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Observing The City

@observingthecity.ca
2.4K followers 112 following 517 posts

Observations from around the city (in most cases, Toronto)

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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026
Hi! 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
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/09/2026
I 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.
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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 · 28/09/2026
Yep, 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.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026
These 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.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 25/09/2026
See intersection counts from across the city, here: 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 · 31/08/2026
Any 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
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 31/08/2026
A lot…
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 31/08/2026
I didn’t say anything about reducing traffic lanes.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 28/08/2026
It absolutely is. There is no law that bars the expansion of bike lanes.
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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
Interact with the full map and submit your own results, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-...
observingthecity.ca
Where would you live in Toronto? — Observing the City
Draw the parts of Toronto you'd actually want to live in, and see where everyone else would.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 24/08/2026
For 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.
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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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Reposted by Observing The City
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
This is where the 14 people in this box would live. Try it for yourself, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-...
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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 · 23/08/2026
Nah
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 22/08/2026
Try it out, here: www.observingthecity.ca/where-would-you-live/
observingthecity.ca
Where Would You Live? — Observing the City
Map tool for drawing the parts of a city you would want to live in, aggregated into a heatmap of everyone’s answers.
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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 · 22/08/2026
Because staff don't seem to care...
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 21/08/2026
There 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.
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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 · 20/08/2026
Any push to have the city not extend it a month?
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026
After thinking about it more, it needs to be fully pedestrianized. (with ability for emergency vehicles to enter)
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026
I made the tool: observingthecity.ca/video-counter
observingthecity.com
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 20/08/2026
Far wider, it's a very wide one-way.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
This block was closed for to cars for 8 years, the neighbourhood functioned fine. It can continue to be.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
You 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
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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
Paging @lanrickbennett.bsky.social!!
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
This 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.
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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 · 19/08/2026
This 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.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
Technically 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.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
You 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.ca
Video Traffic Counter
Count vehicles, bikes and pedestrians crossing a line in your own video. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 19/08/2026
Video I took and model I ran with a tool I made.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026
I assume if the camera is at angle of say, a traffic light camera it would do well, but not top down at 90 degrees.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026
The 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.
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Observing The City @observingthecity.ca · 18/08/2026
I 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-counter
observingthecity.ca
Video Traffic Counter
Count vehicles, bikes and pedestrians crossing a line in your own video. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored.
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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 · 17/08/2026
I nominate @lanrickbennett.bsky.social !!
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