 Okay, so here we go. We're live a little bit early here, but yeah, we're gonna get started at about, I think, we're gonna go live at roughly 305 just so that people who are getting on the stream or set reminders can have some time to get on. I'll just kind of monitor the chat slash prepare for the stream right now. Yeah, it's crazy to think that visiting all the stations was three years ago. There's a bit of a delay, by the way, between when I talk and what everyone sees. So okay, yeah, poster tour. So let's let's do that. So if I go like this, you can see I have the iconic, let me hold it here, the iconic 20 lanes poster here, the Von Metropolitan Center poster here, and then the the OG subway map over there, and then I have the Canada Line car map above that. Here is a little crazy because COVID and stuff. Let's see, I'm doing pretty well today. It's a cool day in Toronto and lockdown, but excited to be chatting with everyone about some transit stuff shortly. I'm gonna reorganize things a bit today, so I'll explain that 305. Hello from Florida. Hi there. Sorry, but I'm gonna have to go like this. You do that. Cool. Howdy Reese. Hey, how's it going, Joseph? Hey, from Vancouver. Always enjoy your videos. Awesome to see. Oh, the folks from Odeobanity. Good channel. You guys should go check it out. Lots of questions. Hi, everyone. Meetup in Bessarion. Yeah, maybe we'll see about that. I would love to do a meetup, but I think if I do a meetup, it'll be at like Union or something like that. A bit more accessible. Bessarion is not that accessible. Hi, Metro Elf, friend. Hi there. Yeah, once we get to 305, I'm gonna get formally started. Thoughts on doing videos at 60 frames per second. I think that's something I will move towards eventually, but it is just a little insane from a storage standpoint because like right now, my footage is all 4k. It takes up a ton of space. If I go to higher bit rate and I add 60 frames per second, it's gonna get a little crazy. So it's something I definitely consider, but I need to revamp my storage setup before that happens. Yeah, so if you're just joining, we'll be starting at 305. Good to hear. Thank you so much. So today, it's gonna be a little different from last time. I've got some mail I'm gonna open. Some people sent me some awesome transit maps and cards and stuff, which was awesome. I'm gonna open that up on stream. I also have some lemonade, which is good because my lips were getting quite dry last time. And so this should keep me going a little longer if I'm answering a lot of questions. Yeah, Linus Tech Tip Solution for storage would be very nice, I think. I don't think I need that level of storage quite yet, but someday, hopefully that will be the case. So we're gonna get started in just about two minutes. Just pulling up my sheet here as well as opening the news and stuff. I'm also going to be opening the news as well as opening the mail I have here. I'm also going to be talking about some interesting news stories over the past couple weeks that I thought were interesting. Regarding Brightline, I haven't heard any news. I think there's some stuff going on regarding a bond sale maybe for Brightline West, but I do think the extension to Orlando is progressing well. So that's good to hear. Yeah, I think I'm a bit beyond the external USB hard drive point. I do have several USB hard drives, external ones, but once you're getting into the eight terabyte hard drives, you have to start thinking a bit bigger than the USB ones. Brightline demystified. I might very well do that, actually. That's a good idea for a project. Ooh. Got some more things. Okay, so I'm gonna get started. Welcome, everyone, to the stream. I just want to note that in the description for the video is the link to the next stream. So go set yourself a reminder. I'm doing another one in two weeks. I think it's gonna be every two weeks. I'll be doing a stream. And yeah, I think, I don't know. Again, I'm wearing these headphones. My hair looks crazy. COVID, what can I say? But I'm gonna do a stream every two weeks. It's really fun. I enjoy chatting with everyone answering questions, talking about the news and stuff. But yeah, let's get into it. So the first thing I want to talk about is that I've been reading this book called Strap Hanger. It's very cool. So I recommend it. This is this is the first first item I had to mention for today. I'm gonna be reading hopefully one transit book every two weeks this year. And so I wanted to start it off with that because I thought, you know, that's, that's a good New Year's resolution. Now just to forewarn you, I've opened the letters already because you know, I don't want to be surprised with what's in these but some some folks sent me mail from last time, which is super awesome. Some people sent notes as well, which I'm not gonna read on stream because I'm sure people want those to be private. But yeah, it's really exciting. So if you have any unique transit cards, transit memorabilia, maps, etc. Feel free to send me those. The link again is in the video description. We'd love to open them up on on the next stream in two weeks. I think some more people sent mail that didn't arrive to us yet. So if your mail arrives later, we'll send it to you next week. So from Felix in Toronto, we have this lovely Beijing public transportation card. So this is an awesome addition to our collection. I don't know how the autofocus is gonna work. But that's a Beijing public transport card. So I think that's very cool. It says on there if you can't read it, build a digital Beijing enjoy modern living. So that's really neat. Let me close that up. I will get to answering some questions. Once I've gone through these, I have three pieces of mail. So once I'm done those, I will answer some questions and I'll talk about news and continue. So the next thing is these. These are from Rob in Ottawa. And these are all of the line one magnets for O train line one, which is very exciting. So what these are is is when line one opened in Ottawa, they gave out these kind of headboard looking magnets that that basically are the station signs. And this is a full set, I believe I can take a look. Rob is obviously much better than me because he was able to collect all of these tannies, Bayview, Pimacy, lion, as they call it, Parliament, Rideau, you are to a lease. Oh, my goodness. This is impressive. So I finally have the full set. I had, I had some of them, but I was missing a few. So now Rob has sent me the full set. Thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate that. So that's awesome. Next up. And the last piece of mail for today is from Theo, who is in Santiago, Chile. Very cool. Awesome metro system down there. Let me pull out the stuff that Theo has sent me over and feel FedEx dip and it got here really quick. So that was pretty, pretty interesting. So let's take a look. Okay, so first, we have a Brussels transport ticket. So this is very cool. Thank you so much for sending this. I don't think I have anything from Brussels. So that's cool to see. I have actually been to Brussels, but I was unlucky and I didn't get to ride the transit system, which is sad because I saw the trams and the trams actually operated in Vancouver during the Olympics for the temporary tramway. So it's a bit sad that I didn't get to ride them. We have the trend central smart card and and Chile is going crazy with the smart cards. It's kind of the suburban railway for Santiago. It's very cool. So that's an awesome card to have. Next I have the I'm gonna I'm going to butcher this name but the Metro Valparaiso. It's in Chile, Chile. Awesome. But yeah, thank you so much for sending that. This is a very cute little transit card called the BIP card or BIP or BIP. This is from Santiago. It's really awesome. It's just cute, you know, it's short and sweet. This is in the you know, the same realm as like Pazmo and stuff in my opinion. Now, this last thing is quite special and Theo has told me because this is a Metro map and you only get these when a line opens. So this is very interesting. Let me open this up. Kind of folds open a very nice pocket map. Let's flip these open and ooh, that's very nice Santiago Metro. Okay, so we've done that. So now that I've opened up this this mail, I just want to remind everyone if you have any cool unique transit cards, especially from Europe, Asia, South America, because I have a lot of North American ones, please send them to me. Link is in the description. So let's get to answering some of these questions in the chat. So thoughts on an RER tunnel under downtown Toronto. I think it's an idea that we'll probably eventually want to pursue. My personal preference has always been on College Street, you know, East West cutting across and depending on how crazy we want to get that could be a really long tunnel. But I think it's nice because it kind of is equidistant from Bloor and Queen where the Ontario line will run. So I think college is a cool corridor. You've got Queens Park, you've got U of T, there's lots of big trip generators on college. And so yeah, I think College Street tunnel is something I've always thought would be interesting. I have a friend who really is into the idea of a Bay Street tunnel. And that would be a North South tunnel linking up the North Toronto sub to the Union Station rail corridor via tunnels. A lot more crazy of an idea because that requires us getting the North Toronto sub for passenger use. But that's an interesting idea as well. So I definitely think eventually that's something we should look into. Next up, what's the next transit project you're excited about? I'm excited about pretty much every transit project. I know I made that video talking about the Eglinton Crosstown where I'm kind of a bit down about it. But I'm still excited about that project. I'm excited about the there's a project going on in like every major Canadian city, right? I'm excited about Broadway, Green Line, Valley Line, Waterloo Phase two, Hamilton, eventually happening, Mississauga, Finch, Eglinton, Ontario Line, Go, Ottawa, Expansions, Quebec City, Gatineau, Montreal, we've got transit everywhere. So it's very exciting, the progress happening. So there's a rumor about a project for Richmond BC along the lines of an LRT. Any thoughts or reactions? I think that's a pretty good idea. I mean, I think that if it's done right, LRT can work well. If it's on a, you know, an existing rail corridor, it's pretty well segregated. It's a good solution. Richmond, though, I don't know. For me, Richmond is a place where it's probably not best to put a ton of heavy infrastructure because of how low lying it is. It's at a lot of risk from sea level rise and an earthquakes, etc. It's also not that populated. Surrey has very little public transit, despite having a lot of ridership and a lot of populations. So I think investing in Surrey right now probably makes more sense. Let's look, what's your opinion on public transport in Vienna, Austria with its subways, streetcars and Espan. The city ranks top for quality of living like Canadian cities. I love Vienna. Vienna is awesome. Though the whole low floor metro line situation kind of like auto eyes is one that I find questionable. But on the whole, Vienna is super impressive. And it's a crazy city. Like I recommend people go and go and Google Maps 3D view and just look at Vienna. It's wild. It looks unlike pretty much any other city in Europe. So it's super cool. Let me scroll down. Why are big infrastructure projects always controversial? Well, because they're expensive. They take a lot of time. There's politics involved. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons. Any thoughts about doing a Los Angeles metro rail or Metro link demystified? So to clarify, I do demystified on major ongoing projects. So while metro rail in Los Angeles does have a lot of ongoing projects. Metro link does not. Nothing massive. Metro link I have thoughts on. I probably should make a video talking about about Metro link. I will do that actually in fact, I think it's super important to talk about LA Metro is also interesting. LA Metro is going through a massive expansion and I want to make a video about it. But there's a great existing video out there. If you guys haven't taken a look, go search up LA Metro expansion video. It's like the first one. It's super high quality. It's on a different level. But I'm a little less interested in just talking about the plan. I want to talk about what I think about the plan and I'm not as excited about LA Metro's expansion because I think the quality is questionable in places. And also regarding demystified, I usually do it on like mega projects and while a new light rail line is nice, I don't consider it to be like a mega project. It's not you know, gigantic. So I will talk about LA a lot more but probably not too soon. Okay, next up transit agency in the GTA that provides the worst service. There's a couple that would qualify, I think. I think, yeah, it's kind of hard to answer that question. But it's pretty easy to just look at main streets in different areas and just kind of compare it like you know, what is the bus service in these various cities look like? Which one is the worst? What's your opinion on the Finch West LRT and do I think it will be do you think it will be built like on time? I do think it will be it's pretty simple. There's very little underground work on it. It's it's mostly mostly just a surface LRT. With that said, I have problems with it, but I'll probably talk about that in another video. Thoughts on converting YRT to light rail. I think it's it's the nice thing is that it could happen someday. I don't think it has to happen anytime soon. We have to run buses on Viva before we can run trains on Viva. And right now very few buses are being run on Viva. Yes, the U six in Vienna was the line I was referring to. Thoughts on TTC line to under appreciated is what I have to say. There will be new trains on that line, which is very exciting. I'm going to answer a few more questions and then I am going to go through my first news story and then I'll go back to questions and continue. What are better low floor LRTs in Toronto or one of those LRTs with wheels on the articulation points? So very cool to hear you're talking about that. But I think those those articulate. Whoa. I think those those LRVs with wheels in the articulation points. I believe they mainly exist in Vienna. If you know of other cities that have them, that's interesting to know. They're better for some reasons. They're worse for other reasons. What's a project not even under consideration that you want the most Las Vegas subway? Come on straight down the strip underground. It would be really cool. It'd be well used. I know they have a BRT right now. I've seen it and used it before, but a subway would be absolutely awesome. Thoughts on the Singapore MRT, lots of expansions, but missed connections and transfers. Yeah, Singapore is super expensive. They're MRT. It's an interesting network. I haven't been able to use it. I'd like to in the future. That that's all I can really say on MRT at the moment. Will LA ever become less car dependent? We certainly would hope so given how much money is being spent on transit. Do you have plans on making a video on the new Xcela 21 and additional high speed segments coming with it? If you're referring to the new Alstom trains and some of the new upgrades to the Northeast Corridor, yes, I really do want to talk about it. I have a lot of thoughts. I think it's super interesting. LA Metro Canada line is a great sky train line, but I'm not sure I would say it's my favorite. Do you think 350 million pounds is reasonable for a tram line extension? Yeah, it's a lot for five kilometers. But it's probably about what you would expect in the UK. Thoughts on new bus lanes in Scarborough. Good idea. Are you going to go and try the new Xcela trains when they come into service? I certainly hope so. As long as I can travel, I would love to do a lot more videos in New York, DC, Boston, Philly. What's your opinion on the Carl's room model tram trains? I'll have to make a video on that. It's a very, very interesting idea. Thoughts on the new VIA trains? I have lots of thoughts. Let me get back to that after the first news item. Okay, so I'm going to go into the first news item. This is actually maybe I'll do two news items. So the first one is that, wow, Bois Franc in Montreal has come along really far. If you go and look at the kind of social media for the REM project, it's amazing. Like we were all really amazed that the cell shore segment of the REM was far along, you know, that they had built stations quickly. They had, you know, they had the infrastructure in the wires, the tracks, etc. But now it's like Bois Franc, which is on the northern section is really far along. If you look at it, it looks almost complete. So that's amazing. Also, REM trains have been traveling under their own power, which is amazing as well. The REM is amazing. Okay, I know people think it's funny that I like it so much, but it's great. The other news item I wanted to bring up here, I'm going to share this link. Let's see if I can get this. I'm going to share this link in the chat. So as it turns out, preparation is being made for the laydown and the site preparation for tunnel boring on the Eglinton West extension. That's mind blowing. So we are getting ready to put TBMs in the ground to start boring the Line 5 West extension to Ronforth Gateway, where my way connects to the TTC, where eventually the Pearson connection link to the LRT, sorry, I don't want to say LRT to the subway will happen. It's super exciting to see. I'm amazed how quickly that we're moving on that, as well as the Scarborough subway extension. Oh my goodness, so messy. It's amazing. So I thought that was awesome. I wanted to share that with everyone. But yeah, I'll answer a few more questions and then I will keep going through some new kind of news, etc that I think is very exciting. So on those new via rail trains, I think they're awesome. Let me take a sip of this lemonade. Mm, delicious. So I think they're absolutely awesome. They're going to be huge improvement. The interiors are super modern. If you've seen the Brightline trains, they're very similar. I love the LCDs. As you folks will know, if you've watched my videos for a while, I love internal LCD screens and they have wide kind of long ones on the tops of the cars. That's great for giving you kind of a time to your next station, what's coming up, stuff along the route, just lots of great information. They're going to have Wi-Fi. They're going to have really modern lighting accessibility. They're just beautiful trains. And what I think is kind of the untold story here. Well, it's not untold, but untold in the general public that I think is really interesting is that so the train sets are manufactured by Siemens in Sacramento, which is I think well-known, but this train set, the chargers and the venture cars, it's like the North American standard at this point. So there's probably going to be some on the Northeast Corridor. I know I think MTA is getting chargers. They'll probably get some venture coaches. I'm sure that we'll replace some of the Amfleet coaches with venture coaches. And the Amfleet cars being the kind of tubular Amtrak cars with the lines down them, the stainless steel ones. If you look at the venture compared to the Amfleet, the size like the cross section, the loading gauge is way larger. So it's really cool to see the comparison. There's been some pictures of those. I'll try to link one later. But so they're going to be on Northeast Corridor, Brightline, Amtrak Midwest has ordered them. Seattle is probably going to get some. I know they already have chargers. They're probably going to order the venture sets. So Seattle, Portland, Vancouver will have them. Caltrans has them for some of the Amtrak California services. Via is going to have them. These trains are going to be so ubiquitous. It's going to be really cool. And I think that's nice because it's a good design and having it everywhere in North America would be awesome. So I think that those are my thoughts. It's a lot of thoughts. I'm sorry about that. What would make Toronto have the perfect transit system? So things that we need that we don't have. Crosstown route in North Toronto that is fast. Shepard Line extension could do that. Expanded streetcar network throughout the denser parts of the city. Maybe like the junction. Some areas north of Bloor, east of the Don Valley. Rosedale, etc. I think streetcars could make more sense there. Bathurst up to St. Clair in sections. Bus lanes, bus priority, streetcar priority that works. Better subway service, platform screen doors. Go expansion, you know, actually happening. Electrification, station expansions. More train service Crosstown on go. So Midtown Toronto Line, North Toronto Sub. Busways, Finch Hydro Corridor Busway. I have some friends that are obsessed with it. So that would definitely be great. Yeah, we have a lot of things. Open payment with Presto. That's supposed to be happening. So do you think it's better if the Eglinton Crosstown was built as an extension and total renovation of the Scarborough RT? Yeah, sure. So if it was built as an extension of the Scarborough RT and like a total enhancement, rebuilt to use the modern trains that Vancouver uses, probably would have been better. It's probably would have also wanted to avoid linear motors in the snow though. I do think that that's a fairer compromise to make. Hi from BC. Hi there, Iron Lady. The service in LA is getting better. Yeah, bus service is super critical and without it getting better and without stigma kind of falling away, then you know that's a big problem. Will we ever get high speed rail? I certainly hope so though we should aim for 125 mile per hour, 200 kilometer per hour class before we aim for 320, I kind of think. What's your opinion on the Toronto Subway with the Crosstown LRT? At the end of the day I think Toronto will be so if you're talking about actual metro lines, like not LRT, I think Montreal probably wins, but on the long term with Toronto converting GO to a regional express rail model with frequent service that's electrified, Toronto blows Montreal out of the water because you have these giant trains, they're going on really long lines like GO RER is a couple hundred kilometer system that will probably have over a hundred stations. So Montreal is winning now because they took a smart decision, they're building something low cost that can be built quickly, but in the long term if we get our act together in Toronto we'll have a bigger system. When do you think the international terminal at Gare Central will begin operations? And do you think that REM will help move the project along? I'm not really sure the REM is going to have any impact on that. What he is referring to, Joseph specifically, is the kind of international pre-clearance terminal at Gare Central. So right now our inter-Canada US trains do not have pre-clearance, which is a little sad because if you had pre-clearance what that would mean is that you know you wouldn't have to stop at the border, so it just speeds up your train trip in terms of actual train travel time. You would still have to you know get pre-clear at the train station. This exists at most major Canadian airports already. I think that having it in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver would be expensive, but it's probably a long-term investment that's worthwhile. Though it does create a few issues in places like the Maple Leaf in Toronto, from Toronto to New York City, where there are stops in between Union and the border. So you got to sort those out, but I think it's a good idea. Do you classify the REM as light rail or metro? It's clearly a metro. People who call it light rail are lazy. Light rail as a term, if you didn't see my earlier video, I don't want to use it this year. I've used it already. I hate it. It's a terrible term and I think it is lazy because it doesn't have, it's a very broad word slash term. It doesn't have a single meaning. It doesn't mean something specific and so it's confusing and it's not a good