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Episode 1 - Meet Rodney and Denis!
107 Plays1 day ago
It's our first step! Rodney Chan of TriTAG and Denis Agar of Movement have come together to discuss transit advocacy in Canada. Rodney brings up the new Line 6 Finch West LRT that just opened in Toronto and how its shortcomings are bringing transit priority front and centre at city hall.
As well, Denis and Rodney have a conversation about how they ended up in the transit planning and urbanism scene plus how they both have contributed to being micro-celebrities on social media.
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Denis promoting a new bus service for Metro Vancouver - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eltnLcyP8AU
Steve Munro Blog Post on TTC Board discussion on Line 6 Finch West LRT - https://stevemunro.ca/2025/12/10/ttc-board-debates-finch-lrt/
Motion to speed up light rail transit and street cars - https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2025.MM35.15
Results of the motion - https://bsky.app/profile/graphicmatt.com/post/3ma4xkekyhk2o
Tri-Cities Transport Action Group (TriTAG) - https://tritag.ca
Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders - https://movementyvr.ca/
Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/dwelltime.ca
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:17
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Rodney and this is my co-host, Dennis. Dennis, say hi. Hi. hi ah We are so excited to start a new podcast that we do not have a name for yet. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll have one by the end of the episode.
00:00:34
Speaker
um But yeah, we're here to talk about transit advocacy and what people around the country and world are doing to make transit better. um Yeah, Dennis, you have anything to add?
00:00:54
Speaker
That's what we're doing. i'm I'm here in Vancouver. I'm the executive director of Movement, Metro Vancouver Transit Riders. And Rodney, where are you?
Transit Advocacy Backgrounds
00:01:04
Speaker
Right now, I am in Toronto, but I lead TriTag, TriCities Transit, sorry, TriCities Transport Action Group in Waterloo region, which is like Kitchener, Cambridge, Waterloo.
00:01:22
Speaker
um and I have previous experience with TTC riders in Toronto. I'm just on a co-op work term from school right now. So I'm in Toronto, but I will return to Waterloo in January, which is exciting.
00:01:38
Speaker
And would it be fair to say that like we don't know each other really at all? Like I know you on Blue Sky and you're very funny there. But like aside from that, we mostly just are like around each other in the transit advocacy world. But that's about it.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's, we know of each other and we've actually met each other in person once in Vancouver when I was there. That was, that was fun. But yeah, we don't really know each other well.
Line 6 Finch West LRT Discussion
00:02:04
Speaker
So we thought this would be a good episode to kind of interview each other. we get to know each other. you guys get to know us and we can also talk about um some transit news that has happened recently.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And also, like, what a conceit for a podcast, two transit advocates who don't know each other at all, try and get together to cover the entire world of advocacy. I don't know, we can do promos later. But that's I'll put that one in the bank for for potential. Okay, okay. yes we will. um Yeah, I mean, I guess the the biggest thing right now, people won't shut up about including me is the line six Finch West LRT opening in Toronto.
00:02:49
Speaker
Everyone and their mom is complaining about how slow it is and how much of embarrassment it is. It's a multi-billion dollar project that's taken forever to build. People are blaming the province, Metrolings, the city, the TTC. um But because of this, like,
00:03:06
Speaker
and' know, like uproar. it's finally like giving, ah creating like a political opportunity for councillors and ah the mayor, Olivia Chow, to do something about it, um which I find really exciting and kind of apt for our podcast discussion.
00:03:25
Speaker
Totally. Can I make a confession? oh When I was a planning student in Toronto at TMU, I had ah printout of Transit City on my wall.
00:03:39
Speaker
Like, it was like, i don't I don't normally put much stuff on my wall. Like, you'll see my house. It's like, the walls are bare. But I was so jazzed about this plan, like about 15 years ago, to put light rail all across the city of inc of Toronto. sorry And it was like this thing that just like inhabited my imagination. And here we are like 2025 and I hate it so much. It makes me so angry. i don't know if that makes me like a bandwagon jumper, but I just like, I am so furious at how slow this line is and how expensive it was and how much people in Northwest Toronto need it and how it's just like falling down. for that yeah i am so angry about it as well but i i i don't know i have i have a lot of mixed feelings about transit city so i also i don't think you guys can't see but i'm like in a video call with dennis right now but like on my wall i have like a bunch of like toronto map iterations like there's a kind of a transit city modified map and then like a doug ford subway plan with his face on it the back that's his face over there um
00:04:50
Speaker
i like I think there's like been a lot of, like if you're like in like chronically online, Transit, Twitter, Transit Blue Sky, and on Substack, there's been like a lot of a hate thrown at Transit City these days.
