Updating my LEGO White House

Felicity Borgal in a transit station in front of a three-piece jazz band: sax, banjo and tuba / Felicity Borgal dans une station de transit devant un groupe de jazz composé de trois musiciens : saxophone, banjo et tuba.

Listening this morning to Dr. Jazz at Hurdman station! They’re here till 11 thanks to OMIC and @envirocentre.bsky.social. Felicity is surveying riders.

Will Ottawa's last remaining 600-series streetcar ever ride again? Volunteers spent decades trying to restore Streetcar 696. But the project stalled when the city locked the streetcar away in storage.

ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa-...

Sadly the city/OCT, in a cost-cutting measure, towed them to a remote works garage in Cumberland and won’t let volunteers finish streetcar restoration work.

Alstom report blamed soft tracks, design flaws for LRT derailment | CBC News The consortium that oversees Ottawa's LRT system and the French subcontractor that built its trains have long disagreed over a simple issue: Why did a train derail four years ago?

The LRT Inquiry statement at the press conference said the people of Ottawa deserve better. How much of tax dollars was spent to keep this out from the city councillors and public knowledge? The mayor promised transparency. Is this transperancy?
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

And how many employees the railways had in the 1960s versus today!
Mechanization and automation of track work and signaling takes far less labour.

I don't bet for $, but I'd like to set up a pool of which Canadian transit line will open next: TO's Finch West LRT or Eglinton Crosstown, Montreal REM, or Ottawa O-Train East Extension. Or the longshots, Broadway SkyTrain Extension, & Edmonton/Calgary LRT lines. Winner gets bragging rights. RSVP

What is lifted? Rehabilitated or repaired? 🇨🇦
This sidewalk has been”lifted”
by heat.

They didn’t bury hydro on Bank St a decade ago when they rebuilt though the Glebe either.

Underground hydro lines for home entry and cottages has been mandatory for decades. Kent St predates that, and any new building on Kent now has underground entry.

How will Alto HSR share or even cross CN / CPKS freight lines? For example there is regular freight to Peterborough/Havelock over CPKC and to Ottawa over VIA that will be used by HSR.

@ontariotrafficman.bsky.social

For GO? Or UPExpress?

It may vary system by system. iirc in Ottawa / OCTranspo, it’s equivalent to one ride. The idea is it can get you to somewhere where you can reload your card.

Travel times have increased by only 5% (30 secs on the average 10 min trip), and pollution is down by 17%

From what I can understand from the press release, the study is based on analyzing data from Even Data Recorders on cars over two weeks before and after introducing the city-wide 30 km/h limit.

In 6 mesi risparmio 150 milioni con limite 30 km a Bologna - Ultima ora - Ansa.it Con la misura della Città 30 è possibile risparmiare in costi sociali e umani: è il caso di Bologna, dove in soli sei mesi sono oltre 150 i milioni di euro risparmiati grazie alla riduzione di inciden...

Interesting news about how the 30 km/h city-wide limit impacted driving behaviour in Bologna:

TL;DR: only 58% of trip*km is effectively below the 30 km/h, but more importantly, the driving style has become more relaxed, with less harsh braking and accelerations.

www.ansa.it/sito/notizie...

They weren’t building a party — they were planning a takeover.

Convoys. Foreign funding. Freedom caucuses.
This is imported extremism, not grassroots.

That’s why they want to defund the CBC — it exposes the playbook.

Defend truth. Defend the CBC.

#SaveTheCBC #NoMAGAinCanada #CdnPoli

I used to think public transit should be free.

But price isn’t the problem, bad service is.

🚫 Infrequent
🚫 Unsafe
🚫 Inaccessible

Free rides don’t fix broken systems.

✅ Make transit actually usable
✅ Make life affordable with UBI + lower housing, food, & healthcare costs

Lots of us visited Greenboro Station at Doors Open 2 years ago, below. And TTC Lower Bay Station is always a big draw at Halloween etc openings.

How much of Eglinton LRT is undergound? Over half? Certainly that part could be quite fast ( certainly Yonge to Lawrence near Bathurst subway connection part)

Because the Ottawa LRT was built as a light metro. Fully grade separated, tight headways, and almost fully CBTC operated. @chittimarco.bsky.social

Bayview does not look like that anymore! It’s a major transfer now.

Not if the station is the equivalent of 6 stories underground.

Seems when they rebuild the Ottawa bus (or rail) elevators after 20 transitway years, it requires a 3 to 6 month shut down. @chittimarco.bsky.social

two pictures, the first of china and the second of usa. the first one shows many trains all lined up side by side, maybe 25 of them, and they look high speed, and the word communism is on top of it. the second one shows a single amtrak train with the text "the 'free' market"

🔢 VIA631 / 🚂 VIA2211 / 🛤 VIA Alexandria Sub / 📆 2025-06-03 / #VIARail

I wish the media in Toronto covered the $100 billion transit expansion more than one dude on YouTube.

The icing on the cake is that the high-speed rail project followed the very silly structure that this go project followed and lead it to disaster. There's a reason I've been sharing how concerned I am with that project...

VIA also shares/uses tracks w GO from Pickering/Liverpool to Union and to the west also.

I really hope people don't get attached to this narrative. Does DB have problems operating reliably in Germany? Yes. But that's like saying 50th best cyclist in the world isn't still an order of magnitude better than you or me.

I've got a #longread in the @theglobeandmail.com today about Brightline, and the promise of privately-run passenger trains in North America.

Spoiler: Not all "high-speed" rail is created equal...

#RailSky #trains

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

and people were mad that i was against Metrolinx taking over local transit operations. Fuck.that.