Results tagged “yorkregion”

Toronto City Council, after debating yesterday evening and all of today, voted earlier tonight to prioritize the building of a so-called Downtown Relief Line—a new subway route meant to alleviate stress on the existing infrastructure—at the expense of expanding the Yonge line north into Richmond Hill. Council's executive committee had already attached substantial conditions to the controversial Yonge North Extension, worried that an influx of suburban transit users will overload subways running into downtown. Today's amendment, introduced by Councillor Michael Thompson, calls for Metrolinx to put the new downtown subway ahead of the Yonge expansion in its fifteen-year plan for the city, and will likely reignite claims of a turf war between Toronto and York Region. In a welcome moment of levity, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong's motion that the TTC "come up with a more inspiring name for the Downtown Rapid Transit Line" also passed in a 37-7 slam-dunk.

If you're interested in pursuing a career in crime here in Canada, it looks like your best bet is to pack up and move to Regina. According to an article published in Maclean's, Regina (aka "The Other Other Queen City") has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous city in Canada, followed closely by Saskatoon and Winnipeg. The rankings, based on per-capita crime rates published by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, paint a dark picture of the West as a crime-ridden, scary place where unsuspecting rubes from Toronto are lured into dark alleys and robbed of their vintage t-shirts. All of the cities in the top 10 (save Halifax at #10) are located in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.

The ever-reliable Transit Toronto has just posted a comprehensive list of a number of Ontario transit services' holiday hours. If you have any intention of using any or all of Barrie Transit, Brampton Transit, Burlington Transit, Durham Region Transit, GO Transit, Guelph Transit, Hamilton Street Railway, Milton Transit, Mississauga Transit, Oakville Transit, Orangeville Transit, Region of Peel Transhelp, Toronto Transit Commission, or York Region Transit between today and December 28, the list is an invaluable look at how you will and won't be able to get around over the next week.

Once upon a time, governments worked together to create ambitious and expensive projects like, say, public transit. Then came the 1990s when funding was summarily cut off. Since then, we've seen funding restored in dribs and drabs, the half-implementation of several ideas (we're looking at you, Sheppard subway!), and the odd difficult move forward (the St. Clair ROW). We've also seen the creation of the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, but since no one seems to know exactly what they are doing or when they might be doing it, we won't dwell on them.

Several major GTA transit projects have been sitting in limbo awaiting federal funding for so long that if you weren't directly involved you might have forgotten they were ever announced.

Gas shortages continue to plague Ontario and Quebec and it isn't getting better anytime soon. Hybrid owners laugh manically as the world slowly crumbles around them. Mad Max-style mayhem ensues.

like a serial killer? If you were casting a movie and had a role named "Mangy Serial Killer," would this guy not instantly get a callback after his audition based on looks alone?

Elizabeth May, the newly chosen leader of the federal Green party, is currently riding the rails across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa. May was scheduled to stop in Toronto yesterday evening, where the public was invited to meet and greet with her outside Union Station.

The TTC is apparently losing about a bus a day to repairs and safety issues. Many of the buses are around 18 years old and nearing the end of their lifecycle. By next year the TTC will lose around 320 buses, more than five a week.

Usually there isn't much that happens on a sleepy stretch of Centre Street, just north of the city in Thornhill. It's a pretty typical suburban stretch between the Promenade Mall and, well, not much else. But this week it's been hopping!

Last month I wrote many nice things about VIVA. Last week, after missing the GO Bus from Markham to Toronto by seconds, I decided that it was a good opportunity to take an impromptu test ride on VIVA. I feel as though I may have been taken a little (not a lot) by the initial VIVA hype.

, to trick car drivers who would otherwise feel shame riding in the common people’s chariot.