On October 3, New York City did something very similar to what Toronto did on King Street. It restricted through traffic on 14th Street to only trucks and buses, and turned the street into the city’s first “busway.” Under the new rules, cars, vans, and… Read More
I had dinner tonight on King Street and I was reminded that this week marks the one year anniversary of the King Street Transit Pilot here in Toronto. The pilot has certainly had its share of controversy, but the improvements to both transit reliability and… Read More
Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading. I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an… Read More
Back in January 2016, I wrote about Toronto’s ambition to transform King into a “transit first” street across the downtown core. The King streetcar is the busiest surface transit route in the entire city (65,000 riders / day on average) and it was – and continues… Read More
Anyone who has ridden Toronto’s King streetcar during rush hour can tell you that the service is broken. It’s unreliable. It’s overcrowded. And during peak times it can be faster to walk. Chart below. Part of the problem is a misallocation of resources. Only 16%… Read More
Yesterday was an exciting day for Toronto city building announcements. Firstly, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail published an exclusive preview of architect Bjarke Ingel’s plan for King Street West. Here’s a photo of the architectural model (it’s by Landon Speers): My favorite quote… Read More
https://500px.com/embed.js I try not to focus on local Toronto issues this much, but this morning an important initiative was announced and it’s blowing up my Twitter feed. By spring 2017, the city hopes to have a pilot project in place that will transform King Street… Read More
Those of you from Toronto might be aware that the city is currently assessing the possibility of a “relief subway line” that would connect the downtown core back up to the Bloor-Danforth subway line in the form of a stretched out “U”. The reason this… Read More
Right now the Toronto International Film Festival is going on in the city. It’s actually one of my favorite times in Toronto. There’s so much going on and the city generally does things that it doesn’t normally allow, but that it should do all throughout… Read More
Tonight I saw one of Toronto’s new streetcars cruising down King Street. They’re still in test mode and the first batch won’t go into operation until this August, but every now and then you’ll see one circulating around the city. This was the first one… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 