June 19, 2007 - Yay! My article was published today in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Policy- my first (and sadly, probably my last) piece of work to be published in an academic journal! Sure, the paper feels like it was written a billion years ago (December 2004 to be exact), but wow, it's such a great feeling to see your name printed on an actual paper.
Chances are no one I know will ever read the article and grad students who are forced to read it will curse me for adding to their reading load. But oh well, I'm still proud of my work =)
Special thanks to Prof. Conway for pushing me to write this and for getting it published!
Boo for my parents not caring though. or my friends. sigh.
June 15, 2007 - The Ontario government today announced an unprecedented $17.5 billion rapid transit action plan for the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton. Named "Move Ontario 2020", the transit plan features 52 projects that will expand transit to all corners of the GTA. You can click here for a list of the projects (including Toronto's Transit City vision and the extension of the Yonge Subway to Highway 7!).
What's significant about this announcement is not only the scope of this plan, but also the fact that the province will fund two-thirds of all project costs (with hopefully the feds covering the remaining one-third), thus relieving the municipalities of their traditional one-third share.
While critics were quick to say that this is simply an election promise (and the Liberal government doesn't really have a good track record when it comes to that), what's important here is that at least transit, for the first time in a long time, has been brought to the foreground as an important election issue. Sure, the plan is bold and it's not for certain that all the projects will be built, but at least there's now A PLAN to do something - which is something that we haven't seen since the early 90s. Could this transit dream be finally realized?
June 14, 2007 - Just when I was feeling very depressed about the TTC, it managed to surprise me again with the unveiling today of its latest public consultation on the plan to purchase a new fleet of light rail vehicles to replace our current streetcars. With a hip, youthful, flashy multi-media website "mynewstreetcar.ca", this is definitely not your ordinary public consultation meeting or open house. On the website (cleverly named Transfer to the Future) you can actually click through various pictures of both the current streetcar fleet and LRVs in other parts of the world and tell the TTC what you like or don't like about each one. Pretty cool way to speak your mind from the comfort of your own home (or office)!
What I especially liked is the awesome video that they've put together to advertise the site (see video at the bottom of the site). The video actually makes riding the TTC seem cool (not an easy task I tell you). The video should be on tv - and if it's reworked a bit (i.e. include more shots of buses, the subway and maybe even the RT), it could actually be part of a whole new advertising campaign to make the TTC more youthful and appealing (TTC marketing ppl: can you hear me?).
This is the 2nd time the TTC has impressed me with a new website in recent months (the first was their Transit City LRT Plan) - could this really the beginning of a new era in TTC marketing and public relations?
June 12, 2007 - Is it just me or has the subway been super slow and super unreliable lately? The other day, it took me almost half an hour to go from Eglinton to College - which normally takes about 12 minutes. What annoyed me the most was the train stopped just outside Eglinton Station - you could actually see it standing on the platform. Why couldn't the train just stop at the station to at least let people on?
Then today, Bernard and I were on our way to Union to catch our 5:20 GO train. We left Jenny's convocation at 4:50ish (yay!), got to Queen's Park Station at 5 and what was supposed to be a 6 minute subway ride to Union turned into more than 20 minutes!! The reason: some sort of signal problem (again!). What pissed us off the most was we stopped just outside Union Station for like 5 minutes - when the train could've easily pulled into the station to drop people off! Ultimately we missed our train home and had to wait for another 40 minutes for the next one.
As much as I support transit, sometimes riding the TTC just really gets to me - there needs to be a better accountability mechanism in place - who's the blame for subway delays? and what can be done? and why can't they just pull the train into a station and wait for the signal to change there?
June 19, 2007 - Yay! My article was published today in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Policy- my first (and sadly, probably my last) piece of work to be published in an academic journal! Sure, the paper feels like it was written a billion years ago (December 2004 to be exact), but wow, it's such a great feeling to see your name printed on an actual paper.