00:05:04
Speaker
And I feel like it misses the nuance that I know like people understand that like LRT is higher capacity and was thought to be cheaper at the time. And I think like of its political time, like it was something very progressive and good.
00:05:19
Speaker
that we should have done.
Transit Planning and Political Dynamics
00:05:21
Speaker
um And like the way we went, like, obviously like we can run LRTs faster and they can be built ah more efficiently.
00:05:33
Speaker
um Everyone who was kind of like saying, Oh, like Rob Ford was kind of right. We should have just built subways. Like there wasn't money for that at the time. um But there was enough, there was some like funding from the city and the province to build light rail and at that time like that would have been an improvement that we should have gotten instead of like cancelled.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what what makes these transit debates so difficult is that, like, the idea of, like, what is their money for is so slippery. Like, it's so hard to pin down exactly what there is money for.
00:06:09
Speaker
um Because every different player in the political conversation is going to say there's no money. There's so much money that we could make transit free. There's, like, every... every place on the spectrum, someone will say that this is how much money we have. And they'll say it with such certainty and fortitude. um But yeah, I totally agree. Like Transit City, for those who aren't deep in the Toronto lore, is is back when we had, you know, Mayor miller the city The city had just been amalgamated, so there's this huge thing, and there's this progressive, exciting ah mayor, David Miller, and he had this transit guy, Adam Jambroni, and and they put forward this visionary plan for transit in Toronto in a place that hadn't seen vision for a long time, it felt like, and it was going to touch every single ward in the city.
00:06:59
Speaker
um And it was like, what is the most affordable way that we can bring tangible better transit to every ward in the city, including the ones that are the most disadvantaged that are like, you know, intentionally, you know, far from transit, low income, low, like low rent, etc.
00:07:17
Speaker
And, uh, And yeah, now we're starting to see, I guess, is this the, this is the first piece of it that's actually been implemented. yeah The Finch West line, line six, and it's, it's slower than the bus line that it replaced. So yeah, the question is why, why did we bother Rodney? Like hinted at the fact that it's, it's, it's got more capacity, which is good, but.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah. Like when, like there, there's been like multiple reasons when they're kind of like running it slower, in general, just for soft openings so the operators can get used to it because, like, they were, like, rushed to open the line.
00:07:55
Speaker
And then there's these, like, speed caps that go through intersections. Like, they're capped at, like, 20 kilometers an hour or 30 or something because of, like, Vision Zero and, like, pedestrian safety, which is kind of insane because you have, like, cars on this super wide road going, like, 50, 60, and that's allowed, but God forbid the train go go over...
00:08:18
Speaker
like 20, 30 kilometers an hour. um And there's the stop spacing is really close as well too, which is like kind of symptomatic, problematic of the street car network as well. um But think- Which harder to change, unfortunately. Yeah, well, what there is there has been like a um a motion in city council to look into transit signal priority, like into looking into speeding up transit and like all the options, including stop removals and transit signal priority and ah parking removal and all these things. So that's exciting. And I think they're going to do a pilot on Spadina soon of transit signal priority.
00:09:03
Speaker
But yeah, one thing about this line six debacle that I think is really interesting is that like people, transit advocates have been pushing for transit signal priority for decades now in Toronto and seem to get nowhere. But this was such a fiery moment that like, Mayor Chow and the council, like pro transit advocates were able to take and I think like if you look at the motion like, like 95% of council voted in favor of
00:09:35
Speaker
signal priority, like, except for a holiday, as usual, this like, conservative Etobicoke center, counselor who votes no to everything. um so yeah, I think it it just kind of shows that like, when transit takes up a lot of media coverage, and then like political attention, like, counselors will vote for things that may actually end up slowing down cars, which is always, always the kind of concern or like central concern a lot of the time.
