Sarah Lazarovic––curator of the garage-based Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada––is painting a portrait of a Torontonian (be they Mirvishes or Meashas) every day. Each Monday, we'll feature one of those portraits here. Last week, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone said we should be feeling the better way's better service imminently.......

Left to right: TTC market research director Mike Anders, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, irate civil engineering Engineering Science student Ryan Campbell, and Giambrone executive assistant Kevin Beaulieu. "Isn't this just a quasi-communistic redistribution of wealth?" asked a student at the microphone, receiving hearty applause from a good chunk of the audience. He was inquiring about the new U-Pass being proposed by the TTC, which Mayor David Miller, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, and Vice-Chair Joe......

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......

When we interviewed TTC Chair Adam Giambrone in August––at the height of anxiety over potential cuts to his system––he told us that the TTC has "an acceptable level of advertising. Could it be less? Absolutely. At this point any reduction would be a budget reduction, and I'll tell you I'm not really prepared to reduce the budget of the TTC to reduce the advertising. At the same time, I think we certainly have enough......

Mayor Miller was in Etobicoke yesterday, trying to convince the people who regularly vote in Ford, Holyday, Nunziata, et al. that new taxes are a necessity. It went about as well as you'd expect. In an effort to boost turnout, Elections Ontario has put some advance polls in supermarkets. We hoped to write something sarcastic, but upon further reflection, this is a really good idea. John Tory has essentially killed his public-funding-of-faith-based-schools proposal, promising......

The CBC is reporting that the provincial government announced an ambitious new project today to revamp Kipling Station and turn it into a major transit hub for Etobicoke and Mississauga. The announcement came from Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield and Environment Minister Laurel Broten early this afternoon. The new station, which will be owned and operated by GO Transit, is set to have an inter-regional bus terminal and will connect Mississauga Transit and GO buses......

Photo by Jason Thompson Photography. As TTC Chair, Vice-Chair of the Works Committee, and Ward 18 Councillor—among an ocean of other positions that he holds now or has once held—Adam Giambrone's influence spreads far across the city of Toronto and to some of its most contested issues: transit, the environment, and development, to name a few. Depending on who you ask, he is either the city's best archaeologist-turned-politician or its worst. His term as......

Toronto city council has approved a new design for the city's street-name signs. The city replaces roughly 2,000 to 2,500 signs each year anyway, so the new design will be phased-in gradually. Fortunately, it looks like this may not be as large a waste of taxpayer funds as one might expect. Federal Court Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson ordered the release of Toronto terrorism suspect Mahmoud Jaballah. Jabllah was held for more than five years without......

TTC Chair Adam Giambrone has responded to Toronto bloggers' (that's us, BlogTO, Reading Toronto, and Spacing) open letter to the TTC about fixing their website. And the news is allll good. Our third and final main suggestion -- a crucial one that the entirety of the project pretty much hinged on -- was that "the user input our challenge generated and the media firestorm that followed it suggest the RFP [Request For Proposal] be......

It seems its website isn't the only thing embarrassingly behind the times at the TTC these days: the above scan is of a current January Metropass. (Councillor Howard Moscoe was TTC Chair from 1998-2000 and 2003-2006; his successor, Councillor Adam Giambrone, was elected by the Commission as its Chair on December 6 of last year.) What makes this a particularly odd error is the fact that it's not simply a case of the TTC......

An officer was shot at earlier today which prompted a manhunt in Etobicoke. Police kept a nearby school and community centre closed for safety reasons. A retired gang cop points out that Toronto had a number of great anti-gang units which were dismantled a decade ago. He argues this is one of the reasons the city has seen more gang-related violence in recent years. The CAA is calling for a ban on cellphones and MP3......

Despite criticism from the media, many councillors and Rick Ducharme's public admission that his actions as TTC chair made him quit, Howard Moscoe made it clear he won't be stepping down from the Chair. That is until he talked to his wife. Gloria Moscoe, his wife of 46-years, would like him to spend more time with his family which means Moscoe might step out of the TTC Chair's role but not until after the November......

Things get worse for the TTC. In light of GM Rick Ducharme's resignation the TTC have decided to tell him to leave right away instead of waiting around till November. Ducharme is fighting this and threatening to call his lawyers. He also pins the blame for his resignation on interference by TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and even Mayor Miller . Many councillors are now calling for Moscoe to step down. Ducharme is the third TTC......

The man with the second most thankless job in the city (TTC Union head Bob Kinnear takes the cake for this one we think) has tendered his resignation. The Star has a nice PDF of it here and a story on the whole sordid situation. The CBC doesn't shed much more light except that it was Adam Giambrone who confirmed the resignation. The media has been abuzz with rumours that Ducharme was not getting along......

TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and injured TTC driver Bobby Lowe had a nice chat yesterday and cleared up a few things. Lowe actually said that his beef wasn't with the TTC but with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. They held up his cheque for five months and Lowe lost his apartment and had to break up his family because of that. Howard Moscoe also apologized for calling Lowe a liar on a radio show......

Inquests have been ordered on the death of two patients in the care of Toronto mental health institutes. There are suspicions that these patients were neglected. Under the coroner's act, inquests aren't mandatory in the case of deaths under psychiatric care. These incidents might change that. The city's 25th homicide victim may have been killed by an angry ex-girlfriend. A 19-year old woman turned herself in near Danforth and Eglinton. There are others involved in......

Everyone is talking about how TTC Operators will now turn a blind eye on those who are evading fares. The union is complaining about the rising number of assaults and "passenger rage." TTC Chair Howard Moscoe says that people still have to pay their fares. The Sun's story is here and has some wacky numbers like the fact that assaults have gone up over 30% in a decade. The Star's piece has more of the......

As the TTC's Pizza Pizza campaign ends, they turn the page to Pizzazz. I once was told by a reliable source that TTC Chair Howard Moscoe said they don't have a process for reviewing ideas submitted by the public. This explains why it's nearly impossible to get the TTC on board for amazing ideas like the subway buttons and the Metropass Affinity Program. It looks like a crack has opened up in this insanely......

Normally, I like to post positive transit stories, and then put an even more positive spin on them. But I couldn't help feel disheartened today looking at my Google news RSS feed for "TTC". Google news doesn't pickup everything, but it seems they pickup the worst of what's going on. I know it's nothing new in the world of news, but it's unfortunate that violent news stories get a huge amount of press. And......