Recent content by McGillicuddy

First of all, construction sites aren't supposed to stay construction sites. It is appropriate to talk about future land use in the context of transit planning. Second, taking the SeaBus as our benchmark, it takes the SeaBus about 15 minutes to travel 3.25 kilometres, unload, and load. That...

The SeaBus connects the downtown core of Vancouver to a dense suburb along a route which is significantly shorter than the best road connection. This is also why the Dartmouth Ferries work in Halifax, why the Thames ferries work in London, why the river ferries work in Manhattan, etc. These...

The thing with parties soaring from opposition into majority positions is that, whatever their previously-stated principles, they tend to fold themselves into pretzels for whatever constituencies made their majority. In this case, while it's true the Conservatives hold very few Quebec seats at...

If the Liberals lose the next election and the project is still in the Establishing A Framework To Initiate Discussions With Potential Vendors Related To Planning A Model For Developing A Project phase, it won't matter how high Mark Carney's approval rating was in the spring of 2026. Great...

Excuse you, that's the Canal District, the premier nightlife and cultural destination in greater Sault Ste Marie, "where culinary delights meet casual comfort and sophistication"!

We're ordering off a limited menu: whatever model the city buys, the bikes need to be fully compatible with the existing dock and charger infrastructure. Ideally we'd also like a model which has been road-tested in similar installations, and which is maximally compatible with existing...

The NDP entered the 2015 election campaign leading in most major polls. They ended the campaign 10% behind the other two parties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_Canadian_federal_election

There's plenty of evidence that Mulcair is just not a very good politician: his post-Parliamentary punditry has been an absolute clown show. (Two years ago he was on TV confidently predicting that Jean Charest would have no trouble beating Pierre Poilievre to the Conservative leadership. How did...

Makes a great deal of sense, especially in light of the colossally stupid experiment with running GO Trains to London. So, on the one hand, there's enough political leverage in play here to force a conservative provincial government to run train service to London. But because the only extant...

We would also be further fracturing the passenger experience. (You must ALWAYS request stops on THESE services UNLESS the following criteria are met. You must pay your fare BEFORE boarding, unless you pay it UPON boarding, unless you board the service HERE, HERE or HERE...)

I can sympathize with the fact that it does take years to get a project up and running. But let's not forget: the government spent the better part of a decade dicking around with High Frequency Rail before they "committed" to this. If they'd arrived at a definite conclusion a few years earlier...

One big difference here: if you step off the train at Queen, you can potentially be inside the Eaton Centre in about 30 seconds. If you step off the train at Golden Mile, you can walk directly at your shop of choice and, ten minutes later, still find yourself walking across its parking lot...

On the other hand, it is almost certainly cheaper for the agency to have two drivers move two three-car trains than it is for them to have three drivers move three two-car trains. And as seat capacity is the same, you can present this as a neutral change, when it's actually a service cut.

It also demands a fundamentally different kind of engineering. When you're designing high-speed rail, you're trying to triangulate between various requirements (minimizing curves, minimizing changes in elevation, avoiding obstacles, etc.) which tend to steer you away from any population centres...

Commuter services are properly understood as a provincial and municipal responsibility. If the provinces want to come up with their own money, I'm sure ALTO will let them buy into the project.