term to use. Do you think the more trunks of the REM are likely to be built? I think so, because if you start getting, you know, we have three lines to the north. If those get congested, that's actually okay because you have a lot of capacity, but what you do need to do is add another trunk. So maybe we'll see a new trunk that goes some other way around Mont Royale, but that's an option. Light Metro doesn't exist. It's a conspiracy to make investors scared of transit. The REM trains look very Asian. I don't know if I would say that. I think Alstom's trains are quite distinctly like this kind of European style, a lot of curves and stuff. I tend to associate Asian metros with more straight lines, but you know it is a fluid thing. Google assistant calls the Vancouver Skytrain subway. Well that's because it technically is a subway. Oh, lots of messages. Ontario transit... Sorry, the only... I'm just reading these messages. Yeah, extending the orange line to Bois Franc would make a lot of sense. What would happen to the MR90s from the Dumontania line? I think they'll be put in museums, which is cool. Best way to serve Atlanta in its suburbs. Oh, so unsurprising take for me, a REM style system. But seriously, I've spent a lot of time in Atlanta. I have family that used to live in Atlanta. There's a ton of highways all around Atlanta, Gwinnett County, etc. I think serving those highway corridors with a REM style system is probably pretty good. You can take out like two lanes and put up a viaduct and quickly build out very fast, and it's important because Atlanta is sprawling, fast rapid transit. The thing you have to combine that with is high-quality bus service to serve the last mile trips. Marta is good, but the trains are gigantic, which will make extensions expensive. So that's kind of my thoughts on that. The ventures are beautiful. Yes, they are. Do you think extending the Finch West LRT to the east up to Finch Young Station? I think it's a good idea, but we should do it underground. Thoughts of the lack of hourly go service to Hamilton? It's egregious. We need to get 15 minute go service to Hamilton. Finland and Russia trains have onboard clearance. Interesting to hear. What were your thoughts on the pink line? You know, I think the pink line is kind of, it doesn't seem like it was very much technically assessed, right? It's going to be super expensive to build a line on that alignment, but it is probably a better line than the REM east, right? But the thing that doesn't get talked about is you have to be pragmatic. If it's super expensive to build, a super expensive line that would be great, that will never be built, is worse than a line that is insuperior, but which will be built, right? So I'm not saying the pink line could never be built, but it's obviously much less likely to be built than the REM east was, which is being built. So that is a factor you have to consider in your analysis of comparing projects. Once Go serves Grimsby, Bia should make the Maple Leaf an express service with passport checks at Penn and Union. Yeah, no, that's not a bad thought. Doing them at Penn is going to be difficult, though, right? Because there's a lot of intermediate stops in New York. How long until they honestly start extending the young line from Finch? Well, probably not that long. It's being studied right now. What are your thoughts on double versus single deck? Ooh, interesting question. Double, it's kind of, you know, it's the same as buses. Double deck is higher carrying capacity, but you want to probably a lower stop frequency. Of course, the Paris RER, as I have said, in my Crossrail video and possibly in a future demystified video, the Paris RER operates double deck trains with three doors per side, which is kind of unprecedented globally, but then you have a train that is like 90% stairs and so you kind of have that issue. You have to toss up between having a lot of stairs and not a ton of seating capacity and standing capacity. I don't think that there's a single correct answer. It really needs to be matched to the service. More Express can use double-deckers. Local services should use single-deckers in an ideal world. Okay. Did you check out the new Moynihan station in New York? Well, I have not traveled to New York, so I could not check it out in person, but I've definitely looked at it online. It looks quite nice, but it is a symptom of a problem which is doing these aesthetic improvements to a system without actually making service better. And we're guilty of it in Canada and some places too. Viva much in York region, but I think the Moynihan station is kind of egregious because it's even it's gigantic and super expensive. I would be much more supportive of it if it was coming with, you know, a gateway with through running and a pen expansion of the platforms, but since or reconfiguration of the platforms, but since that's not happening, it's a nice thing. Like, it's like with Eglinton. I'm not going to complain about making transit better, but that's money that could have been spent more effectively in other ways. And so that's the toss-up you have to consider. I want to visit it in real life once I can go to New York again. Do you think Toronto has the best bus service in Canada? Yep, without a doubt. Do you future, do you see a future with US Mexico passenger rail? I didn't until, well, I certainly wouldn't have said so with the in the past four years because of, you know, obvious reasons. I think in the future it would be awesome to have. There's some corridors like to Tijuana that would make a ton of sense. I mean the San Diego, it's called the San Diego trolley. It would be called LRT by many. The San Diego S-Bahn, it goes basically to the border with Tijuana, which is wild. That's something I think that's underappreciated by a lot of people. Okay, so I'm going to go through a few more news items because I have a lot of questions here. So the next major item is kind of a general one, but I just want to say, holy, wow, Vancouver is expanding in terms of like high density development in a crazy way. There's been a ton of proposals lately that I want to mention, as well as the ton of projects under construction. I recommend people go look up the Deloitte Summit in Vancouver, which is going to house offices for Deloitte, obviously, as well as Apple and some other tech companies. It's this cool tower with cubes around it. It's really awesome. There's one called, it's by Kengo Kuma. It's on Albany. I think it's 1550 Albany. It has like a curve out of it. It's a very cool tower as well. There's obviously Vancouver House. Vancouver has been doing amazing stuff with its high-rise development, which is good because Vancouver has not been building tall towers because of the view cones, right, which is an interesting discussion to have. I'm really into urban development, obviously, because it's associated with transit in a lot of ways. So I think it's interesting. It's important that if Vancouver cannot build tall, we have to build interesting, at least. And another interesting development recently came up in Vancouver, which is on, I want to say it's on Granville, yeah, on Granville, to basically take this block of heritage buildings, redo them, and then put a very large kind of ground scaperish building that has like steps on it, above it, with a lot of green space and terraces, et cetera. It looks amazing. So Vancouver is doing some awesome stuff, and I wanted to bring that up. I also wanted to bring up the fact that Vancouver will have a new tallest tower shortly, but it will not be in the city of Vancouver. It will be in Burnaby, at Metro Town. So Metro Town is a huge transit hub, massive, like, OG transit-oriented development, which was formed when the original Expo line opened. It's going to be 231 meters. It's going to be part of the Concorde development at the Sears site at Metro Town. So very exciting, and I wanted to bring that up. I also wanted to bring up that Surrey, my hometown, basically, is doing crazy stuff too. Surrey is a deeply underappreciated community in Canada. It's set to overtake Vancouver in terms of population. It's getting a major Skydrain extension. It has great transit ridership. It's underserved vastly by transit right now. It's developing a brand-new downtown core as like a second downtown core for the Vancouver region. There's over 90 towers in various stages of approvals in Surrey, downtown core. So it's a very exciting place, and I wanted to bring it up. So let me take a sip of lemonade, and then I will answer some more questions, because we have a lot of them. It's raspberry lemonade. It's very good. Okay, so let's go. Since the TTC connects with the UP Express at Union, what would happen to the Toronto UP Express if Eglinton extends west of Pearson Airport? I don't think anything. I think that lots of airports that are better than ours have multiple rail connections. Heathrow being the obvious example, where there is the Heathrow Express, there's TFL Rail, there's bus services, and there's the Piccadilly Line, and I might even be forgetting some services. You know, there's in Paris at Charles de Gaulle, there's RER, there's the TGV, there's going to be the Metro with the Grand Paris Express. So having multiple connections is fine, because they serve different markets, right? The UP Express serves the express business market. The Metro will serve the kind of more local market. A lot more workers will probably take it, because it's more affordable, and it's going to take you to a lot more destinations. So each each rail link to the airport serves a different market, right? UP is a lot more oriented towards downtowners and tourists. Something like the Eglinton Crosstown will serve the whole TTC network a lot more than the Uptas, and so the different services serve different markets. So I don't think there's any issue with that. What are your thoughts on extending Line 2 to Sherway Gardens? Also, do you think it will ever be extended to Square One in our lifetime? So I think extending Line 2 somewhere is super important. Line 2 is not, you know, carrying the numbers that Line 1 is carrying. To be fair, Line 2 is kind of geographically, you know, it's a single corridor, whereas Line 1 is 2. But with ATC and with larger trains and with a bunch of work we can do, we can enhance the capacity of Line 2 substantially. And so it's kind of like an underused asset at the moment. Now given the fact that we don't have really plans for a good link between Toronto and Mississauga, I mean our best plan right now is is take the GO train over and take the LRT up. I think that Line 2 is looking like one of the best options to connect the two city centres. Because to be fair, Bloor Young is just the north city centre of Toronto, right? Like it's on the north end of downtown. Tons of supertalls are going in there, which we will talk about shortly. And so connecting it really well with the core of Mississauga makes sense. However, I think we would probably have to accept doing it elevated. I've thought in the past about like what if we ran Line 2 elevated above Dundas in here in Ontario and ran it as the express service and then had, you know, the Dundas BRT is happening and so do that as a local. So that's my thoughts on that. Do you ever think there will be a GO train to Peterborough? Maybe, but it will be a long time. What are your thoughts on Double Track Railway to Tromsø, Norway? I am so sorry. I'm not that familiar with the rail network in Norway, which is something I'd like to be more familiar with. I was just talking with Ellen about going on a trip to Norway when when travel is allowed again. So if you're in Norway and you want to do a meet-up in the future, that might need to be arranged and you might need to show me around some of the rail network in your country. Do you think they're all, oh, I just answered that. Okay, let's look. Rem is amazing. Have you ever taken the Canadian? What was your experience like? I have not taken the Canadian unfortunately. I haven't rode many of via rail services. I've loved, I've only taken the corridor. Toronto to Montreal. So