I really enjoyed being in this Hudson Yuen video about the history of plans for a downtown east-west subway in Toronto. youtu.be/Gd28OmmPTtg?si…

As a Toronto resident, it's kind of crazy to think of this city as having great transit. But, looking at the history of transit in the US since WWII, we come out looking like visionaries. #ttc bloomberg.com/news/features/… By Jonathan English

A very misguided cliché I hear in transit is “Nobody cares about opex because you can’t cut a ribbon.” Of course you can have a big photo op for a major operational improvement! And the politician that funds it will still be in office when it opens, unlike a capital project

From my archive: Berlin U-Bahn plans from the 90s

TTC ridership is up 27% in one year at Union Station. Just as we predicted in our Toronto Region Board of Trade report, fare integration was one of the best ways to drive transit ridership recovery. thestar.com/opinion/contri…

Transit isn’t only place where cost differences are huge. La Romaine hydro project in Quebec was $7.4B for four dams totalling 1550MW, 14% below budget. Site C in BC was one 1100MW dam costing $16B (142% over budget). Hydro-Quebec has a lot of experience building dams.

With Reece taking a very well deserved break, I urge everyone to check out his amazing library of excellent videos about transit around the world. His output was so prodigious that I know there’s lots to catch up on. youtu.be/JDxa9F0NSTg

Alright I finally got to it and created a Bluesky account so if you're on that app, feel free to follow me over there bsky.app/profile/englis…

I’ve written an article on the extraordinary transit success of Brampton, how it was achieved, and the lessons for other suburban areas in North America. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Did an interview with Global News on fare integration. Very exiting that it’s doing as well as we hoped. Was very proud to work on helping push this forward. globalnews.ca/video/11128627…

Toronto is experiencing a lot of planned subway shutdowns. The city regularly does temporary no parking for road work, filming, etc. We should do the same for planned subway shutdowns to make shuttle buses more efficient. Temporary diamond lanes would be even better!

I’m as keen on protecting transportation heritage as anyone but Reece is absolutely right here. If it’s preventing electrification, its preservation on that site isn’t tenable. It could be dismantled and moved, say to the Portlands as a market. open.substack.com/pub/nexttoront…