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No Subway Service Between Union and Bloor Stations This Weekend

A reminder: as originally announced last month, the TTC will be closing the Yonge subway line between Union and Bloor stations on Saturday and Sunday, while they continue to install double cross-overs—which are track improvements that help the commission turn trains around in case of problems or emergencies. Normal service will resume on Monday, at [...]

Building Storeys: TTC Yards

Where Toronto's public transit vehicles go for rest or repairs.

Every year, Heritage Toronto works with local photographers to create Building Storeys, a visual documentation and anecdotal exhibit of our city’s heritage sites. This year’s exhibit—which is on view at the Steam Whistle Roundhouse throughout the month of May—is dedicated to rail and marine transportation. Over the month, Torontoist and Heritage Toronto are exploring the [...]

Building Storeys: Subways

Moving Torontonians in red or silver trains since 1954.

Scene: A New Entrance for Queen’s Park Station

WHERE: College Street and University Avenue, Southeast Corner WHEN: Earlier today WHAT: Queen’s Park Station users are getting a new way down to the tracks, done up in a style meant to complement the architectural sensibilities of the still-under-construction MaRS Centre Phase II (and provided by that project’s developer, to replace the entrance that was [...]

Julie Wilson’s Love Letter to Readers

Seen Reading, based on the blog of the same name, is a collection of micro-fiction that captures the imaginary world created by readers while in transit with their books.

Dear Toronto talked with Wilson in 2009 about the Seen Reading project. Julie Wilson, author of the new book Seen Reading, is funny, articulate, and self-deprecating. She has a fondness for both witty anecdotes and bathroom humour: an ideal cocktail party guest or, you might think, a good person to sit beside on a long [...]

Newsstand: May 2, 2012

Somehow, it's already Wednesday. Creepy. So anyhow: Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam wants Ontario to join up with Quebec in the fight against long-gun registry data deletion (say that 5 times fast); surveyed TTC riders are strangely content with transit service; Doug Ford is pro property tax freezes; Toronto roads account for half of the province's worst; families of individuals shot by police meet to discuss better police handling of those with mental health issues; and Occupy Toronto up to slightly different tricks.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) wants Ontario, as Quebec, to go to bat against the feds on the issue of deleting data from the recently-nixed federal long-gun registry. Though the registry was successfully abolished by Prime Minister Stephen Harper after years of touting its insignificance (this, despite the Canadian Association of Chiefs of [...]

TTC Chief “Won’t Back” Lazy Employees

"I cannot and will not defend such incidents," writes TTC CEO Andy Byford.

Andy Byford, the TTC chief installed after the ouster of Chief General Manager Gary Webster in February, is now beginning to wade into some of the more mundane aspects of his role as one of the commission’s public faces. For example: containing damage from the continual stream of news reports about cellphone pictures of TTC [...]

Subway Will Be Closed From Union to Bloor This Weekend

Weekend travel is going to be a little inconvenient. The TTC is still adding double cross-overs to its tracks, and as a result, subway trains won’t be running between Union and Bloor stations on Saturday and Sunday. The TTC has also announced another weekend service interruption next month, on May 26 and 27.

The Better Way, Around the World

Taras Grescoe wrote Straphanger, a book about public transit in many different cities, worldwide. We spoke to him about how the TTC stacks up. (Or doesn't.)

It’s difficult to read Montreal-based writer Taras Grescoe’s new book on public transit around the world, Straphanger, without feeling more than a few pangs of some serious transit envy. Written as a public-transit travelogue, it’s a fascinating look at the intense relationship between a city’s growth and its transit system. Reading Grescoe’s book, one comes [...]

Spotted: Texting While Driving…a Subway?

SPOTTED BY: YouTube user evanderm WHERE: Between Eglinton and Bloor stations on the Yonge subway line WHEN: Video uploaded Friday; recording date unknown. WHAT: The TTC is, needless to say, investigating after a TTC passenger posted this video on Friday, which appears to show a TTC operator messaging while operating a subway. Spotted features interesting [...]

Rob Ford’s “Woman Problem” Not His Alone

City Council's Protégée Program seeks to bring fresh—and female—faces into local politics.

“Does Rob Ford have a woman problem?” asked the Globe and Mail recently. A bold question, but the problem of female representation in politics reaches far beyond the mayor. In Toronto, 15 of the 44 councillors—or 34 per cent—are women, and while that sounds bad, it’s a heck of a lot better than the paltry [...]

Historicist: In the Dark

How Toronto survived, and even enjoyed, the Northeast Blackout of 1965.

Mass power outages can make the imagination run wild. Take the case of Mrs. Joe Clarke, who was driving through downtown Toronto during the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. According to the Telegram, Mrs. Clarke “got the fright of her life when she saw a shadowy monster silhouetted in the moonlight.” After a moment of [...]