Role of Advocacy and Leadership in Transit
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, transit is really popular and council will vote yes for it. Like, I feel like the takeaway for transit advocates across the continent is that, i mean, in in my experience, transit is more popular with your elected leaders than it is with city staff sometimes. Because yeah as long as like signal priority wasn't a crisis, usually the people that were in charge of of like futzing with it and implementing it were like senior leadership at the city. And, you know, they often have, ah you know, an engineering background and we're trained in school that like we have to do this a certain way. We have to make sure we're not impacting the speed of cars. And what this crisis did on Finch West was it elevated it past them up to council who understand the benefits of transit. They understand that we can't keep adding cars to traffic and that kind of thing. And and that they...
00:11:00
Speaker
acted I know that's a dynamic I've seen a bit in our region in Metro Vancouver, but Rodney, I don't know if that rings true that like that council elected officials might be more likely to act than staff on these things. Yeah. and It totally depends on like what flavor or a leading council has that term, but yeah, staff tech, especially in Toronto have, have always been more car oriented. There's kind of like an old kind of leadership that, well, it kind of showed during, there was a council meeting, a TTC board meeting where,
00:11:30
Speaker
like, councillors were asking staff questions about things. Like, Roger Brown, the new, like, like top manager for transportation in Toronto, like, they asked him about transit signal priority. And a lot of the answers he gave were actually just wrong. And a lot of them, like, he didn't know. Like, Steve Monroe, a long time and well known TTC advocate, has a good blog on this board meeting. And he, like, clocks every single, like,
00:11:58
Speaker
wrong factually wrong thing said in this meeting um and it's kind of sad that they don't well one one big thing that i i really appreciate like going to what university of waterloo and being in waterloo is that the eye on lrt in waterloo does have transit signal priority and it uses these like white light bars that toronto doesn't use and it's kind of sad i think I don't remember, but he said something about like him not being like really aware of other cities in the region that use transit signal priority. I'm like, there's like a city literally down the 401, like, like, like an hour or two away that uses it. It's Waterloo. And I like, I tweeted and some other people were like, you should come. We'll like show you the, how the trains work.
00:12:39
Speaker
But yeah, it's not like, it's not like some novel, like lot of like Toronto has like a resistance to like international best practice. And it's like, this isn't even international best practice. There's like, people are doing this in our backyard and we're still like, yeah We're better than them. We don't need to do this. There's like ways of resistance to change. And you kind of need a counselor who will spearhead and kind of force emotion for staff to like change something like that's not something they will do themselves a lot of the time.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the absence of a staff leader that's willing to stick their career on the line, like, uh, Jeff Tomlin in Los Angeles, in, um, San Francisco or, um, Jeanette Siddiq Khan in New York.
00:13:19
Speaker
Uh, I mean, I guess with, with her in New York, like she, she knew that she had the mayor's kind of backing and, and maybe in both of those cases, but, uh, my point being that those cities were able to sprint so far ahead when they had someone in charge of the public service who kind of had the mandate and the interest to like sprint forward and put in a bunch of bus lanes and signal priority and stuff like that.
00:13:44
Speaker
I think that that has been one of the biggest things I've i've learned is you need someone like ah a full-time person who's like dedicated on it that has power or else a lot of times I feel like campaigns who don't have a There's a word for this, not like spearhead leader, but like, yeah, someone who has like, who takes ownership of it. Like right now, and like one thing I'm trying to like get the city to like pedestrianize church, pedestrianize church street in Toronto right now.
00:14:11
Speaker
um And before, like in previous years, we would have um like open streets days where like one time a year they would like open ah the street to pedestrians and like block it off to cars. Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
But like you needed like a counselor or someone on staff that would take ownership of this and organize the funding from organizations and pull together the people. And if you didn't have like a person who took ownership of it, it would kind of go away. So like Kristin Wong Tam was a counselor who took ownership of this a few years ago.
00:14:41
Speaker
But now that they're an MPP, like there's this vacuum that was created and we're trying to create another open street stay. But like, awesome we need someone on council who's willing to take this on.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Which is, you know, the the importance of elections. You know, we both have municipal elections coming up in 2026, which will be really exciting. But I often think about, you know, as a person yeah running a transit rider group, like what is the most effective thing I could be focusing on? yeah And, ah you know, the elections are definitely going to be something coming up in the fall. But but sometimes I also do wonder, like, you know, like,
00:15:23
Speaker
how do I get really ambitious pro transit engineers out of school, out of university and like directly into leadership at a municipality? We have to build the pipeline. Yes.
