iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026

Thank you, @how-sen.com for the thread! I hope others can continue to glean insights from these visualizations. My goal is to make this data as accessible as possible and not hidden in reports to council that no one reads. www.observingthecity.ca/intersection...

observingthecity.ca

Toronto Intersection Counts

Every Toronto intersection the City has counted, mapped by how its traffic splits between cars, trucks, buses, people walking and people cycling.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026

Only around 40% of rush hour traffic at Bloor and Shaw in Toronto is made up of cars. Before the bike lanes on Bloor, over 80% of traffic was cars. Now more commuters pass through the intersection, although raw number of cars has decreased. If you build it, they will come.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 17/09/2026

This streetcar waited 25 seconds for one truck to turn left. Wasn’t @mayoroliviachow.ca celebrating “transit signal priority” on Spadina 6 months ago?

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 02/09/2026

Brad Bradford says that 50% of roadway cannot be allocated to 1% of users. Good thing it isn't. Only about 1% of all of Toronto's road space is allocated to bike lanes. I showed my work, and used Danforth (the lanes he fought so hard to get added) as an example.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/08/2026

Would be great if the mayor or anyone on council could present a vision for a cycling network and then actually deliver it. Then when it’s delivered, celebrate its success. Too often when new safe street infrastructure is installed, the announcements are immediately trying to re-assure drivers.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 26/08/2026

Freshly installed at Runnymede and St. Clair. I know this is the default standard for bike lanes adjacent to parking for accessibility reasons. These plastic flex-posts get destroyed so easily. Why not elevate lane adjacent to parking? That would be no different re:accessibility than at a curb, no?

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 24/08/2026

A few interesting observations about where people want to live in Toronto. First, the most desirable areas map almost perfectly to the areas that have lost the most population since 1971.

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Kanchan @kayehm.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Contrary to a narrative being propagated by a certain double name person, gun violence is not actually increasing in Toronto Do you know what is? Traffic fatalities. Including pedestrians, people cycling, and people riding motorcycles. Don't believe the hype. Source: www.tps.ca/data-maps/da...

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 23/08/2026

After 92 people responded, this is where people in Toronto would live.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 22/08/2026

I made a tool where you can draw boundaries around the sections of the city you would want to live in. Then see a heatmap of responses that can be filtered by responses from within the city and outside of the city.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/08/2026

A plan to fill the gap in the Christie bike lane between Bloor and Dupont has been brought up since 2011. Was in the plan to be completed between 2019 and 2021, and then died on the vine. These types of gap closures should be highest priority while Bill 212 is in effect.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026

I will keep posting these videos on bike lanes that Ford is threatening to remove daily until morale improves. Today we are on Bloor at Brunswick, during afternoon rush hour on a Wednesday. No congestion to be found. 38 bikes and 25 cars over 2 light cycles.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026

Pedestrians getting out of the way for a car zooming down Markham. Definitely doesn’t seem like it’s “pedestrian-first”. Councillor candidates should commit to pedestrianizing at the first opportunity.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026

Blackbird baking moving in at Mirvish Village.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026

One full light cycle on Bloor at Shaw during rush hour at 5:30 on a Tuesday. Where is the traffic? Equivalent numbers of bikes and cars pass through the intersection.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026

Morning commute on a bike lane that Doug Ford wants to rip out. 21 bikes and 4 cars clearing an intersection in 23 seconds. Which mode fights congestion?

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 17/08/2026

Yonge St on a random Monday, this many pedestrians on the sidewalk while 2 cars are driving south on the same stretch. Allocated 2 lanes, one with a stopped vehicles every 100m rendering it useless. Stop with the 12 years of studies and just allocate 2 extra lanes of space to pedestrians now.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 17/08/2026

"Crime is coming down" is not a good plank to take for Chow's campaign. Even if this is true, she is never going to own that lane.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 16/08/2026

Ford celebrated ripping out bike lanes 2 days ago. Meanwhile, Bike Share is recording it's 5 millionth rider today. This is more rides than were seen in all of 2022, the system has doubled its ridership in 4 years.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 16/08/2026

You can now track Bike Share Toronto e-bike growth and compare it relative to classic bikes on my website. As well as compare member to casual riders.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 11/08/2026

The TTC has provided a table on "Reduced Speed Zones" on their website for the past few years. It just has a static map and is hard to interpret the real impact on riders. I have created a tool that pulls this data daily and will provide real info on how this delays riders.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 05/08/2026

The Bell Jar filming in Kensington Market

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 03/08/2026

Mirvish Village sign is being installed. The homage to Honest Ed's wasn't in the initial renderings.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 02/08/2026

Bike Share Toronto revenue is up about 25% over last year for the first half of 2026. This is even after a record-breaking cold and snowy winter caused a slow start to the year.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/07/2026

Municipal politicians talk a lot about meeting "TransformTO" goals. I have made a tool that actually tracks commute mode share in Toronto and measures how close we are to hitting these goals! See what your ward's transportation mode share is and hold candidates to account.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 14/07/2026

Over the past week over 32,000 people, across over 2,000 cities have contributed to what they define as "downtown." NYC is clearly delineated by the East-West streets as northern borders. Chicago centres on the loop, but bleeds into the surrounding areas. London is bi-modal.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 10/07/2026

Where is downtown? It's an endless debate. Let's finally settle it! Choose a city, add your definition of downtown, and compare it to the general public. Then share your map on social media!

