As I find myself increasingly frustrated with John Tory’s first six months in office, I can’t help but wonder what his motivations are behind his stances on his signature SmartTrack transit plan, the Gardiner East, the Scarborough Subway, and police carding. Despite it’s many flaws, it’s still full steam ahead for SmartTrack; the Scarborough Subway […]
Author: Sean Marshall
Recently, I sat down with Darren Foster (Cityslikr), of the blog All Fired Up In The Big Smoke, and Paisley Rae to discuss the results of the last municipal election, particularly the ward-level election maps that I created back in December 2014 and in January and February 2015. It was my first time participating in a podcast. As I […]
Building the Sheppard East LRT in December, 2010 Nearly five years ago, in October 2010, work began on the Sheppard East light rail transit project, the first of three Transit City lines funded by the provincial government. This initial work was to build a grade separation between Sheppard Avenue East and Canadian National Railway’s Uxbridge Subdivision (better […]
A snapshot I took back in March 2001 of the Gardiner Expressway’s demolition at Carlaw Avenue. In June, 1999, Toronto City Council, after much debate, voted 44-8 to demolish the eastern section of the Gardiner Expressway. The section of elevated freeway from the Don River to Leslie Street, which opened in 1966, was underused and in […]
Back in September 2014, I created a series of maps for Matt Elliott, journalist at Metro, blogger, city council observer, and all-round great guy. Elliott’s City Council Scorecard tracked how each councillor voted on major decisions at city hall, along with a “Ford Nation” score that measured how closely each councillor voted with the mayor. Matt’s Council […]
Note: On October 2, I wrote a follow-up to this post, including a few new maps, some additional insights. All three races — Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale, and Spadina-Fort York, remain interesting and close Liberal-NDP battles. As I mentioned on this blog previously, describing the “Drawing the Lines” ward boundary review now underway, there are new federal […]
Highway 427 looking south from Burnhamthorpe Road On a recent walk with a group of friends and acquaintances, I had the opportunity to explore a bit of Etobicoke. We walked from Kipling Station to a pub near the West Mall and Burnhamthorpe Road, passing by an abandoned dead mall, cutting through another mall, Cloverdale, with its […]
Over at Torontoist, I took a look the City of Toronto’s data on complaints made to Municipal Licensing and Standards (ML&S) on multi-residential apartment buildings. All properties with at least 25 notices or orders that are either open, or issued and closed within the last two years are mapped; the ten properties with the highest number of […]
The City of Toronto is in the process of reviewing the ward boundaries. This is an overlooked and much needed initiative. Due to population increases in central Toronto, North York and in Scarborough, parts of the city are unrepresented at City Hall. Some councillors are overworked with development proposals in their wards, while other parts of […]
Last week in Torontoist, I wrote about the challenges of getting around on the TTC for passengers who rely on mobility devices, such as wheelchairs. Most of us never think about this problem unless we’re directly affected by the consequences of an inadequate system, as I was after a cycling injury in 2012. But for TTC users […]
Sean Marshall 