what do I need to ride? I need to ride the Canadian. I need to go to Churchill eventually. I need to go up to Port Rupert, Prince Rupert, sorry, oh my goodness, I'm from BC. I probably shouldn't have said that. I need to go to the ocean. I need to go to Southwest, to Windsor, etc. So I've got lots of via rail riding to do in my future. The low frequencies did not help. I probably would have taken via from Vancouver to Toronto, but it's been incredibly unreliably because of issues with the freight railways. It's also, you know, COVID and there's a lot of issues. Thoughts on via time to make a video in the near future I think. Should we go with a smaller line? Three to five stations dense? Yeah, I mean I think doing smaller lines more frequently is a good approach. Talking about the Northlander. Yeah, the Northlander is a very interesting train service and Ontario and Northland is very interesting as well. I think that's better serving rural areas and places like Northern Ontario are super important in transitioning people away from cars. Okay, okay, so we've got some more, oh my goodness, we really got a lot of questions. I am going to, I'm going to, okay, so let's see. Did you have to make, did you have to make CS post at U of T? I'm trying to make it into, yeah, I'm trying to get into it from math. So to be clear and they're also saying how is CS related to transit? So U of T has a crazy CS program where you're not actually in the program until second year. You have to go into the program, take some fairly hard courses coming out of high school and then and then get into the actual computer science program. As someone who went through this process I'm always happy to talk to people in U of T computer science if they have questions. So feel free to send me a message on our community discord server, which if any of you folks haven't joined, please join the community discord. We have lots of amazing conversations, lots of very funny people in there. It's a great place to just like learn about transit and news. But yeah, I made the CS post. You should do it. U of T CS is really a great program. CS is related to everything really. I mean in the modern world everything runs on on computerized technology and I like transit as well. Like I would have liked it if I took underwater basket weaving, right? So CS is related to transit in lots of ways. You know, transit apps, signaling, design, but then I think CS also it teaches you a lot of mental models which are applicable to literally every field and which allow you to think about things in interesting ways. So yeah it's related but I also just like transit. Liberty Village gets a bad wrap for bad transit. Do you agree with this? And if so, what makes it bad? I don't really agree with it. None of Toronto has terrible transit. Liberty Village could benefit from higher-order transit, which it will get with the Ontario line and with GO expansion. But it has the king streetcar, so I don't really feel like Liberty Village is a place where you can complain about bad transit. Why do Stovill GO trains bypass Danforth Station? Good question. So because the GO corridor currently has three tracks and because our operations kind of regime is not that complex, we struggle to stop all the trains. Some trains do stop there, but basically when you think about it, the only way to get to the Stovill line which connects to the Lakeshore East Line and then to Union Station is you have to be in the northmost track as you're traveling past Garborough Station. Now the northmost track is naturally, it cannot be a bi-directional track when it's being used by Lakeshore and via trains as well. So trains have to travel in the southmost track and then quickly switch over to the northmost track as they approach Garborough. But that means that you have to be at the right place at the right time, which means if you're stopping at Danforth you might be conflicting with other trains, and so it's just not scheduled in. Hopefully in the future that can happen. There are plans to quad track the Lakeshore East, at least to like, I think, at least to Garborough Junction, so that the Stovill line and Lakeshore both get two dedicated tracks. This isn't necessary to provide more service, but it will definitely help, so that's kind of why. When will the Stovill line road underpasses and road block at Havendale be completed? I think it will be a few years until they're completed. I need to get something out actually, which is this. So last stream I had one piece of mail, and look I got a new piece of mail, and so this is the notice of completion of environmental project report. Go expansion program, new tracks and facilities, so it's kind of complicated, but what this basically has on it is it talks about you know your grade separations. It also talks about new layover facilities, which may or may not be necessary, but those are being built. Some new GO platforms, which are at Unionville, Mount Joy, and Oshawa, so that's interesting. Why are we adding those? Well, because those are where major train services will be turning back, and so GO figures, they need more platforms. I'm not sure that they need more platforms, but having more infrastructure makes ops easier, so sometimes the easier approach is to spend a bunch of money and avoid having to make huge institutional and operational changes, so it is kind of reasonable from that sense. There's a lot to talk about here, but I wanted to mention I got this is kind of interesting. I'll talk about this in a future video, I'm sure, but yeah I wanted to mention that. Let me go through some more questions, and then I'll do a news item, and then I will get back to, let me just take a look here, then I will get back to answering questions and stuff, so I don't know when they'll be done, but probably a couple years. Do you know about the project The Rise in Vancouver? I have probably heard of it, and I would probably recognize it if I saw it, but the problem is projects, they all get these like fancy names like The Butterfly, The Rise, The Summit, The Stack, and you just in your mind you're like, well I always confuse The Stack and The Summit because it looks like a stack of cubes, so names are not not not something I can do very well. I've literally followed like probably a hundred development projects in Canada, at least the skyscraper development projects, it's hard to remember everything. Surrey is basically Laval with money. I think Laval has a lot more money than Surrey does. What are the challenges getting HSR service from Toronto to Chicago? So you've got first of all the fact that you've got across the border, right? As we mentioned there's some logistics involved there, and then it's mainly just you know if you want high speed track probably going to have to be your track because the freight railways are not paying to upgrade it, and they probably don't want you to touch their tracks, so you've got to have your own tracks, you've got to upgrade the tracks, then you've got to do probably do great separations, you've got to probably electrify because if we're wanting true high speed rail we're going to need electric trains, and so there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Calgary need the transit connection to the airport and also to Banff. I'm gonna have a sip of this. I agree with you, you should go take a look at my video on the proposed Banff Calgary airport rail connection. So next up, what are your thoughts on an expanded commuter rail for the lower mainland of British Columbia? So I think it's difficult. Freight rail and passenger rail are different in a lot of ways. One of the ways that they're different is that freight rail doesn't necessarily prioritize like, you know, minute to minute speed like passenger rail needs to because, you know, an hour difference in travel time makes a huge difference for passenger train. Like, you know, you want a one hour commuter or two hour commute, but for freight train when your trip is, you know, like 30 hours or whatever, an hour difference doesn't make a ton of a ton of difference if it's not, if it's a huge cost that you have to incur to build infrastructure. So in the lower mainland, the tracks are not well laid out for passenger rail. There's a few lines where it might make sense, but those are heavily used by freight trains. Now of course the West Coast Express have advocated for increased passenger service there because it's a good location for a passenger line. But for example, there's not really a natural line to Surrey Langley Delta that actually connects up well to the rest of the population centers of the region. So that's a problem. You've also got the issue that all of the freight tracks are basically low-lying areas because that's where, you know, it's easy to hug waterways. And so I think SkyTrain is kind of the best way to develop out Vancouver's rapid transit. Why? Because SkyTrain can climb steep grades, you can put up viaducts, you can go underground. It's just, it's more flexible than heavy, heavy, like heavy, heavy rail. So that's why I think it's unlikely that we see more commuter lines, but SkyTrain definitely for sure. He wanted to, REM should be straight up buried under René Levec. I don't agree. I think that it can be elevated and it can be fine. Some of the lines of the Paris Metro, some of the lines of the Tokyo Metro show you that you can be elevated in dense areas and it can be fine. Design and urban environment are just critical to that. Someone mentioned that they just want to say how fantastic up-express is and how impressed I was with Up and Go when I visited Toronto. Thank you. So kind of a quick note. I just want to remind everyone again, if you're not in the discord, please join the community discord server. Let's see if we can drop a link or something into the chat. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that quickly because if you, if folks haven't joined, I really recommend you join. So I'm gonna put an invite link into the chat. Let's put that in here. I've got an invite link there. So please do join that. Also, if you're not already, please follow me on Twitter. So I'll share a link to my personal Twitter in the chat as well. And then finally, if you're not, follow me on Instagram because I share lots of images, sneak peeks, etc. on there and it would be much appreciated if you tossed me a follow. So throw that there. I also want to mention, as some people took me up on this offer last time, please send me your transit maps and your transit cards from around the world. So Europe, Asia, South America, if you have an interesting North American transit card that I do not have, send us a message. We have a link in the description below where you can submit a form to send us a transit card and we'll feature it on the stream. We'll mention that you sent it to us and we'll show the world your amazing transit card and transit map and so yeah, I just wanted to suggest to people to take us up on that offer and send us anything unique you have. Again, link in the description. We also have in the description the link to our next live stream in two weeks. So please do that. I'm going to try to rapid fire off some more questions and then I am going to do a few more news items. Okay, what city in Ontario lacks go transit service that you think could use it the most? Hmm, that's a good question. I think London might eventually actually get go transit service, but actually if we're talking about who lacks service, Hamilton, big time Hamilton. If light rail is a bad term to use, what do we call the E train and C train trams? I'm not sure what city you're referring to so you'd have to specify what city you're referring to and I could tell you. Should there be a deadline to eliminate diesel operations in urban rail? Ah, maybe that's not a terrible idea. Good idea to upgrade the up express to RER standards. A union build a Pearson service with fair integration could help push ridership up. I agree. Upgrading the up express to RER standards is difficult. You know, we need to... a lot of work needs to happen, but I think long term like that makes a ton of sense. Like it's a great idea. You have some good vibes. Well, thank you. Toronto transit was very good but ticketing a bit confusing and messy. 