In my job as transit columnist for the free commuter daily Metro, I get to learn about the workings of the GTA transport system directly from public officials. I call them up, ask a lot of questions and try to fit a tiny portion of the answers into my weekly column. In turn I rely on transit advocates to fill in the blanks as well as describe their first-hand experiences aboard streetcars, buses and trains.

My ideal of a proper discussion has these two groups in the same place at the same time, plus anyone else with an interest in urban mobility.

When I first envisioned a series of meetings to explore the Metrolinx regional transport plan, I hoped to huddle with a few advocates and get their perspective on the process and the results so far. I wanted to hear about the parts of “The Big Move” that need greater attention.

Along the way it became clear that some kind of official involvement would greatly aid the discussion, but that hasn’t proved easy. Since the draft RTP was released, Metrolinx staff have been particularly busy with stakeholder and public consultation meetings. Next comes preparing the plan for approval at the agency’s board meeting on November 28.

That said, there are still a lot of questions worth asking about how the Big Move will work, and I’m holding three more unofficial meetings before the expected board vote — each on Tuesday nights at Metro Hall in downtown Toronto. I’m hoping to convince Metrolinx and other public officials to attend subsequent meetings.

Tonight, Tuesday November 11, the session deals with paying to ride: How will GTA transit fares affect the regional transport network? How can payment be better integrated and what could this mean to capacity throughout the greater transit network? Look below for some questions sent to Metrolinx, and the responses.

An earlier Metronauts entry, Two fares just doesn’t seem fair also explores some of the key issues.

If you’d like to continue this discussion in person, join me at Metro Hall, 55 John St. @ King in Room 303 at 7pm. (Details after the jump) (more…)

MyTTC.ca is a community effort to give everyone free, open access to a better quality of transit information in Toronto. Since the first TransitCamp in 2007, Kevin Branigan and I have been working to re-build our own set of TTC data, as well as exploring different ways to visualize, display and distribute it. MyTTC.ca is, at least in part, how we’re expressing that data on the web.

The data available from the TTC was, well, a little lacking in both quality and quantity. With fewer than 20% of the stops available and a staggering error rate on the TTC site (both new and old), Kevin and I reasoned that we’d need to build our own data set if we were going to do anything useful with it. Fortunately, we were able to find just enough good data to do just that, and with that data at our disposal we finally had the stable base we needed to build fun and useful applications. (more…)

Barrie and Richmond Hill GO Lines

This is the final entry in the “Where do we GO?” series, as all directions from Union Station will now be covered (West and East sides were covered previously).  This post focuses on the remaining corridors of Richmond Hill and Barrie.  As promised, there’s a lot of comment on these two corridors.

BARRIE LINE

Recently extended from Bradford to restore service to Barrie (and the corridor renamed as a result), this corridor has a lot of unserviced pockets compared to other corridors, despite having more stations already added to it than other corridors in the network except Stouffville (with which it is a tie).  Long a poor performer in the network, GO Transit has been very keen on making this corridor prove its worth.  (more…)

Yesterday evening, I was shooting a Gears of War 2 Launch Party event in Lower Bay Station. It was my first time in the station which is pretty similar to Bay station, except more dirty and run down. It was the perfect setting for the games launch.

East of Scarborough GO Station

In a previous post, the topic was about where GO Transit could add stations to its westbound train lines to increase the value and performance of the existing service area, something that should probably be done before extensions of lines takes place.  Now in this post, the same question is posed towards its eastbound lines; the Stouffville and Lakeshore East corridors. (more…)

If you look at a arial photograph of the residential areas in the historic downtowns of the GTHA and compare them to the areas built after the second world war, you’ll notice a few major differences. First of all, the streets in the downtowns are usually a neat, orderly grid, while the suburban areas tend to have winding, almost disorderly streets. Next, you’ll notice that the houses in the old neighbourhoods are build very close to the street and very close together, with garages (if any) accessible by a rear laneway. Newer suburban neighbourhoods tend to have houses which are setback from the property line in all directions, and the garages and driveways are often the most prominent feature of the front facade.

While this may be over simplifying the last 50 years of urban development history, the car is essentially to blame for this change. When we had to walk or take the trolley everywhere, development had to be compact and orderly to allow more people to live close to the streetcar stop. Now that we can drive everywhere, development can be more spread out, and walking provisions (front door close to sidewalk) can be replace with automobile provisions (garage close to street). Also, with land cheaper away from the transit stops, more of it can be devoted to each individual lot. Since lower density means more privacy, the suburbs pretty much sold themselves. While it was a foolish idea that has come back to bite us on the arse, we have to look forward. (more…)