00:15:40
Speaker
How do we do it? but The transit pipeline to, well, one interesting thing you that you brought up the elections, I think, I mean, I think I have two thoughts on this. Like one, um so in Waterloo
Student Involvement in Advocacy
00:15:51
Speaker
just recently, they were passing the 2026 transit budget and they wanted to keep the property tax increase below 5% because of the upcoming election. They don't want to upset property taxpayers. But one, because of declining,
00:16:08
Speaker
ridership because of like the international student drops. GRT, Grand River Transit in Waterloo has been like less ridership than forecasted and they have a kind of funding gap.
00:16:19
Speaker
um So they would would have to like, they were thinking of reducing frequencies of certain bus routes that a lot of students use, including me and we at Tritag and other students and people ran a campaign against these cuts. And sadly, there was a motion to like,
00:16:38
Speaker
kind of compromised they were going to cut um the nine the 13 the 19 and the 30 from every 15 20 minutes to every 30 minutes um so it's basically cutting most of them in half um which was really unfortunate because some of these routes are like crowded and and Yeah, we there was like a go motion to compromise and say, what if we just cut them all to every 20 minutes instead of every 15 minutes? Literally cutting the baby in half. Yeah, and even that one, we lost, it was an 8-8 tie vote, which meant that they wouldn't pass the motion to, like, not to do the compromise. And that was really, was both ah really upsetting, but, like, we were actually kind of surprised, like, the amount of support that we got. Like, half the council was interested in this. This was more, it kind of shows that even, like, some, like, township, like, a township mayor who was on the council,
00:17:36
Speaker
kind of supported it, which is like a more car centric place, but they were, people did advocate for a free pilot for a pilot for free transit for seniors on one day a week saying that there would be no budgetary.
00:17:52
Speaker
You would just let a few extra people on the bus that using existing capacity. it's like that passed. And they also were thinking of like increasing the price of like taxi chits for people with like disabilities to use. And that,
00:18:06
Speaker
they kept the same price. So there were some wins, but like, because of the elections coming up next year, the like regional chair, Karen Redman, she is not running next year or we don't think so. But she also like voted no to the motion.
00:18:22
Speaker
She voted to the cuts of the service. So I think next year is a really exciting opportunity to find a regional chair. Who's like pro transit, like pro good urbanism.
00:18:34
Speaker
and I think getting a lot of students tend to be involved in transit advocacy because a lot of students use transit and that's kind of a pipeline I went down and getting students involved in municipal politics, especially is really important because a lot of students, you can vote in your, the place you're going to university at and where you are back living at home. So that's what I find really interesting about municipal politics, but a lot of students don't really realize that or like have the time or energy to get into that. So,
00:19:03
Speaker
I'm like kind of thinking about ways to go about getting more students involved in the upcoming municipal election in Waterloo since it's such a like student heavy city.
Community Building and Engagement
00:19:12
Speaker
That makes sense. And turnout is so low even amongst adults in municipal elections that if you can manage to get a few hundred, you know, students to the polls um to vote for transit causes and, you know, you you have a really simple way to get them into the political system. Like just like say like, hey, vote for more frequent yeah GRT service, vote for a better transit.
00:19:33
Speaker
And, ah you know, it's probably one of the most effective ways to mobilize a demographic that isn't used to to voting and kind of getting them in the door. That's always been my theory of change is that we can use transit to get ah non-traditional voters into like caring about policy and thinking about how to fix this stuff and that they'll transfer that onto other issues in their lives.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's this, I'm like searching it up right now. There's this like kind of ladder of engagement that, so Sheila, who was the old head of, or executive of TTC Riders, kind of explained to me like getting people involved in transit, it's kind of like concentric rings. And at the edge, you have people who are maybe even like against transit. And then the closer you get in are like people who are interested or supportive, then people who will sign your petition and then people who are on your newsletter. And then at the center, it's like the people who are making the campaigns, making the decisions, um running the campaigns. And like, you you kind of want to bring people closer into the circle. You can't just like get someone who's opposed to transit to like go straight to work in your organization. It's like working people,
00:20:46
Speaker
from like, oh, sign this petition. And then like the next month around, it's like, oh we remember this petition you signed? There's this update. Would you like to help volunteer with us or send an email?