100% I agree. What do you think of private railroads like Brightline? Do you think there's a future of intercity railways in the US? I thought they'd just be doing stuff on the cheap but they're doing extensions for 125 miles per hour. I think it's an option. You know, I don't think that there's necessarily a better or worse way to do it. It's all about how you do it. Having 125 mile per hour service is awesome and Brightline doing that is awesome. They're doing, you know, they're using a highway right-of-way to achieve those kind of very straight you know, routings that allow them to hit those high speeds. I think that it's also good railways have powers like eminent domain that allows them to construct rail lines. So I think private railways are an option. There's a lot of options. Next up, SuperTall is really bad for city. I don't necessarily agree. I think that SuperTall buildings can, in the right place, be good. Any thoughts on the rail solution that we use for the Ontario line? Haven't seen a lot of details on what tech will be used. Mention has always been automated metro technology. So look at Montreal Rem, Sydney Metro. It will be something akin to that. That's what has been suggested. Mississauga should join the City of Toronto. Yeah, I'm not sure how likely that is. Uh, some specific talk of the Rem de List, or I'm sorry, the Rem East I can pronounce French. Um, I'm probably a bit more specific than anything I'll talk about here. Do you think there'll be capacity problems at Eglinton Station with the island platform? Probably, yeah. That's something we might have to fix the long term with a second island. Um, but uh, if Ontario line ends up happening and it's successful, then I think that will reduce the need. What do you think of Chinese subway design? Uh, you know, they some some don't have express service. Yeah, so there's a lot of good things about the Chinese subway and metro systems such as how extensive and faster constructed, but there's a lot of bad things too. There's been a lot of construction issues because you might build fast, but if you don't build high quality that can lead to problems. So you, you know, quality of construction is a huge issue that does exist in some places. Um, missed connections are another issue. Long and poor quality connections. I remember watching a video of one Chinese metro system with a transfer between lines that was like 10 minutes long. You know, that really reduces the quality of your service. So it's important to avoid that. Uh, now some systems aren't implementing express services, but not nearly widely enough, which is problematic. Some of these Chinese cities are insane. They are gigantic. They're the size of a small country. Uh, and so if you don't have an express service, people basically are riding the bus, but in train form because it's going to take them forever to get anywhere. So, so express services are important. Uh, do you think a via regionalization would better serve Canada? It's an interesting idea. So the problem with regionalizing things though is that, you know, you get way better service in Ontario and Quebec, but then you might completely lose service in the prairies, right? So, I think the best solution to that would be saying, okay, Ontario, if you want better via service, you can pay and we'll enhance it, but we're not going to fully regionalize things. The worst rail service between capitals is between Oslo and Stockholm. It's amazing how bad it is. Well, I'm interested to try it someday. Do you think a high speed link between Windsor and Quebec would make sense? I think let's do Toronto and Montreal first, but perhaps, yes. In fact, it seems interesting. Okay. Thoughts on a full BART Caltrain integration put them under the same agency makes a ton of sense. I think that, you know, it's a little crazy. Some of the decisions being made in the San Francisco Bay area, especially with the Caltrain and BART work, but specifically with the BART San Jose extension, it's a little, it's crazy stuff. On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it via rail? Well, via rail is not bad. It's pretty good, especially on the corridor. It's like a 7 or 8 out of 10. It could it be a 12 out of 10? Yes. A good way to improve the business case for high speed rail would be to convince Detroit and Chicago to join. Yeah. If you're going to Windsor, getting into Detroit might make a lot of sense. Ooh. Someone gave me a super chat. Well, thank you so much. That's that's deeply appreciated. Thank you, Dio. The the worst rail service, okay, sorry. I'm just trying to relocate myself here. Thoughts on the Eglinton East LRT plan or route. Well, it's on the surface, which I'm not a huge fan of, but you kind of put yourself into a corner because the section to the west is. That being said, well, at least you're linked up to Kennedy Station. So there is an argument for grade separation on the eastern leg, but since it seems like it's basically not in the provinces priorities, I'm just not focused on talking about it because if it's not in the provinces priorities, it's not going to be built too soon. We should focus on the things that are to make sure they're built right when those things come along like Eglinton East. We'll talk about them. The rail service here between also and Stockholm has gone better. Good to hear. Just joined. Cool. If you're just joining, make sure to check out the description, join the discord, follow me on Twitter and Instagram and send me your transit stuff. Links are all in the description. Also in Copenhagen is the worst though. Equally long, more populous corridor with Gothenburg in between. Still no direct service, but I believe Copenhagen and Stockholm is a decent corridor. If you go to Montreal, you'll find a bridge interesting. Interesting, interesting, interesting Cambridge, Hamilton. Yeah, I guess Cambridge is definitely another place. E train and C train trams. Well, so the trains in Edmonton and Calgary are really more like a metro or an S-bond. They're not trams at all. The valley line is a tram, but the existing networks that are called LRT are regional kind of S-bond style trains. Do you think they will expand electrification in the whole of Montreal after Go RER? So the difference is that in Montreal, XO has not gone buying up corridors. Go has bought up a ton of corridors. So probably not, but it's possible. Maybe XO will try to buy up a ton of corridors, but without owning the corridors, the freight railways don't really want you to electrify them. And so you need to own the corridor to do it. And so you have to own the corridor or you have to get political willpower to do it, right? So it's challenging. Do you consider Calgary and Edmonton trains metro? Well, I guess I kind of just answered my question. Oh, do you think the rest of Ontario will be electrified? I don't think so for the same reason I just discussed. Thoughts on the big three transit systems built in the 1970s. This is an interesting topic. So we're talking about Marta, Bart and Womada, also known as the DC Metro. They're cool systems. Giant trains, pretty high speeds, some elevated sections on all of them. They're really cool. You know, like these are systems that should be way better though. Bart has a lot of issues. Okay. Using broad gauge was a mistake. Using really odd wheel profiles was a mistake. A lot of mistakes with Bart. Bart is kind of like the REM if the REM never got upgraded in a significant way. And so like super congested through the central core. Actually, it's very interesting because Bart has an almost almost the same kind of network layout as REM. Extended out, of course. Interesting. I never even thought about that. There are big metro systems with giant trains that are kind of unlike any other system in the world. It's kind of like if your whole system was cross rail but they all need a lot of love, especially DC Metro. So I probably want to do some videos on these systems when I can visit their cities but the bad thing is preventing that at the moment. Lots of the go rail system needs off peak service. Yes, I agree. Any ideas for what form of rapid transit would be best for Hamilton. Why don't we do another REM style project with smaller trains? Thoughts on the new Confederation GO train station? I think it's fine. It's a commuter only station so it just doesn't excite me that much. I guess it's cool though because it can start to allow Hamilton to have its own commuter train service which is cool. What's your favorite O train station? I think parliament most likely. I do like Tunney's Pasture and Bayview as well though. Bayview is really cool. You know, it feels like a special station. What needs to happen for the Milton Line to get RER? Either we build new tracks in the corridor or we do a missing link connection. Aren't you being a little kind to via rail compared to what? With the proposed HFR new trains big upgrade but presently trains arrive when they arrive, poor frequency, poor reliability. Actually in the corridor that's not true and the corridor is basically all that via rail can realistically be considered to be right now because it's the only place where trains run quite regularly. Trains arrive on time you know with pretty high frequency. The frequency is it's not terrible but it's okay. The trains are fairly nice so for yes for North America it's a pretty good train service and it would be pretty good in some areas of Europe too. The trains could be newer and better but yeah. What's your favorite North American metro model? Ulster Metropolis guys, Rem. No, I think I actually really like the new Bart Bart cars. I think they're very nice looking. Yeah that might have that might be my favorite actually. Some of New York's cars are nice but they don't have full gangways. I don't know if I have a favorite. We have a bunch of models that have their ups and downs. Vancouver has some nice stuff as well. Okay let's see do you think NYC can benefit from an airport express train to JFK? I like the up express and even though I don't fly often from JFK on paper it seems like a household to get there via public transit. It's not terrible because the air train connects you up to Long Island Railroad and the subway so you can get downtown as into the core of Manhattan pretty easily. I think a Long Island Railroad express train to JFK via like a tunnel or a guideway would be awesome though so I think it's a good idea. From what I understand Eglinton line one station is going to be expanded north by 100 meters. I don't believe that's happening anymore. What do you think of Hamilton's think of Hamilton's close by Ontario roads? Not sure what you're saying there. Why is Denver, Colorado the only city without HSR service to other cities? It's not there's lots of cities in the U.S. without HSR service to other cities. Any idea when Kipling storage yard would take place? Probably when the Ontario line is coming online slash when line two gets ATC upgrades because trains will be reconfigured to single units from the current you know six car consists which are really just three marine pair consists. Do you think they'll ever build on top of Greenwood shops as was prepared to support residents above? That would be cool. Yeah I think maybe eventually they will when land is that valuable that it makes sense. If you need to stop weighing bags and treating it like plane travel I agree. Oh thoughts on Highway 413 project? I don't think it's necessary. I think that it's the same as the thing I mentioned with GO trains right? It's easier to build something new than to make a big political move right? So the big political move would be doing something with the 407 to force lower tolls or to put tolls on the 401 in exchange for the 407 but make them way lower. At the end of the day the highway network in Toronto is bad because of the 407 being told. Fixing that should be the priority not building new highways to fix prior mistakes. Great video stations around the world