Categories
Politics Toronto

The East Gardiner: a chance to get it right

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 […]

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Maps Politics Toronto

Mapping “Team Tory”

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 […]

Categories
Election Maps Politics Toronto

Exploring the downtown federal election races: New ridings, new candidates

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 […]

Categories
Toronto

The beauty of the expressway and Toronto’s accidental gateway

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 […]

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Maps Toronto

Mapping Toronto’s Rental Complaints

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 […]

Categories
Election Maps Toronto

Why Toronto needs new ward boundaries

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 […]

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Maps Toronto Transit

Mapping an accessible TTC

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 […]

Categories
Cycling Toronto

Mapping the City’s Bike Network Gaps

Toronto’s Bikeway Network, as of January, 2015 Over at Torontoist, I posted a short article about the gaps in Toronto’s cycling infrastructure. You can read it here. What follows is a quick summary and some more thoughts (and another map, showing the bikeway network without the sharrows and signed routes without bike infrastructure). Toronto’s bikeway […]

Categories
Politics Toronto Transit

The genesis of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack

I was recently browsing Urban Toronto‘s forums (a great resource if you’re interested in keeping up with construction updates and development proposals here in Toronto), when I came across a post written by “AlvinofDiaspar” in a thread discussing SmartTrack. Alvin’s post linked to an interesting report written by the Strategic Regional Research Alliance, a consulting group based in […]

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About me Transit Travels

Streetcars of desire: why are American cities obsessed with building trams?

Back in January, I posted my thoughts on some of the new streetcar systems being built in the United States after visiting Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Tampa on a Florida road trip. I soon cross-posted the article to Spacing, where it got more interest. Not long after the Spacing cross-post was published, I got a […]