In our inbox yesterday appeared a link to a TTC tender for consultant services, sent to us by Joe Clark (as these things tend to be). They're looking to hire someone to (emphasis ours) "provide professional architectural, engineering/design services and specialized transit services to perform the study concerning the installation of platform screen doors at 75 locations in 69 subway stations and in the six stations that will be constructed within the Spadina subway......

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie. According to a December 2004 article in the Globe, Mike Harris is (or at least was at the time) the chairman of video advertising company Onestop; he got on board "in return for an equity stake" in the business. Presuming that he still has that stake (and why wouldn't he? he may be evil, but he's not stupid), Harris became a richer man two weeks ago, when the Toronto Transit......

A little more of the renovation of Museum subway station has been revealed, showing oddly contrasting purple columns and white moulded volutes. (See also Rannie Turingan's video taken from a train pulling into Museum station.) Still under wraps until the official unveiling in April are the individual column designs themselves. The subway revitalization project, which includes Museum, Osgoode, and St Patrick stations, has not been without its critics. Joe Clark calls the project a......

Selected quotes from "Toronto's Type and Tile Heritage" by Edward Keenan, from the November 14th issue of Eye Weekly: Joe Clark: "The trick is trying to prevent the destruction of the subway system as we know it. What are these [TTC] commissioners doing, exactly? Through malign neglect, they are beginning a 35-year process of destruction. Because if they make over Pape station so that it doesn’t match any of the other stations, if they......

Discovered going eastbound towards downtown on an old, very packed, and very hot subway car at 8:30 on a Monday morning: an old route map, sans Sheppard line subway stations; and an old ad advising riders against the gravest of transit crimes––leg extension. In response to a letter from someone pleased that the problem with "feet on seats" has improved, but that the ever-present issue of outstretched limbs remains, the late 1980s ad advises......

Reader Cy Goldsbie sent us the above photos, taken at St. Clair West station, along with the following note: These aren't the greatest pictures, but I think they're clear enough. The hand-written sign is one of two on the same wall just above the duct tape sign. I think I've discovered a new font that even Joe Clark doesn't know about. Of the font mixture of which he spoke, 'Duct-Tape' was never mentioned. As......

This past weekend's TTC Type & Tile Tour (or TTTT) was such a success (50 people! some of them women!) that Joe Clark is doing it again, bigger and (maybe) better, this upcoming Sunday. While last weekend's trip kept to the Bloor-Danforth line, this one will see the tour take stops along the Sheppard, Yonge, and Spadina lines for maximal signage/font/TTC-critiquing––the itinerary so far ranges from the inspiring (Dupont) to the horrifying (Osgoode), with......

If you really like typography, signage, and the TTC––like, really really like it––maybe you'll want to join Joe Clark this Sunday, October 28, at 2:00 p.m. at Scarborough Centre Victoria Park Station for the TTC Type & Tile Tour (or TTTT), a guided excursion through some of the Transit Commission's successes and failures with signage. (Mostly failures.) The itinerary includes trips to choice vacation spots like Victoria Park's bus bays and Spadina's Walmer Road......

Above is the TTC's unnamed official font. Though other fonts are similar––like Futura, which we used for elements of our survey, or Gill Sans––there are none exactly like it. No one knows who designed it, or why it's not still being used consistently across the TTC. Enter Joe Clark, who, as we all know, cares entirely too much about the TTC's typography and signage (but goddammit, if he doesn't care, who will?). Earlier today,......

On Monday, the TTC unveiled a survey that, in lieu of other public consultation, would be used to help the organization determine what cuts it may need to make this year. (For more on the TTC's potential budget shortfall, see our interview with Adam Giambrone, the TTC's documentation included with the survey, and Steve Munro's excellent summary of the situation.) The problem is, the survey really isn't that great: it's too vague, too incomplete,......

Reader Cy Goldsbie (yes, relation) sent us the above photos of a box that popped up in St. Clair station over the weekend. Marked "DEPOSIT PUBLIC CONSULTATION SURVEY HERE," the box is at the "end of the southbound platform tucked into the alcove of the non-working elevator." (In other words, they're about as conspicuous as what Joe Clark calls the TTC's "intentionally hidden online complaints form.") So what's the deal? At the TTC's emergency......

Eight months after Torontoist, Reading Toronto, Spacing, and BlogTO all banded together to solicit reader comments to improve the TTC's website and after Adam Giambrone agreed to re-open the Request for Proposal (RFP) to allow for "a more ambitious and exciting project," there has finally been some news to report of late. Last week, Adam Giambrone told Torontoist that the website would launch sometime in the fall, and would definitely feature everyone's top request––a......

Like many Torontonians, we love the TTC but we're often boggled by the way it's run when it comes to human elements, like their hideous website and merchandise offerings. We are not only distressed at the removal of the Walk Left/Stand Right signs, but also noticed the Please Do Not Block Doorway stickers are no longer in the classic TTC typeface (based on Gill Sans), but a boring and generic sans serif instead. Accessibility......

Photo by matthewpiers from the Torontoist Flickr pool. One week ago today apparently marked the opening of HtO, Toronto's new "urban beach," on a parcel of land south of Queens Quay West, between Rees Street and Lower Spadina Avenue. We say "apparently" because we'll believe it when we're standing on the sand with our own two feet; the relatively modest (yet nevertheless impressive) project having already been delayed multiple times over several years, we......

Yesterday the City of Toronto unveiled the designs submitted for the "Coordinated Street Furniture Program," its plan to grant a billboard company a twenty-year monopoly on providing and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, benches, and other items for Toronto’s sidewalks. The "renderings" have been posted on the City website as epic PDFs, but our friend Joe Clark has also extracted the images from the PDFs and posted them to his Flickr account for convenient......

Elected municipal officials across Toronto now have four-year terms thanks to Queen's Park. Citing the increased complexity of municipal affairs the province rushed through a bill lengthening municipal government terms. The reform divided council and raised criticism from local activists like former mayor John Sewell. Anti-poverty groups are peeved at Jane Pitfield and want her off the city's homeless advisory committee. They're angry over her desire for a by-law that bans panhandling. Residents near the......

In due time, you'll be able to fold a map of city in half, with Yonge Street as the crease, and witness the more or less symmetry in Starbucks locations on Queen Street. One Starbucks is on Queen West in Beaconsfield, site of the infamous "Drake you ho this is all your fault" tag of last year. The other is planned for Queen East in Leslieville, home of the infamous commenter Joe Clark. More......

Margaret Atwood is signing books, actually she's using her newly developed machine to sign books. It seems that Atwood is sick and tired of doing endless book tours and signing countless books, so she's invented a machine that allows her to remotely sign books. Torontoist sympathizes with Atwood, who is approaching 70, and would find whirlwind publicity tours tiresome after the 30+ books she's done. Frankly, if the invention let's Atwood spend more time writing......

In the news of the world wide web, Joe Clark (not to be confused with the real Joe Clark) has just informed us of his new neighbourhood website, The Free City of Leslieville. Though it's purported to be about Leslieville, the content of Joe Clark's most recent web-venture concerns two subjects: Joe Clark and how much Joe Clark doesn't like Spacing. According to Joe Clark's numbers, Spacing Magazine has more references to the west end......