with the same name now that's a good interesting idea actually. There's a lot that have similar names. New Barton model has bike like storage yeah that's awesome. Statler's expansion North America with Kiss and Flirt. Statler has been has been actually growing their GTW model more than the Flirt I think. So Statler is doing great North America. I mean I like their trains they're really nice the designs are excellent and yeah I'm happy to see Statler continuing to expand. They're doing Marta's new trains which should be very nice so that's exciting. Very cool trains that I'd like to ride someday. So we've kind of got to the end of these questions so I'm going to go back to some news items to mention. So yes if you didn't see which most people did but actually it turns out not everyone watches every video which is understandable. We opened a new major bus terminal in Toronto this last week which I've linked in the chat the Kipling bus terminal long walk to get there from the subway which it's not great at all but on the whole it's very exciting to it's very exciting to have better connections. It's kind of neat you've seen Von Metropolitan Centre which better connects TTC services into York with the York Transit Services of Viva and YRT. Now you're seeing my way over here is connecting better with the TTC at Kipling. Maybe DRT will see some nice terminal at one of the Scarborough Subway slash Eglinton East LRT stations that could be cool so now I think it's it's a very cool project to see happen and you know I think bus terminals are very underappreciated given how much bus service we have in Toronto bus terminals are are great investment. Let's talk about the next news item so this is very cool Canada's first supertall is shooting to be supertaller this is in urban Toronto I just linked it again in the chat so Canada currently does not have a 300 meter plus building we have a tower that's the entire which is over 300 meters but a building and a tower different so a building has floors the entire way up or most of the way up a tower you know has an observation deck or something like that so a building is obviously more impressive because it's more massive right it's harder to construct etc so Toronto currently has a couple projects three or four that are aiming to go about 300 meters now one of these which is very iconic is called the one so again take a look at the link I sent in the into the chat it's the urban Toronto link what you can see is you can see the pictures of the one looks amazing it's going to be again at Bloor Young the intersection so that kind of pulls the weight of downtown it's interesting downtown Toronto is being stretched north and south you've got Southcore on the south end Bloor Young getting and Yorkville getting super redeveloped on the north end so it's stretching the downtown out right and it's interesting the supertalls are kind of proposed all the way along so you've got one young which is at the foot of young streets right near the waterfront you've got the the Gary and Mervish or Mervish and Gary project which is King Street you've got the young street I think young street living which is at college area I think and then you've got the one which is at Bloor Young so they're kind of like all spaced out through downtown but interestingly the one has kind of applied to the city of Toronto given like some new precedents set by these other towers they've applied for a height increase and it's so interesting because the tower is already under construction like it's above ground already and they were just kind of like hmm we want to be the tallest because some of the other projects are aiming to be taller and so we've gone from a bunch of towers that were aimed to be around like 300 meters just so they could break the barrier and say we're the first super tall and now the one is being proposed I gotta go look at this article I'm just pulling it up yeah the one is currently what is the extension proposed for sorry I'm just trying to locate it here it's in here somewhere so I think it was originally proposed to be 300 308 meters something like that but and 85 stories the current proposal is to add another nine stories so it'll be 94 stories I'm trying to look at I cannot actually see the the height here that they're mentioning which is a little unfortunate let me zoom this out just looking yes so now they're proposing for it to be 338 meters so that's a like a 30 meter extension in height which is awesome it's really cool to see the one is going to be amazing because it's going to be visible from like all points in north of Bloor Street in Toronto it's going to be incredibly tall it's going to really transform Bloor Young like Bloor Young it's a cool area but a lot of the buildings are kind of older and so it's cool to see like money flowing in and buildings are getting rebuilt new towers are going up the one now I'm not a huge Apple fanboy but as I mentioned in a recent post-in Discord I might be switching back over to the Apple ecosystem because I've been having issues with the old PC and need-o thing and to be fair something I've always thought were cool is Apple stores Apple their stores are nicely designed like even as a PC and an Android enthusiast you cannot deny that those stores are beautiful Toronto does not have a flagship store and one thing I found cool in a lot of cities you know Sydney San Fran New York you know they have the really amazing Apple stores with giant glass structures etc but Toronto doesn't have one despite being the fourth largest city in North America so Toronto is set to be getting a flagship Apple store most likely in the ground floor of the one like it that's the rumor right and the one is designed by Norman Foster who has a lot of links to Apple he designed their new campus he's designed to believe other Apple stores and so yeah just really cool stuff going on with that so I wanted to tell everyone about that because I think you know super tall skyscrapers are neat let me answer some more questions and then I'm going to go through one last round of news so okay thoughts about the 407 transit way well that would be a great project for us to build but we need to build it right and so there's been a lot of talk need to see some action thoughts on the Scarborough subway do you think will ever get built or will it get cancelled again I don't think I don't think a future government would cancel a subway project you know I think that after the iconic Eglinton subway getting cancelled I think it would be pretty controversial and political suicide to be honest to cancel a major subway project also as I mentioned earlier in the stream Scarborough and Eglinton are moving really fast so it will probably be under construction before the next election so I think Scarborough subway is happening I would probably prefer parts of it to be elevated but on the whole I think the three-stop plan is probably better than the one-stop plan so I accept it did you see that joke Canadian HSR map yes I did it was funny yeah Marta is getting those new Stadler trains from Best Transit name that's like a question you know I Bart is kind of a funny name I think the logo is kind of cool you know the New York subway is kind of unbeatable right it's just the subway the Montreal Metro has awesome branding so I think maybe the Montreal Metro is one of my favorites I don't think names attract me too much Skytrain is cool too there's a lot of good ones in Canada I think but I'm trying to think yeah I can't think of a system that kind of blows me away with its name maybe the Osaka Metro is cool because of the cool look up the Osaka Metro logo it's very interesting I don't think they should till the 401 but I agree a lot of the problems are because the 407 is told you could very easily send trucks around the the core the 407 yeah now I don't agree at all I really think the 401 highway should be told it doesn't need to be told heavily but maybe told the express more than the collectors so that the express can actually act as an express because it often does not the 401 is the direct route through the city center so if you want to take the direct route you should pay more if you want to take the longer more indirect route you should pay less that's I think that's logical the 401 is more congested the 401 has more traffic so you could charge a lower toll which people would be more willing to accept and then still have people using it so that's that's my thought I think the 401 should be told what are your thoughts on subway systems like New York with express trains while very convenient it's a service that would only work in high density places or is it a service that would only work in high density places well until recently New York was like one of the only places in the world with express services on the subway some Chinese cities aren't kind of investing in it and they're taking a different approach typically the modern way of doing express services on the subway is you either build a new line which some of New York's lines like the lexington avenue arguably it's a new line that they built but a lot of systems you know they're doing passing tracks or they're doing skip stops or they're doing kind of unique operations instead of quad track so I think it's unlikely we see a ton more express subway services except for in the biggest cities but so that this is what make that's what makes New York system quite special right thoughts on 401 widening between Missaga and Milton while they're heavily traffic sections and the transit connectivity is not great right Milton line does not have a ton of service so while I'm not a huge fan of highway expansion you know there's obviously a rationale there for for it to be justified if you had a final say what would you do with Los Angeles public transit I think what I would do is a ram style system you know okay the thing about the ram is it works well because it is very tailored to North America using existing rail right of ways minimal tunneling lots of elevation going above highways this is this is something that exists everywhere in North America so a ram style model makes a lot of sense in a lot of places in North America I think that a relatively local ram style model with some faster lines to certain areas of the LA county area as well as expanded expanded subways drastically expanded bus service because you know LA could quadruple their bus service and they wouldn't have enough bus service you know all of these points and then electrify and expand metro link so that that's kind of my wider thoughts metro link can be the you know the regional express the really longer distances link up to the CAHSR etc do you think Toronto should make elevated guideways like the Scarborough RT seems like that's the plan for the Ontario line hello I'm just wondering what your opinions on life lane 3 Scarborough RT well 985 Shepherd East Express I don't have a ton of thoughts on but the line 3 I think it's a good line should Via Rail have gotten superliners I would be kind of cool I like the superliners but they don't look great with chargers so probably not going to happen anytime soon it's proposed to increase yeah 338 from 308 very interesting I think Toronto should have height restrictions of as long as your building isn't taller than the CN Tower well I think maybe it should be more like as long as it's not taller than the observatory on the CN Tower like not the sky pod because the sky pod like the dome thing the ball on the CN Tower that's like where the the one is going to get up to basically that height now but the taller observatory deck the tiny one at the top yeah that make that maybe set that to as as the limit but Toronto is doing a ton of tall towers so you know with 338 you know from 338 it's not hard to see getting into the high 300s and then 400 meter towers then we're competing with Chicago and New York on on on height and you know Toronto is already building more towers than any other city in North America besides New York City and we're we're doing them fast so you know Toronto skyline is pretty crazy and it's changing really