00:20:57
Speaker
And then you get people to join your organization. And I think this kind of like workflow of getting people more involved is something that like on the surface, like
Challenges and Successes in Vancouver Transit
00:21:07
Speaker
makes sense. But like, it's something if you think about is like a good way to like visualize how to get more people involved.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I have a Vancouver News thing to share. Can I share it? Yeah, of course. Okay. It's, I guess, maybe a bit of ah a jarring transition from that Kitchener-Waterloo update because we are about to have some pretty nice service increases in January. TransLink dropped their quarterly service changes recently. um And they have indicated they're going to be adding service on a variety of routes, like really in like a minor way, like little bits and pieces here. um But there's a lot of history to this because Thank you.
00:21:52
Speaker
Transit service last decade in the 2010s was like growing and growing and growing. and they had like a solid funding plan and and lots of growth. And that was creating more ridership, which was making it easier for the service to grow. Like it was on that good feedback loop. And then COVID happened. Everything fell off a cliff.
00:22:07
Speaker
um ah And across Canada, the population of the country started really growing. Immigration levels went up. ah And we ended up, you know, this starting this year, 2025, with an increase in the population in our region of around 15%, but a 0% increase in transit service since 2019. Crazy. And pardon?
00:22:32
Speaker
I said crazy. That's, that's insane. Yeah, it is insane. Right. And, And under the surface there, there was the the population changes and the demand changes weren't even. So we had way higher transit growth in places like Surrey and actually a drop in transit usage in Vancouver and the in the North Shore. And TransLink has been kind of shuffling service around to try and keep everything on track. But what we really need is more buses on the road. And so earlier this year, there was a crisis just in the same vein as the the crisis on Finch West about speed. Our crisis was that if a funding agreement isn't come to by April 30th or something like that, TransLink would have to start cutting about half of the service in the region. And that was a big formative event for our organization movement because it It really gave us something to rally around. And we grew a lot and we had this whole campaign, save the bus, blah, blah, blah. um
00:23:26
Speaker
And was a really good outcome, about i was as good as we could expect, which was that the the mayors of the region and the province got together to prevent the cuts and to actually fund 5% increase in bus service. Now, that's not at all getting us to...
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's good news. We're not at 2019 levels per capita, but we're kind of on that right trajectory. um And so the result is that like in this past September, there was enough money to take a route, the 388 in Surrey, which is this monster of a route. It's like really long. And it was only in peak hours, yet it was the only east-west route basically in the entire part of that region. And to make it all day. So like between the peaks, there's service midday, but there's none in the evening and there's not the weekend. Right. um
00:24:20
Speaker
So it's kind of a very incremental level of progress and it's only every half hour. But so in in January, like just in a couple of days, January fifth There will be a similar improvement ah to this bus to this place called the River District, which is in the city of Vancouver, but is like buried in the far southeast corner of the region. And it's like really hard to get transit to. And it's really dense. It's like a former industrial site. And you have like 10, 15 story towers like chock-a-block. Wow.
00:24:51
Speaker
it's like It's like this beautiful, perfect, like, rendering of a transit-oriented development, but with almost no transit, which is just a reflection of how expensive housing is and is in this region. And it's just like, oh, God, where can we stuff some housing? Let's just put it over here in the corner. But anyway, so this ah one of the reasons why I'm really excited about the service changes coming up is that that area will finally get midday service to the Canada line to one of our main rapid transit lines every half hour. But previously, it was peak only.
00:25:25
Speaker
And so this is a this is a step forward. And it's an opportunity for us to talk about, like, first of all, like all the people in the River District have been begging for this. They've been talking about it forever. The MLA of that area, the the provincial elected leader of that part of the city has been really championing this.
00:25:44
Speaker
Why did it take so long to do? Like, we can talk to the people who are benefiting from it and they can talk about like how it's changing their lives to be able to have this access. And then we can go further, which is that like 5% service increase isn't enough for the region. We really have to get ourselves back up to our old per capita levels and then actually start implementing. TransLink has a desire to double transit service in the region, which would be amazing, but it's just not funded. And so like, how do we have that conversation about getting the funding there?
