Thief stabs ticket taker, burns TTC booth - "A man with a dark hood over his head and a scarf covering his face approached the booth [at Lawrence West station] and doused it with a cup of gasoline, demanding the employee open the door. Fearing for his life, the collector opened the door and allowed the attacker inside the booth, police said." [Toronto Star]

Adequately rewarding selflessness

`It was instinct,' subway hero says - "After risking his life by jumping into the tracks at the Sheppard subway station to save a blind man who had fallen in, friends and neighbours gave Osman Hersi the nickname Hero. It's a moniker that's sure to follow him all the way to Rideau Hall, where he will be given the Medal of Bravery by Governor General Michaëlle Jean in a ceremony later this year." [Toronto Star]

The article also notes that the TTC boosted Hirsi's initial reward -- one free metropass -- to a full year of gratis rides after a torrent of public complaints.

I think it should have been a special lifetime metropass. If 19-year old Hirsi lives to be 100, such a reward might represent a value of around $100,000* in 2007 dollars, but would cost the TTC virtually nothing given the insignificant marginal cost of a single rider. Even administration costs would be miniscule: just add one name to the MDP mailing list in perpetuity.

* ~$100/month * 12 months * 81 years = ~$97,200

Tear out the Sheppard subway!

I've been pondering the implications of the so-called Transit City LRT plan for Toronto (which has been discussed in passionate and speculative detail over at Spacing).

An LRT is to run westward along Sheppard to Don Mills station, which is great; however, travelling this direction past Yonge will then mean a transfer from the LRT to the subway at Don Mills, then to a bus at Yonge.

It is well-known that the Sheppard stubway, while convenient for a limited range of commutes, loses a great deal of money every year. If the LRT is added, it may being seem like an inconvenience.

My outlandish proposal: rip out the subway tracks and run the LRT underground from Don Mills to Yonge. Eventually, the LRT could hit the surface around Wellbeck (doesn't the Sheppard tunnel already run a certain distance past Yonge?), and head all the way out to Weston with connects at Bathurst, Downsview station, Keele, and the proposed Jane LRT.

Swapping subway for LRT along Sheppard shold cost considerably less than digging a new LRT tunnel (as is planned on Eglinton), requiring only new tracks and some station modifications to raise low-floor LRT doors up to meet the platform. The subway cars used on the Sheppard line are interchangable with the rest, and so they won't go to waste.

Will it cost less to operate an underground portion of an LRT line than the current Sheppard subway? Have heavy-to-light underground rail retrofits been sucessfully accomplished elsewhere? I have no idea, but a great deal of transfer hassle would be saved at Don Mills, and a single-trip, transfer-free LRT run from the east through to Weston would make a lot of sense.

Bag ladies (and lords), rejoice

Ontario curbs scavengers seeking big bucks from bottles - "Starting Monday, customers were charged a recycling fee of 10 cents or 20 cents a bottle for liquor or wine purchases. The money is returned when the empties are brought to a Beer Store. However, nothing prevents people from returning bottles bought before Monday and claiming a deposit they never paid." [CBC; also Toronto Star]

I've been saving wine bottles for a couple of months myself, but only because I learned that the vast majority of glass put in Ontario's blue boxes ends up in the landfill. 10 or 20 cents to haul your bottles back to the Beer Store is hardly a giant unwarranted payday. Maybe giving a little sugar to people who haven't paid the deposit on their empties is a relatively cost-effective way to publicize the recycling program? Certainly cheaper than the TV spots they've been running.

I wish they could be returned to LCBOs, as they tend to be more conveniently located next to bus routes and subway stations than their Beery cousins. By way of evidence, I offer up BeerHunter.ca, which is a handy way to locate your nearest booze peddler.