fast I think Toronto and the thing about a thing about skyscrapers is they take a long time to build so you go out for a walk downtown and you see there's not towers here and here and here and you think hmm okay we could use a lot more towers but there is a lot of towers that are either under construction and you just haven't seen them above ground yet that are proposed and approved that are just in early approvals so like the towers that we will be getting is much more than what we already have so you know you can't really make your judgment call off what you see on the streets today what are your thoughts on preserving old Victorian houses versus new buildings downtown yeah I think preserving old buildings is really critical because we have a lot of historical stuff and it's important there's a lot of land that has still has parking lots and and really drab you know older buildings that aren't architecturally amazing on them and then those plots should be developed before anything old is knocked down and I don't think old stuff should necessarily be knocked down it's going to look insane from the island I agree with you it's going to be awesome insane is it going to be usable height or just vanity height well part vanity part usable I I think the vanity height like percentage will be decreased right because you know whatever the utility stuff at the top was going to be or those kind of architectural elements they look like they're going to be the same size just moved up so the usable height percentage is actually increased okay let me 10 seconds things got lost a bit let me just go like this should the GTA an alchemy to create a huge Toronto there's justifications for that but it will be very hard the whole skyline is going to look insane in five to 10 years yep most likely yeah the sea and tower is 568 but the observation decks are significantly lower isn't there an apple store and eaten yes there is but it's not a flagship right the flagships are the ones that are directly off the street typically and they're usually like often they're multiple floors they're going to have like a huge glass wall they might have like cantilevered floors they basically they look really dramatic and large and like the apple stores in in malls the one in eaton did get rebuilt and it's a lot nicer now but it's not like architecturally impressive these flagship ones are really impressive what's your opinion on the toronto pierce and airport and laurence east rt station maybe we'll talk about that a bit later another in another video yeah it's yeah it's not a mall it's just a mall state a mall store thoughts on the young street extension do you think they can stretch it past Richmond Hill I don't think they should I think it's a reasonable project to Richmond Hill Center though do you think they should have done a line three extension as I said before in this stream yes it might be they might be telling a sign that we should slow things down is hsr possible between various cities in texas while texas central is trying so let's see how that goes okay what is the next station focus well when we're out of lockdown I'm not sure but I want to do some go station station focuses on like the lake shoreline so that probably something on there 1970s style trains larger trains like longer trains on the subway will make sense but our subway stations can't hold trains the size of Bart and and DC metro that being said Toronto's subway carries a lot more people nonetheless because again it doesn't matter how big your trains are if you run them infrequently yeah express is more like collector plus indeed do you think California high-speed rail will make will get funding to make it to San Jose I certainly hope so with the new administration thoughts on the Hamburg you you bought an extension it's exciting yeah honestly the Gardner should definitely be told yeah Gardner should be told as well Lexington Avenue is not new way old yeah but what I'm saying is that no the express section of Lexington Avenue is newer than the old section it was much newer I didn't say it was new I said it was newer it was constructed as a separate line so that's what I'm talking about I think other cities approach express subways by building express transit modes like RERs or S-bonds yep exactly that's very very much true okay I'm just trying to did you see the business case for the Ontario line yeah I did what's the best TTC subway line I'm a line one fan why is it Canada why is Canada so far ahead of the US and building transit or is it I think we are I think it's because we just value transit more like throughout government right so there's a lot of local transit support in like various cities like Seattle and and and other cities across the US but the problem is at least for the past four years the federal government has not been transit supportive like basically at all right they've been quite hostile to transit so you've got that you've got the fact that transit for a long time has been more successful on Canada right we've got more riders because we run more service and so you know it's been a long term thing where Canada has been just gaining distance above the US and like the the fact that our buses run more often it might sound like a minor thing but it's not because when your buses run more often your trains get more riders when your trains get more riders you need to expand the system right so so it's kind of at all levels our transit is beyond the US's and so that's why we're continuing to have to grow faster I'm super excited to see where the US goes though and the US has tons of systems so once again I want to travel there and film some videos in the US would it be better to have TTC would it be better for the TTC to have Wi-Fi and trains as opposed to stations it's not really a choice like that though right putting it in the trains requires a lot more infrastructure because you have to have a connection between the trains and the network when you're in the tunnels putting them in the station is pretty straightforward so that's why it's in the stations and not in the trains it would be great to be at on to have it on the trains and in the stations yeah they're adding additional homes exactly to the top of that tower yeah there's some major upgrades happening in New York but New York is not doing enough you know New York needs to be revitalizing every subway line needs to be moving forward quickly with CBTC on every subway line which isn't happening you know new lines need to be built second avenue should be done by now costs are way too high so New York has a ton of work to do yeah I don't necessarily agree that just because the strength of the public sector is more significant because right like transit is more successful when in Calgary right Calgary's transit is super successful and Calgary is not necessarily placed with a strong public sector how about having an 1867 meter tower to symbolize the birth of our nation maybe we'll have to do it like the U.S. with one world trade center and do it in feet I think 1867 meters is a little crazy Toronto is lucky that the CN tower is still much higher than everything else in Auckland there was a concern that the 230 meter proposed tower would block views the nice thing about Toronto there's no mountains there's no amazing views really that exist as is like there's river riverdale and stuff but there's no natural wonders besides stuff way out of the city so it's a lot easier to justify a super tall tower I think yeah so do you think bus lanes on the Gardiner expressway like the DVP would be a good idea yeah definitely you know I don't don't disagree I think that'd be a great idea via HFR is not a terrible proposal but I think having faster trains as well as important best way to serve rural areas buses or trains a combination but you know it depends on the area as well it depends on what exists already should Amtrak start new services to Calgary and in your opinion should the line one Richmond Hill station look like yeah I don't I don't think I can comment on either of those at the moment do you think Toronto should have an RER like intercity line yeah also not sure about that Wi-Fi is everywhere in the Metro Metro I believe there's cell service in the tunnels but I don't think there's Wi-Fi in the tunnels also pretty sure that the TGC is working on getting cell service in the tunnels not exactly there's wire laid in the downtown tunnel but it is only accessible by freedom mobile because of some problematic organization stuff with who built the line and who owns the line what do you think about the here Ontario LRT I talked about it in the last stream so you should go watch that if you're interested Auckland has volcanoes and stuff yeah Empire builders per to Calgary sounds great but there's no way a large amount of people would choose it over flying yeah I kind of agree what's the best future transit method for Windsor to Quebec city high-speed rail you've expressed distaste for sound transit link how would you fix future sounds regional transit well I think mainly just removing the Rainier Valley at grade section fixing that would fix most of the problems I think and maybe Ottawa style trains you know Ottawa has had issues with the trains but they're better than the Seattle trains for some reasons not for other reasons I would be interested in a go train to Peterborough but again I don't know if that's that likely to happen so last two news items of the day sending a link over so South Korea has done a major climate commitment which is awesome to see and that's to convert a ton of their existing diesel trains to these new KTX EMU trains KTX is kind of the high-speed rail line or high-speed service in in Korea and so that's very cool but what's especially cool is it's this new EMU model so if you look up the EMU 260 as it's called it's like a very nice looking EMU I think it's built by Hyundai so it's you know it's Korean rolling stock as a lot of systems in Korea use but it's very exciting you know it's a positive thing for the climate to see all these diesel lines being converted to using electric traction and so I'm super excited about that and I think you know moving forward this kind of approach is a great way to solve climate issues and it's literally mentioned in this article that this is part of Korea's Green New Deal so I think that shows you that talking about things like high-speed rail investing in improving environmental standards and stuff globally has an impact because whose idea was the Green New Deal like at least calling it the Green New Deal right so everything is interconnected and I think that it's great to see it's great to see progress on this and I think replacing diesel trains by 2029 is awesome and it kind of goes back to someone's comment earlier in the stream which was that like should we have a policy for replacing diesel and fossil fuel trains and I think Korea would say yes I'm going to go through a few more questions before I talk about my final news item will climate change boost Canada's economy by increasing our growth season and giving us climate to grow a corn shouldn't we be rooting for it no we shouldn't root for it like yes it might be better for Canada but the vast majority of the Earth's population is not in Canada and I don't think it should be our goal to make Canada I don't know more hospitable so that people move here or to increase our growth season first of all our economy is not that heavily based on agriculture we do have a large agriculture economy but we're still a service economy right so there's that issue there's the fact that you know how does that increase international tensions because of climate change climate change is affecting our infrastructure it's going to make rail travel a lot more difficult and rail engineering a lot more difficult and so that's hugely problematic like we're going to have to reduce frequencies reduce speeds and hot weather there's going to be more flooding etc climate change is bad no should not hope for it at all should Ottawa have built their trains like the s200 and I like the s200 I think high high floor