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think you brought up a lot of really good points. I think it's so important to like celebrate wins, like even though it's just the 5% increase and there's been like a 15% increase in population, there's still that gap, but like all the people you've like, all the friends we made along the way, um That's what it's all about.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah. um Like growing, growing your movement. Yeah. It's so important to celebrate and recognize the wins you've had. And I feel like a lot of people have been, I mean, someone asked me the other day, like, oh, like, how do you keep going in things feel kind of hopeless? It's like, you have to like, see like the small wins you have and kind of be like, we did that and we can do more.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, we have to be like optimists to do this work or like it's built in, like a huge optimism bias or else we would never bother trying to do any advocacy.
Personal Stories and Passion for Transit
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah. i know you You talked about like getting more like pro-transit people on council and kind of building a pipeline. One interesting development that happened in Waterloo is that councillor stepped down to run for MPP and they didn't want to like run another election. So they like got the the second place person. And this person, his name is Matt Rodriguez, and he is a city planner who like worked for the city of kitchener oh cool like and he went to like university of waterloo for urban planning so he's like very transit and urban planning pilled and minded um so he's been ever since then he's been like a really good voice on city council or on regional council about transit and such um and i don't know if he's gonna run up in the upcoming it'd be nice to see him run again maybe you could bully him into doing it
00:28:00
Speaker
yeah Like as a group, just have a big campaign like, please run. Have a banner. Maybe like a social media thing. Yeah. I think, and then also before about the the regional council thing, i think like when kind of we should probably start developing like, I know TTC riders often, and I think movement probably does too, like sends a questionnaire to like potential candidates about like, do you support bus lanes? Do you support this? One good question for the regional, regional chair candidates is like, will you like restore like the service that was cut like on the nine 13, 19 and 30 that was cut to every 30 minutes? Will you bring it back to every 15? That would be like a good, like litmus test question about where their priorities are.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. ocean staio squa vi oai So but like we, as I mentioned before, we basically don't know each other.
00:28:55
Speaker
And we were thinking that it might make sense to just kind of interview each other a bit to see, ah to learn about each other and see if we are suitable podcast co-hosts. I actually, that that ship is kind of sailed because we're already doing it. right um But yeah. We're stuck in this together.
00:29:14
Speaker
yeah exactly We're all locked in I guess I can ask you. So we have a few questions prepared. How did you first get interested or passionate about public transit, Dennis? Well, I came at it from a climate change angle. I'm of the generation of like an inconvenient truth. Like Al Gore was like the hottest thing when I was entering university.
00:29:38
Speaker
um And I didn't really know what urban planning was. actually in the first week of university, just saw a documentary. It was honestly as simple as that. It doesn't take much to persuade me. you remember which documentary? Was it Inconvenient Truth?
00:29:55
Speaker
It was, I had already seen that, but this documentary is called, um, the end of suburbia. Um, and it didn't age well. There's some stuff in there. Like we were also really into peak oil back then. The idea that we would actually just run out of oil, which has like proven to be extremely incorrect.
00:30:14
Speaker
Um, but i But the idea that they put forward was like, yeah, the way that we design ah the places we live ah has a huge effect on our greenhouse gas emissions, maybe the most effect. And that kind of set me on this path of eventually switching my my major. I was actually majoring in marketing at the time. and switching over into like urban planning at TMU, formerly Ryerson. And the I will actually also credit one of my colleagues there, Ned Carlson, for introducing me to Jarrett Walker's blog, Human Transit. for like It gave me like a way of thinking about transit. Like I had already kind of thought of transit as being like one of the most effective ways to address greenhouse gas emissions. But
00:31:01
Speaker
Uh, then I started, you know, Ned showed me, ah Jarrett Walker's blog and I was like, oh man, like there's like a whole right way and a wrong way to do this. And like, I could do this for my career and it would be so much fun to just like draw lines on a map and like, and like change bus routes and make them faster and more efficient. I like dream, just like crayon, whatever you want, future, urbanists. Okay. Wait, that brings me back to, um the thing that I forgot to say is that you were talking about how the people at TransLink like want to expand service and stuff. I think a lot of times people have like misplaced hate. They're like, oh, I hate the TTC or I hate the TransLink or I hate the GRT. But in Waterloo region, like Tritag, we've built like a good relationship with like transportation staff and the GRT. And that's so on important because like we know that they want to like in their ideal world, they would be increasing the service. They'd be doing the overnight service now.
00:31:56
Speaker
But it's about that partnership of um working with council and getting whatever compromises or concessions. um I think people really need to put more pressure on their elected representatives instead of like commenting hate on like TransLink's TikTok videos about their new snack vending machine.
