Categories
Ontario Transit Travels

Can on-demand transit meet your demand?

On-demand transit is costly to operate, less flexible for prospective passengers, and be frustrating to use, as I recently experience in Durham Region. But as on-demand transit can cover much larger areas than line haul routes, it has its place.

Categories
Brampton Mississauga Ontario Politics Transit

Heavy interference in a light rail transit project

The renaming of the Hurontario LRT for former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion violates wayfinding standards, but the decision came direct from the Doug Ford government. The unilateral move is just another example of Metrolinx’s loss of independence.

Categories
Roads Toronto Transit Urban Toronto

Bussing the gap: Scarborough transit after the SRT

On July 24, 2023, 38 years of Line 3, the Scarborough RT, came to an ignoble end when a car came off the tracks just south of Ellesmere Station, four months ahead of the scheduled closure of the deteriorating line. Though the City of Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) were hesitant to say […]

Categories
Infrastructure Transit Travels

How to run a street railway: riding trams in Central Europe

Back in October, my spouse and I had the opportunity to visit several countries in Central Europe: Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, though we spent the majority of our time in and around Vienna, as that is where my spouse attended business meetings for several days; we also took time to explore the […]

Categories
Infrastructure Ontario Transit Walking

A visit to GO Transit’s New Old Elm Station

GO Transit’s new Stouffville Line terminal overlooked one important detail.

Categories
Maps Toronto Transit

Line 3: struck from the maps

Line 3 – the Scarborough RT – is gone from the TTC’s maps. But what’s left on is even more puzzling.

Categories
Infrastructure Transit Travels

Automatic for the people: Riding Montreal’s new REM

North America’s newest rapid transit service, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), opened on Monday, July 31, 2023 after a weekend of free public rides. I took my first ride several weeks later, on August 22, 2023. The five stop, 16.6-kilometre line between Central Station and Autoroute 30 in Brossard, is the first of four phases […]

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Development Infrastructure Toronto Transit

Toronto’s saddest subway stop

Islington Station, opened in 1968 as part of a major expansion of the Toronto subway system into Etobicoke and Scarborough, is now literally falling apart. At platform level, Islington looks little different than most stations on the Bloor-Danforth Line with the faded wall tile, coated with a layer of brake dust. Upstairs, on the concourse […]

Categories
Ontario Transit Travels

A transit tour of Southwestern Ontario

In January 2023, while visiting the site of the now-demolished Sarnia Eaton Centre, I took advantage of two new rural transit services serving Southwestern Ontario: Strathroy-Caradoc Transit and Huron Shores Area Transit. While both services connect London and Sarnia, they operate as separate services with different fares; they also have different terminals. Strathroy-Caradoc Transit offers […]

Categories
Infrastructure Transit Travels

Middle America’s transit oddities

In 2022, with travel restrictions eased, I had the opportunity to take several road trips throughout the Northeast and Midwestern states, from New York and Maryland to Kentucky and Michigan. Previously on this site, I wrote about my visit to Philadelphia’s Rail Park, a lesser-known, yet ambitious project to repurpose former Reading Railroad corridors in […]