Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026Hi! I’m on the mailing list, but have yet to attend an event. I’d love to give a presentation, please send an email to observingthecity@gmail.com 010
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026I also hope this makes the lives of planners and other city staff easier. I want to be able to tie our decisions about space allocation and congestion to reality. Transit/walking/cycling is necessary in densely populated areas with limited road space. 141
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026Thank 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.caToronto Intersection CountsEvery Toronto intersection the City has counted, mapped by how its traffic splits between cars, trucks, buses, people walking and people cycling. 2150
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026Yep, exactly what I’m doing and thank you for the thread! I would love to be able to superimpose transit ridership that passes under/over those same intersections if could estimate ridership at specific locations. I could make some estimates but they would not be as accurate as city counts. 111
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026These are single day counts on randomly selected days, so there are many independent variables that might be at play for that specific day. Also the x-axis is not linear in time. Since the sample point data is random, there is no 2011 data point, 2007, then 2009, then 2016. 100
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026See intersection counts from across the city, here: www.observingthecity.ca/intersection...observingthecity.caToronto Intersection CountsEvery Toronto intersection the City has counted, mapped by how its traffic splits between cars, trucks, buses, people walking and people cycling. 042
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026Only 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. 22710
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 17/09/2026This streetcar waited 25 seconds for one truck to turn left. Wasn’t @mayoroliviachow.ca celebrating “transit signal priority” on Spadina 6 months ago? 1215
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 02/09/2026Brad 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. 46717
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 31/08/2026Any arterial street that have street parking, most current 2 lane side roads. Basically every street outside core has lane widths that could be reduced to accommodate etc 000
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 31/08/2026I didn’t say anything about reducing traffic lanes. 100
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/08/2026It absolutely is. There is no law that bars the expansion of bike lanes. 200
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/08/2026Would 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. 2162
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 26/08/2026Freshly 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? 2101
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 24/08/2026Interact with the full map and submit your own results, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-...observingthecity.caWhere would you live in Toronto? — Observing the CityDraw the parts of Toronto you'd actually want to live in, and see where everyone else would. 050
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 24/08/2026For people who live in the city, proximity to transit seems to influence border definitions (first photo) vs for people who live outside the city (second photo), borders seem more defined as boxes defined along streets rather than transit routes and specific neighbourhoods. 2130
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 24/08/2026A 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. 3384
Reposted by Observing The CityKanchan @kayehm.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Contrary 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... 05520
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 23/08/2026This is where the 14 people in this box would live. Try it for yourself, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-... 021
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 23/08/2026After 92 people responded, this is where people in Toronto would live. 4221
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 22/08/2026Try it out, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-you-live/observingthecity.caWhere Would You Live? — Observing the CityMap tool for drawing the parts of a city you would want to live in, aggregated into a heatmap of everyone’s answers. 020
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 22/08/2026I 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. 2112
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/08/2026There is so much low hanging fruit like this section to improve network effects. There seems to be no urgency from either staff or councillors to move forward with these projects, and rapidly. There are many such stretches that would not require traffic lane removal. 190
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/08/2026A 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. 2193
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026I 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. 828571
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026Any push to have the city not extend it a month? 120
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026After thinking about it more, it needs to be fully pedestrianized. (with ability for emergency vehicles to enter) 010
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026I made the tool: observingthecity.ca/video-counterobservingthecity.com 100
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026This block was closed for to cars for 8 years, the neighbourhood functioned fine. It can continue to be. 1170
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026You cannot have a curbless street that invites pedestrians to walk down the centre, and then have no elements on the street to slow down cars in the extremely wide right of way. @mikelayton.bsky.social @diannesaxe.bsky.social @dianayoon.bsky.social @gabeblanc.bsky.social 3191
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026Pedestrians 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. 4204
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026Blackbird baking moving in at Mirvish Village. 0162
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026This is what Bloor street used to look like at this intersection. 2 lanes for vehicular traffic and 2 lanes for parking. Now it's 2 lanes for vehicular traffic and 2 bike lanes. 170
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026One 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. 4256
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026This model downloaded and hosted on your browser, so it is not state-of-the-art best quality. For a whole day of video, you probably are better off processing on your machine. Maybe I will make an open source desktop or cli tool that you can get from github. 000
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026Technically you could but would take a really long time and huge file that may break the download. You can cut frame rate in the tool, but it may miss some tracking/registrations. Re: resolution it is already downsized to 640px before being fed to the model, so a further cut may reduce reliability. 100
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026You can check it out here: www.observingthecity.ca/video-counter data from official city counters at different intersections is here: www.observingthecity.ca/bike-counter...observingthecity.caVideo Traffic CounterCount vehicles, bikes and pedestrians crossing a line in your own video. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored. 010
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026Video I took and model I ran with a tool I made. 110
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026I assume if the camera is at angle of say, a traffic light camera it would do well, but not top down at 90 degrees. 010
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026The model is RT-DETR and was trained on COCO dataset. It’s overwhelmingly ground level perspective. I think it wouldn’t really work on drone footage because almost not of training data would be from that perspective, but I haven’t tried. 130
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026I want to see your own videos of intersections during your commute! Take a video and place the intersection line, then get a live multi-modal intersection count. It can count bikes vs vehicles, as well as pedestrian vs vehicles. www.observingthecity.ca/video-counterobservingthecity.caVideo Traffic CounterCount vehicles, bikes and pedestrians crossing a line in your own video. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored. 2313
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026Morning 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? 13506137
Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 17/08/2026Yonge 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. 38815
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. 260