would have been way better yeah it's not good if the O is right we can already grow corn in a lot of places yes we don't need more corn come on why uh why trains do not go north or south in rural American cities the freight tracks are there um yeah it's a good question I think it's it's like anything you've got to focus on the core corridors first once you have really popular east west service then it makes more sense to do to do north south you said it this is not an anime poster this poster here is Vaughan Metropolitan Center station it's a nice piece of art someone did for the TTC when the line one extension opened major change needs to happen in Canada yeah our economy needs to become less resource-based because it's risky yeah I don't think drastically increasing immigration is necessarily a bad thing but just climate change is gonna have a lot of negatives right so I don't think it's something we should root for I definitely have heard this kind of line of thinking like oh like it might make our climate better sure but a lot of our places in our climate are already extreme like Ottawa, Calgary these are places with some of the most extreme temperature swings in the world and that's bad especially for railways so no climate change is not good do you agree using the Finch hydro corridor for various uses yes busway though probably it says highway 407 station not Vaughan Metropolitan Center yeah it does oh my well tells you how much I know yeah I've yeah I don't know why I just I guess it's because of the oval shape I kind of associate that with the roof of Vaughan Metropolitan Center but yes you're correct it's highway 407 will it evolve into a new downtown probably not but it is a major TOD so that's cool to see um last news item of the day this stream is going on really long so last news item is the new Woodbine GO station was announced I know the news was super Toronto and Canada based this this week I'm going to move away from having it so Canada based but this is the new Woodbine GO station it's exciting for a lot of reasons so for one overhead walkways which is super interesting GO transit doesn't use a ton of overhead walkways so that's cool um six tracks so that's this is going to be like one of the it's going to be like Bloor Dundas West like a lot of tracks available at this station one of the most tracks in any stations for GO for GO right um up express platforms which are exciting these kind of this kind of very interesting ramp style stairs on one of these overhead walkways though which people have been freaking out about a bit but if you look at all the other stairs they're standard so I think it just gives it a unique kind of look I like the look I think it's cool but I don't think it's we don't have to freak out or anything escalators would probably be nice though I think people will complain weirdly people will complain about the elevated walkways not having escalator access but they wouldn't complain about tunnels so um but yeah it's very cool there's going to be an up express platform so I think my suggestion would be let's change up for up express can serve Bloor Caledon Bloor Mount Dennis and Woodbine so then we'll connect to line two line five and line six interchanges line six interchange will be an eventual thing in the future drop the western stop now don't freak out if you're in western we'll have go RER service on the Kitchener line to serve you and then that also makes sense because you know you maintain the five stations on the up express which was already the plan to move there I think with five stations they can still do a roughly 25 minute downtown service maybe it'll be like 27 minutes it's still less than half an hour so way faster than taking a car also you know you have those express tracks on the outside the only weird thing is that the up express platform is because of the way the up express platform is located and the fact that the express tracks kind of you know are on the outside this is going to create some conflicts and I don't know if it's a great you know the best possible design because with those with the up express platform located there you know you're going to foul the junction to Pearson quite a bit because of course basically the if you look at the the corridors like this right the Pearson Pearson cutouts here the up platform is in here so and you've got an express track in between so the up trains are going to have to cut across the express so either you're going to need to fly over or you're going to have a lot of routing issues and so that's the only thing I see problem as problematic but this makes a lot more sense than Weston to have because if people are coming from the Kitchener line as many have mentioned it's a way easier transfer to get to Pearson from Woodbine because well if you were going to Weston you'd have to travel farther down and farther back up so since this is close to where the tracks go out to Pearson it's a good good location for a transfer so that is the last news item for the day I'm going to wind things down but I'll answer a few more questions before I do so I'm going to remind everyone if you're currently on the stream go follow me on Twitter link in the description go join the community discord link is also in the description go follow me on Instagram link in the description if you have any cool transit memorabilia like wonderful Santiago Metro on the half or if you have a cool transit card from a city that is kind of unique or something send us it there's a link down in the description for that as well I'm going to answer the current questions in the chat I want to thank Theo again for the Super Chat that's much appreciated I think at the end of videos typically are when people do Super Chats but oh yeah I think if I click on this oh interesting okay so why various Mexican cities do not have rail service Mexico has a lower GDP per capita right so they don't have as much money to fund rail services everywhere but Mexico is doing some great things with their transit systems so very exciting yes CDPQ did approach Auckland to build a REM style project the plan was not taken up I don't know if it's not the right corridor for REM I actually think it's a pretty good corridor for REM but yeah it's interesting CDPQ is going international that's very cool New York fan here do you know about our transit deserts yeah for sure New York does have a few transit deserts and that's because the approach in the past has been let's build rail everywhere instead of let's just do better bus service so that's a problem for for New York our other corridors suitable for REM in Auckland yeah no definitely I think I think there are corridors because Auckland has a bunch of highways right so REM works well on highways for a double track stations high platforms or island platforms that's a way too complicated question you know there's arguments for both right island is good because it means you need less fixed infrastructure to be duplicated right you can have two elevators instead of needing four elevators same with stairwells and stuff right so that's that's super interesting you know but if you're going elevated it lets you maintain your guideway if you have side platforms so those are the two different rationales there's a lot more rationales I could get into you should be in charge of all our transit decisions do you agree with this statement I don't think one person should be in charge but I'm touched that you said that thoughts about the new development and go project in Humber Bay Humber Bay Shores and what is it Park Lawn area is insane there's a massive number of towers going up in South Etobicoke a Park Lawn go station is something we definitely need whether it be weekend service to Kitchener eventually oh yeah for sure there will be I think it will be relatively infrequent but it will still be great what do you think of smart track is it still happening not in the original form but yes basically the fundamental idea is still happening do you think we'll see a new mixed traffic streetcar line for example on Deffrin or Jane we might but I think it's less likely than a than a segregated one with with up express just kind of be a mess I don't think up express will be a mess when do you think the Bowmanville extension of the Lakeshore Eastline will be complete probably within five years with your approach on cycling infrastructure I think it's kind of it needs to be ubiquitous for it to be you know relatively useful right uh more so than transit because people need their whole trip to be you know very safe and you know if you're trying to go somewhere you need the whole journey to be safe for you to take your bike otherwise you're going to drive so ubiquity is important for cycling infrastructure we need more cycling supportive infrastructure too though office buildings need showers and change rooms so people can bike to work and take a shower if they want to if they're sweaty so so there's a lot of there's a lot of you know supportive stuff that we need to do that you don't need to think about unless you're actually a cyclist which not enough people are um thoughts on cableways and gondolas as a transit solution such as in La Paz or Medellin they're great in certain places right if you have a lot of hills melt in this areas and development on those mountainous areas I think that gondolas are great it's a geographical slash geological problem right you need to have if you have a valley or you have a hill or mountain you need to scale then then cableways and gondolas can be great but they're not super high capacity right so that's that's the the main concern and they need to be integrated fully there's actually been a great article by a friend that I might link in a future video in London reconnections talking about cableways and gondolas as a transit solutions New York City versus TTC right better subways in New York well better subway like scope maybe not better subway operations and then better buses in Toronto much better buses how do we improve the DC metro without interruptions in service well I think it's hard right like typically like that's the thing that's funny in New York at least and I don't know how much this extends to DC in New York there's this attitude where we have to run 24-hour service we cannot shut lines down right and that leads to a deficit in maintenance in Toronto we have a lot of weekend shutdowns and I know that's common in a lot of places with more developed rail networks I think if you want the good rail network you might have to pay pay a price of not having 24-hour service in New York and not having as much weekend service in DC rail service for the far north maybe freight rail I mean there's some rail pretty close to Yellowknife already but I think passenger rail probably not do you have a good road bike not at the moment I have in the past I probably should get a new one driving a car is very ridiculous because there's no reason okay well no some people need cars you know that's it is reasonable in some cases we just use them way too much in North America Tapio Pressure Card for Gondola right yeah tapping that would be cool right I like the plan for the Gondola in Vancouver yes SFU is getting in Gondola very cool it makes a lot of sense what are the rail services in Hawaii there's only one it's being constructed it's called Hart identity mystified I recommend you take a look at it so that is it for the stream today folks thank you so much for watching please if you have a transit card or a transit map or anything like that please send it to us link in the description as mentioned before we'll open it up on the next stream which is in two weeks from now which will be on the 24th I guess let me look yeah 24th another Sunday always do these on Sundays so yeah please send us your cards shout out to Felix Theo and Rob for sending us stuff this time again we'll be doing another stream go follow us on the social media join our discord server thanks for joining me this has been a long talk but I hope you enjoyed chatting and talking about transit until next time thank you so much for watching Huyya!