Where’s the best spot for that new police station? After two October public consultations and with the clock ticking on a December site-selection vote at city council, the best answer is none of the above – at least for now. Three options have been presented for merging Toronto Police Service’s 54 and 55 divisions: East […]
The timing was perfect: A big black pickup – complete with a rumbly mating-call-of-the-inadequate-man exhaust system – sped past, interrupting my discussion with neighbour Larry Kidd before it really started. Kidd was out collecting signatures in support of speed humps on Hanson Street, south of Danforth at Coxwell, and I was eager for a progress […]
Doing the Macarena, snapping up shares of Bre-X and dot-com companies, touting the primacy of palm pilots and DVDs while bracing for Y2K: It all once made so much sense, till it didn’t – much like protesting new bike lanes. In the 1990s, I commuted by car from a Beach-area home to downtown jobs, and […]
It’s 650 metres from S.H. Armstrong Community Centre to the TTC’s Leslie Barns – 13 lengths of an Olympic pool. You’ve probably heard Armstrong pool, where Penny Oleksiak’s Olympic journey began, will soon be closed to save $162,000 annually. It’s a drop in the lake compared with money politicians flushed away in recent years on […]
Veterans of the Beach-versus-Beaches wars need never be asked, What’s in a name? But it’s different north of the tracks, even if roses smell as sweet and the need for identity matters as much. New street signs went up last month on Danforth Avenue between Westlake and Jones. They proclaim the Danforth Mosaic Business Improvement […]
So near and yet so far has long described the gap between Main Street’s underground subway platforms and their open-air counterparts at GO’s Danforth station. I hadn’t intended to return to this scene so soon, but my column in February about Main-Danforth pedestrian disconnects prompted several readers to suggest I tackle “the great missing link.” […]
“Crowded! Hot! Loud! Nobody can hear each other!” Those words top my notes from last June’s public meeting for City Planning’s Danforth Avenues Study, endured in non-air-conditioned discomfort at Hope United Church. Yet, eight months later, I think back more to a moment I almost missed. Needing a break from the heat and din, I […]
If there’s truth in the axiom that everyone loves a good mystery, there’s hope for Victoria Park subway station. The nearly 49-year-old TTC stop and the parking lot on its south and west flanks need all the love they can get, even in Toronto’s hot real estate market. And, yes, while there’s no imminent shutdown […]
You probably received a flyer this fall urging you to “Shape the future of transportation in your community.” It was an invitation to open houses (three of them local-ish) put on by provincial transit agency Metrolinx, which plans to install a fourth track and overhead wires on the GO corridor for its Regional Express Rail […]
A home close to the subway was top priority for Ann-Marie Colacino and her husband when they were house-hunting in 2013. And after enduring several bidding wars they finally got one a 10-minute walk to Coxwell station. But less than two years after becoming my neighbours, they gave up on transit to ride bikes to […]
