was $11.5B. They added a $1B contigency...

That's actually a very good idea. Most of the Kingston-Ottawa route is only single track (after it diverges from the mainline at Brockville) with a few passing sidings which significantly limits the reliability and frequency potential of the track. There's also the massive slowdown at Smiths...

Gweed's theory that there's some sort of secret deal between Wynne & Trudeau for Ontario to build HSR west of Toronto, and Trudeau to do so east of Toronto, might be true. It would explain the complete lack of any conversation from the Wynne government about Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa-Montreal HSR...

I'm a little disappointed that we're still only talking Toronto-Windsor. Given that the plan I imagine is that Toronto-London to be funded and Windsor to be studied and kept on the table as a Phase 2 for future use, couldn't they just go whole hog and study a route all the way to Ottawa? That...

Theoretically they could plop in a bunch of passing sidings first before doing a full double track. VIA manages bihourly frequencies between Toronto & Ottawa even though the track between Brockville and Ottawa (about 100km) is single track.

In Ottawa the BRT platforms are on shoulders at the side of the Transitway; basically, the Transitway widens to 4 lanes at stations. Even then the speed limit is technically lowered to 50km/h through the station area although in practice bus drivers ignore the limit. As they do elsewhere...

When I went to London last year it looked like only a small handful of Tube stations (less than 10) were fully accessible (or 'step-free' as they say in the UK). The fact that Toronto is at almost one-third and will get to at least 80% by 2023 is pretty impressive. I'm a little irritated that...

What really grinds me is the related issue of how utilities work is done. It's annoying when they rip up a road to fix the sewers, then two years later rip up the whole road again to fix the electricity. Kingston has merged all local utilities into a single department (ie: the city owned...