Say again, over

New York's $140-million subway radio system is garbled - "The system was completed in October, after years of effort to make it possible for transit officers in the subway to talk with officers aboveground." [Globe and Mail]

RIP, Walk left/stand right: "Removing the signs won't discourage walking on escalators, because they never encouraged it in the first place. Instead, the signs, simple and crude as they were, promoted order and kindness over chaos and confusion." [Torontoist]

• Merry "Christmess" from Zanta! [Torontoist via Spacing via BlogTO]


• What's the deal with that pleasantly robotic voice on the Subway? [Toronto Star]

Tunnel repairs to force rare Toronto subway detour [Globe and Mail]

• TTC ponders 24 hour subway service [Transit Toronto]


• "Simple Coffee has developed what they refer to as "Better Trade," a system that pays small farmers more than the Fair Trade price per pound on coffee, simply because it's the right thing to do." [Treehugger]

• TTC cars get the nod - "Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) accused fellow councillors of hypocrisy for insisting on made-in-Canada subway cars while buying foreign-built cars for personal use. 'Even the mayor drives a Prius, which is built in Japan,' he said." [Toronto Star]

The better way map

I threw a new-and-improved TTC subway map together today. If you have a spare moment, I'd appreciate it if you could try it, look for bugs and/or errors, and give me some feedback.

There's a great deal more information here than on the old version, of which the flashy (ha ha) custom icons are but a foretaste. Bus routes on all stations will eventually have their proper names (e.g. 36 Finch West rather than 36) and will be linked to individual route maps such as this. The layout of the page will also be improved once the map content is done.

If I hack away at it long enough, the ability to show or hide entire subway lines at will might work out, too. If that's out of reach, I'll have to be content with adding VIVA and GO stops to the mix.

• Spiralfrog to offer up ad-supported, DRM'd WMA content from Universal for free. Big Whup? [CNET News]


• I pass Globe Solar Energy on Finch East twice every weekday. Apparently they deal in domestic and commercial solar water heaters like these, which apparently pay for themselves in 4 years.


• Star P.M. is "a new, downloadable afternoon newspaper
  every weekday starting Sept. 5" [Toronto Star]


• Siemens ups the ante, says it can build subway cars in Ontario instead of China [AM 640]

69 stations update...

56 stations down and 13 to go with just 49 days left before time runs out.

I've completed the Sheppard and Yonge-University-Spadina lines, but still need to finish a few Bloor stops and the entire Scarborough RT.

Can I do it?

More importantly, how best to celebrate my triumph and/or tragic failure?

Tags: Subway, transfer, quest, TTC.

TTC Overload!

• Biodiesel, first tested in Sept. '04, now in all 1,700 TTC buses [News Release]


• Citing 'political interference', TTC head Ducharme resigns [Toronto Star, Globe and Mail]


• Globe's John Barber hits that TTC vice-chair (and councillor, and hardcore NDPer, and "fluent in French and Arabic") Giambrone's management backing (if not selling out the transit union per se) bodes well [Globe and Mail]


• Pepsi Access is being pimped using audio enabled posters on the subway? Neat. [A/D Goodness via Make: via BlogTO]

• Another TTC strike in the works for tomorrow? [AM640]


• Dates and times to check out the new subway mockup


• Shredding scissors [via bOINGbOING]

• Must check out The Tile Project this weekend [via BlogTO]


• Captain Copyright, Access Copyright's cartoon indoctrinator, pirates Wikipedia? [bOINGbOING]


• 10 hurt in subway mishap [Toronto Star, Toronto Sun]

• If Downsview Park matters, why has nothing begun? - "Already the subway reaches the park, but so far there's little reason for anyone to use it..." [Toronto Star]


• Cool? Cool. [Torontoist]


• Twins, 11, donated $10,800 to Volpe's campaign [Globe and Mail]


• Alberta pharmacists earn right to prescribe drugs [National Post]


• Commuter challenge, you say? [via BlogTO]

• Subway fire at Finch station? [Toronto Fire Services]


• Petition + Stephen Lewis = Nobel Peace Prize? 19,140 signatures and counting...


• Plan your own Doors Open Toronto weekend with The Star's google map.


• Sheppard Ave. West (now sinkhole free!) to re-open today: 84ites rejoice! Oh, Jane & 7, too.[City of Toronto]


• UN to US: Close Gitmo [New York Times]


• US Senate proposes bigotry English be made national passtime language [Kansas City Star]


• Torontoist has begun a TTC quest of its own [69 stations]


• Paved rips Toronto Life a new one here.

