As of Tuesday, July 28, the Toronto Star has not published any letter to the editor responding to last Tuesday’s front-page article by San Grewal questioning the ridership of the northern section of the Hurontario-Main LRT, or any corrections. I find myself very much disappointed by this. I know I was not the only reader […]
Category: Politics
For the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived in Brampton. I still have family and friends who live there, and while I was happy to move to a place of my own in Toronto (first in North York, later to the old City of Toronto), I still have a soft spot for my […]
On Thursday, June 11, Toronto City Council voted to maintain the Gardiner Expressway between Jarvis Street and the Don Valley Parkway, endorsing the “hybrid” option by a vote of 24-21. The previous vote, a motion to support the remove/boulevard option, was defeated by a 19-26 vote. The two inconsistent votes were by Councillors Anthony Perruzza […]
Projected Gardiner East council vote as of Monday, June 8. (Updated 5:00 PM, June 8) With Councillors Jon Burnside and Raymond Cho coming out in support of the “Hybrid” option for the Gardiner East, and Councillor John Filion supporting the Removal/Boulevard option, here’s the latest map. Only seven councillors are considered “unknown” in their intentions for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Sean Marshall 