Brian Doucet

Toronto History Lecturers on the Bathurst streetcar with the metal superstructure of a bridge in the background

Each summer @tofamilyhistory.bsky.social holds a very special event to remember a friend. The 2025 Toronto History Lecture is Tues Aug 5 at 7:00 on Zoom. @briandoucet.bsky.social & Michael Doucet present Toronto's Streetcars: How the past shapes the present
torontofamilyhistory.org/learn/toront...

Will Emmanuel Clase beat the charges, or will he be suspended for the remainder of the season? Lock in your prediction on Fanduel, official betting partner of MLB and the Cleveland Guardians. Use promo code CLASEACT to get $15 off your first bet.

Helsinki managed to end crash deaths without deploying a single autonomous vehicle.

Go figure.

FFS can someone open this road back up again!!
No one can get here.
There’s no parking.
Can’t drive the car here anymore.
It’s crazy.
It will kill local businesses.

Just kidding!
Enjoy the Beaches Jazz Festival!

Ps why on early you’d want to drive here is beyond me (and I live 100km away)

Three streetcars!

Sitting in a nice cafe reading really first rate student work is a great way to start a day!

Blue Jays hold the best record in the American League! Gotta love it.

Continuous sidewalks!

A design that’s common in countries like Netherlands. We talked about it in Kitchener’s cycling & trails master plan working group & it’s great to see it become a part of road reconstruction! A model for other cities to emulate! (Both the working group approach & the design)

Great article. Thanks for writing it.

Opinion: Canada’s outdated elevator rules are adding to the housing crisis The high cost of elevators is a barrier to the development of affordable, accessible homes

@englishrail.bsky.social and I have a piece in the Globe & Mail about how Canada can make housing more affordable and accessible, and disentangle itself from its unreliable and hostile southern neighbor: give its elevator industry the option to use the European/global standard, not just the U.S. one

Continuous sidewalks!

A design that’s common in countries like Netherlands. We talked about it in Kitchener’s cycling & trails master plan working group & it’s great to see it become a part of road reconstruction! A model for other cities to emulate! (Both the working group approach & the design)

Government of Canada announces funding for eight Environment-led research projects | Environment | University of Waterloo Marta Berbés, Rosella Carè, Peter Crank, Jennifer Asanin Dean, Brian Doucet, Christine Dow, Richard Petrone and Seth Wynes receieved new funding to support research projects.

Excited to announce I have been awarded a new SSHRC Insight Grant to examine gentrification & displacement along new transit lines.
We will be working with great partners across Canada to centre tenant experiences + solutions to keep these neighbourhoods affordable.
uwaterloo.ca/environment/...

Fascinating read (with amazing photos) about the history of Mexico City's once vast rail network.

This is awesome! Well done Skytrain. What a great way to introduce the Mark V!

The pedestrian bridge at Exhibition GO is a great place to get transit + skyline photos.

Controversial bus lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin may get extended after all Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is asking city staff to look at extending the proposed dedicated bus lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Be bold, Toronto.
Be ambitious.
Act like a big city!
Build those bus lanes as far north as you can.
www.thestar.com/news/gta/con...

If you're interested in Toronto's streetcar history and how it's still influencing the city today, join Michael Doucet and I as we present the annual Toronto History Lecture for the Ontario Genealogical Society.
Online, 5 August at 7pm. More info here:
torontofamilyhistory.org/learn/toront...

The pedestrian bridge at Exhibition GO is a great place to get transit + skyline photos.

Suggest your own spending cuts, Carney government tells CBC, Via Rail Nearly all government departments and federally-funded organizations are expected to propose "savings" of up to 15 per cent of their spending in the next three years.

I thought a well funded public broadcaster was important to combat misinformation and a good passenger rail system was needed to strengthen our economy and connect the country.

www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

Controversial bus lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin may get extended after all Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is asking city staff to look at extending the proposed dedicated bus lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Be bold, Toronto.
Be ambitious.
Act like a big city!
Build those bus lanes as far north as you can.
www.thestar.com/news/gta/con...

Halifax tenants in 'precarious housing situations' band together to fight renovictions | CBC News As one tenant of PreCor Property Management began fighting what she says is a questionable renoviction, she realized other tenants in more buildings were facing eviction attempts too. Then they starte...

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Vienna has been declared a renters’ utopia – and it’s easy to see why | Justin Kadi Social housing makes up almost half of the city’s 1m homes. The system isn’t perfect, but it gets a lot of things right, says housing expert Justin Kadi

Vienna is regularly cited as the best example of how to do affordable housing, and @justinkadi.bsky.social is *the* Vienna housing expert.

He explains the city's social-rental stock results from structural political commitment + investment (1% levy on salaries)

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Highland Park also has many buildings like this. Sadly a lot of them are in bad shape or have long been demolished.

TTC Canadian Light Rail Vehicle - Transit - HO scale - Rapido Trains Inc. Rapido Trains Inc. is a high-end manufacturer of model trains and accessories in HO, OO and N (North American 1:160 and British 1:148) scales.

Really exciting to see that Rapido Trains is going to come out with several HO scale CLRVs this fall! I will definitely be adding one to my collection.

rapidotrains.ca/ho-scale/tra...

Zohran Mamdani Has Some Good Ideas for NYC Transit. His Biggest Promise Isn’t One of Them. Riders don't want buses to be free. They want something else.

In @slate.com , I explained why Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for fare-free buses is a bad idea for NYC.

The cost would be enormous, the benefits meh, and the downsides real.

If Mamdani can find $1 billion/year to improve transportation, there are many better ways to spend it.

🧵

Looks open to me.

Open to people.

#OpenStreets

For Canadians following some of the tragic flooding in the US, this is a good chance to remind everyone that the federal government has a free weather app (WeatherCAN) that a) doesn't track any extraneous data b) has no ads c) has the most accurate alerts.

www.canada.ca/en/environme...

Across Europe, the financial sector has pushed up house prices. It's a political timebomb | Tim White We’ve been living in a great experiment: can finance provide basic human rights such as housing? The answer is increasingly no, says researcher and writer Tim White

Excellent article by @timwhite100.bsky.social about the financialization of housing worldwide & why it's bad for democracy.
If you want information about why housing costs have become so high recently, this is a great article to read! (lots of useful links, too)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

London’s low-traffic zones ‘cut deaths and injuries by more than a third’ Exclusive: Study also finds no change in number of casualties on roads just outside low-traffic neighbourhoods

NEW: Big study of low-traffic neighbourhoods in London suggest they cut road injuries and deaths by more than a third within their boundaries with no apparent negative safety effect on nearby roads. This feels a *major* boost for proponents of such schemes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

This Crown corporation is the steward of some of Canada’s most iconic landmarks — and may be key to addressing our housing crisis The Star caught up with Canada Lands Company president and CEO Stéphan Déry to talk about how reclaimed federal lands are key to meeting Canada’s housing goals, and how CLC

www.thestar.com/business/thi...