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 09/07/2026

Newly reconstructed intersection on “Transitway” of King St at Church. Why take the opportunity to improve the streetscape in anyway when you can just put it back in its temporary cheap state as it was before.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 04/07/2026

Sneaky Dee’s was saved by a bank. Kudos to all who brought media attention to this fight to get to the point where RBC didn’t want to be involved. Probably wasn’t as simple as just “we didn’t know we owned the land.” Could be that they knew and were good to sell, but escalated due to bad press.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 02/07/2026

4 police and 7 security guards permanently stationed over 2 blocks of Church street. All because cars are now not permitted along this stretch. When anyone talks about “cost overruns” for pedestrianization, this is where it’s coming from. This cannot be the model going forward.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 27/06/2026

I hope that the “report” that will come to council about pedestrianization in Toronto will lay out that we cannot treat pedestrianized streets and pilots as “festivals.” The cost and staff effort is far too high. They must be treated like any other street. Just without cars and designed for people.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 27/06/2026

The ultimate irony is IntegrityTO booking a tent at pride. With all he has posted to villainize pedestrian streets and queer people, it’s definitely something that this grifter feels comfortable enough to use a queer pedestrian street to preach his vitriol.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 26/06/2026

Olivia Chow’s deputy campaign manager and transition lead was running this councillor’s election day operations.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/06/2026

I hope this kills the idea in Toronto that these types of things need 15 years and 5 multi-year consultation periods and environmental studies before pilot implementation.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/06/2026

It's amazing how quickly a space can be transformed by political will and a few barriers. Just one night in, before any semi-permanent street furniture or activations, the newly pedestrianized gay village in Toronto feels like a completely different -- festival -- atmosphere.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/06/2026

Remember in 2025 when a TTC spokesperson said their *goal* was 10 slow zones and that it would "never be zero".

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 14/06/2026

There were over 46k Bike Share rides in Toronto yesterday, more than the average ridership of the Queen streetcar. The cost to the city to operate that streetcar was over $50k/day in 2015. Bike share costs the city $8k/day. 6x as cost efficient. Smart cities invest in cycling.

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Matt Elliott @graphicmatt.com · 09/06/2026

Working on an archive project for my past council coverage and some of these old quotes from Councillor Brad Bradford are wild in retrospect. This was April 2022! Not that long ago!

Tweet from @GraphicMatt dated April 7, 2022: “The notion that everyone’s gonna get in their single-occupant vehicle and get across town in 20 minutes? It’s an antiquated notion,” says Councillor Brad Bradford. “21st-century cities build bike lanes.”

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 08/06/2026

Seriously, the solution to "crowd management" is pedestrianization more often, in more places, and for longer. Instead, transportation services just used "risks associated with high attendance" as a reason to not support Church St. pedestrianization. There is so much rot at city hall.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 08/06/2026

Portland and Wellington, Toronto, Canada. June 2026, Colourized.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 07/06/2026

The most shocking thing to Canadians about this pedestrianization project would be the timeline. 4 years from pop-up pilot to complete road redesign. What happens when you don’t “consult” to-death over a decade. Opposers carried a coffin through the space to signify the death of the area. Ignore.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 06/06/2026

Brad Bradford continues to campaign against things that *he* supported under Tory's mayoralty, before Chow stepped foot into office. This time its the world cup deal that Tory negotiated and signed. Brad happily supported Tory in this awful deal at the time.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 05/06/2026

Journalists need to respond to Bradford with this every time he tells this lie during the campaign. Total community safety indicators have decreased every year since Chow’s election. Also, homicides are at lowest point since mid-70s and lowest per capita since the 50s.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 02/06/2026

Church Street, Toronto, Canada. June 2026, Colourized.

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 31/05/2026

I’m going to start a grant program. $5000 grants to take a trip to Barcelona. Eligibility requirement: Toronto City Councillor or member of Transportation Services staff

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Matt Elliott @graphicmatt.com · 29/05/2026

Further to the “squeaky wheel problem” thing, there’s one guy who has basically been waging war against these food stalls for several months. You can read his correspondence with the city here: www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis... (PDF)

toronto.ca

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 29/05/2026

It’s really sad that @chanface.bsky.social has to be asking these questions. The city should be throwing their support behind this project and investing in making it a success by activating the space. Instead they expect local BIAs to do everything to “activate” spaces and let these initiatives die.

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