New subway design?

The Star says that the TTC will run a contest to 'name' the new subway cars (here are some early, and 'interesting' ideas); meanwhile, Northern Ontario Business reports that talks between Bombardier and the TTC about actually building 'em are "intense", and quotes Commission Chair Howard Moscoe as saying "I don’t want to build my cars in a communist regime...I want to make my cars where it benefits Canadian workers."

Tags: Subway, TTC, Bombardier.

East-West indeed

I wonder what it feels like, for a cluster of sari-wearing South Asian women strolling along the pedestrian tunnel between the North-South and East-West platforms of Spadina station, to encounter an Asian dude playing Sitar through some serious effects pedals (surrounded by a cluster of gangsta-looking white kids)?

By the looks on their faces, mighty amusing.

In any case, it was much more iPauseworthy than your standard subway musicians:

While most of the auditioning entertainers are guitarists, the list of instruments played at the auditions has included the balalaika, violin, kalimba (thumb piano), cello, saxophone, mandolin, cimbalon, dizi (Chinese Flute) pan flute, banjo, dijerridoo, bassoon, hurdy-gurdy and steel pans.

Tags: Sitar, TTC, busking.

• Subway to York is 10 years off, says TTC chair [CBC]


• "Various Canadian libraries have joined the Internet Archive to scan various collections of books as part of a high volume book scanning pilot project. Custom scanning equipment and open source software has been developed by the Internet Archive to support the needs of the partner libraries and their collections. This is being hosted at the University of Toronto." [Archive.org]

• Booyah! Queen's Park to green-light Spadina subway extension in this month's budget... to prolong the deficit on purpose? [Toronto Star, Transit Toronto]


• "A record 20,000 delegates are expected to meet for the 16th International AIDS conference in Toronto in August, organizers announced yesterday." [National Post]


• Brison to blame for income trust leak? [Globe and Mail]


• "A group of 27 clergy and laity from 12 faiths -- including the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Zen, Daoist and aboriginal traditions -- have submitted affidavits stating they make regular use of the Jesuit property for meditative and prayerful retreats, and their spiritual quests would be impaired by the lights and traffic noise of a Wal-Mart store." [Globe and Mail]

Until February 28th, Ikea's Vaughan location will give you $20 off purchases of $150 or more (~13% off) if you show them your YRT/Viva monthly transit pass. Attempting to hump that much Ikea stuff home with you may be a challenge, but I'm sure you're up to it.

My Metropass, on the other hand, merits bupkis in terms of discounts (though the free shuttle bus from Leslie subway station to the North York Ikea is still handy).

Tags: Ikea, York Region Transit, Discount.

I made this!

Sure, it's not super accurate. Yeah, I haven't added as much detailed information as I ought to. I know, I should have used for loops instead of just manually coding all of the stations. I'm no CompSci major, after all.

But here's my TTC subway/RT station google map thingum anyway.

It has markers for all of the Yonge-University-Spadina, Bloor-Danforth, and Sheppard subway lines, plus the Scarborough RT line and the 'proposed' stations extending to the north-west of Downsview.

Clicking on any station brings up a small version of the TTC's schedule for that station; clicking on the small version brings up a full-size version.

What else should I add? Bus and streetcar routes would be fun, but I suspect I don't have the skills or patience. Maybe just working on precision for the pointers, or adding wee little TTC logos to mark the entrances for each station...

Tags: Google maps, TTC, Mashup, Beta.

• TTC 'sardine experience' looms - "In rush hour, the TTC considers a bus full when 52 to 57 passengers are aboard. The number is 75 for a streetcar, 108 for a longer articulated streetcar and a six-car subway train is meant to carry 1,000 people." [Globe and Mail]


• Tory! Tory! Tory! - a roundup of US bloggers' reaction to the Canadian election [Slate]


• Natural Food, Unnatural Prices - "Half of the zip codes with Whole Foods stores lie above $72,000 in average income. A fourth of them exceed $100,000." [AlterNet]


• Colbert vs. The Onion [The Onion AV Club]


• "How should I organize my library?" [Ask MeFi]

• If the Spadina subway extension is built like so (before I turn 65), I could almost consider not moving closer to the city centre. Specifically, the new Finch West station proposal [pdf] makes me uber happy. [TTC]

• "TTC approves subway to York, but money still an issue" [York University]


• "Willing to participate: Political engagement of young adults" [Statistics Canada]

• TTC to hold public consultations on York U subway extension on October 6.


• Did Pepsi augment its initial Katrina response by dumping Kayne West? Nope.


• Tornto Hydro is offering 2 free compact fluorescent light bulbs to every household through The Home Depot's dozen T.dot stores.


• Women Have To Stop Starving Themselves Past The Point Of Hotness [The Onion]


• Crime and the Social Reactionaries [via My Blahg]

• The Columbia Journalism Review wonders, "How much of the dead and dying can we -- or should we -- show on television? (Our own dead, that is; we don't seem to have the same problem with Iraqi corpses.)" [via Wonkette]


• demockratees are agitpropalicious, no-sweat, witty and score high on the zing-o-meter


• Toronto City Council votes down TTC in-train subway "info" (i.e. ad) screens [via Spacing Wire]


• The leggero shopper is both a bicycle trailer that converts into a shopping cart (and back again) and way, way too expensive [via Treehugger]


• How much would a condo the size of my apartment cost? Yes, it's downtown, but yow.

• TTC subway rider efficiency guide prints on one double-sided 8.5"x11" sheet and becomes a tiny, convenient reference to which cars line up with the escalators and elevators at each station. [Spacing Wire]


• Transit Toronto is also pretty damn cool.


• "[I]n 2001, the most common collective bargaining provisions, or those appearing in over 80% of settlements, were occupational health and safety, and job security [while] cost-of-living clauses were least common, appearing in only 43% of settlements." [Statistics Canada]

And, apropos of nothing:

There is only one correction which history has made in Marx's concept of alienation; Marx believed that the working class was the most alienated class, hence that the emancipation from alienation would necessarily start with the liberation of the working class. Marx did not foresee the extent to which alienation was to become the fate of the vast majority of people, especially of the ever-increasing segment of the population which manipulate symbols and men, rather than machines. If anything, the clerk, the salesman, the executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker. The latter's functioning still depends on the expression of certain personal qualities like skill, reliability, etc., and he is not forced to sell his "personality," his smile, his opinions in the bargain; the symbol manipulators are hired not only for their skill, but for all those personality qualities which make them "attractive personality packages," easy to handle and manipulate. They are the true "organization men" -- more so than the skilled laborer -- their idol being the corporation. But as far as consumption is concerned, there is no difference between manual workers and the members of the bureaucracy. They all crave for things, new things, to have and to use. They are the passive recipients, the consumers, chained and weakened by the very things which satisfy their synthetic needs. They are not related to the world productively, grasping it in its full reality and in this process becoming one with it; they worship things, the machines which produce the things -- and in this alienated world they feel as strangers and quite alone.

Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man (1961).

Transit-a-go-go

• Brainwash your wee ones into digging public transit [via Spacing Wire]


• iPod Subway Maps are a good idea, but of course there's no TTC love yet (Edit: now there is) [via Kottke]

Speaking of Map Hacks on Crack, how long will it take for someone to overlay the TTC Subway stops (if not the whole transit system) on Google Maps? There aren't that many, and API hacking is always a barrel of laughs... Reagan, I'm looking in your general direction...

Cooest / buttons / ever

From Flickr, via bOINGbOING : Spacing.ca, a site devoted to urban space issues in Toronto, offers a set of nifty buttons with the names and distinctive tile patterns of each TTC subway station. This feller got 'em and arranged them in the shape of the routes (well, except for the 'new' Sheppard line, but I digress).

Meta much? I can't wait 'till all the hipsters on by block are rockin' Pape or Spadina or whatever... what would a Wellsley and Queen button pairing denote? The possibilities are more than mildly amusing.