00:32:17
Speaker
yes That doesn't achieve much. um But yeah, no, that's so cool that you went. I mean, I guess you you kind of are still doing, you're doing both. You're doing marketing. You're marketing better public transit right now. so Honestly, kind of it's like full circle.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, how did you get interested and passionate about public transit? So it took me an hour to get to school when I was younger.
00:32:44
Speaker
ah so my parents used to drive me. But as I got older, I had to take public transit, I took the bus and subway than other bus. um And through that process, I was like, this is, this is stupid. Like, why am I doing this? Like, this is such a waste of time. Like, it affected like,
00:33:02
Speaker
what extracurriculars I could do, like how much time I had to hang out with friends. It kind of like took a toll on my mental health too. So I was kind of like, why, why, why are things like this? Can they be better?
00:33:13
Speaker
And you kind of go down like the urban planning rabbit hole from there. You're like, oh, you start learning that things have transit has been like chronically underfunded for, for decades and in Toronto and in a lot of Canadian cities. And then you were like, why is my commute so long? It's not just that it's like, because of urban sprawl and suburban sprawl. Like I live really far away from things because I live in a single family home neighborhood and like all my services and things are so spread out that it takes forever. And like by that time, like you're kind of like at the bottom of the rabbit hole and learning about like zoning and all these other things. And that's how I got into the kind of transit urban planning world.
00:33:52
Speaker
That's a great visual that like all of us, all of the people in our community are like at the bottom of this rabbit hole of urbanism getting just more and more radicalized with everything we read and all the pieces come together. Yeah, that's that's what I find. So because like I find like for me, like i feel like urban planning, it's so well now nowadays, like there's so many videos online about urban planning. I feel like a lot of Gen Z, like now everyone is talking about walkable cities and and bike lanes and stuff. But like I feel like people before like ah like urban planning was mostly like a master's degree before and people only learned about the concept in their undergrad and then they would take in their master's.
00:34:30
Speaker
um But like it affects like everyone's like daily life, like literally every second. And like people do think about it in passing, but it's like now that I've been like urban planning pill, it's kind of like a love hate relationship.
Origins of Advocacy Efforts
00:34:43
Speaker
Like I cannot,
00:34:44
Speaker
walk outside without being like this sidewalk is too narrow and this crosswalk is bad. And like, it's like so many thoughts, but like everyone is like experiencing that day. Like some people people will be experiencing like a badly cleared bus stop or a late bus or whatever. And people are thinking about these things, but they, the kind of framework you talked about, like like reading like Jarrett Walker's blog or looking at documentary and like having, giving people the words and tools to like see,
00:35:09
Speaker
the issues as they are and like why they are the way they are and like how to fix them. I think is like where I'm at, which leads me. And it is, it is a love hate too. I was talking to one of my colleagues and they were saying, they went out on a, ah like ah a date through the apps and they just couldn't stop.
00:35:27
Speaker
Like they were out walking around like in a neighborhood in Vancouver and just like, couldn't help but point out the urban planning mistakes that they were spotting in the city. become such a huge part of it.
00:35:40
Speaker
a perfect date idea to me just like eight hate on the urbanism as as we walk like what if what if we like what if we kissed on the 10-lane strode um okay but that leads me to like the second question which is like how did you get into the advocacy part of like transit advocacy Well, actually, here's a deep lore drop. When I was in the marketing degree, when I was first in university, before I really knew what this stuff was all about, i was in Guelph. I was studying at the University Guelph, which is right next door to the University of Waterloo. Nice.
00:36:19
Speaker
I got i printed out the city's bus map and I was like, I felt the same thing that like it just takes so long to get places and there's got to be a better way to do this. And I got out a bunch of colored pencils and I just like spent some time just like crayoning my city's bus system. And at a certain point in time,
00:36:38
Speaker
um it It runs on a 30 minute pulse. So all of the bus routes, almost all of the bus routes meet at a downtown location every 30 minutes, and then you can transfer to whichever one you want, and then it goes back up.
00:36:50
Speaker
And they were going to extend the pulse to 40 minutes because they just didn't have, they were a lot of, they were running late really often and they didn't have the resources to like do anything but make it. worse. And so anyway, so I started a Facebook group. That's what you did, you know, 20 years ago. That's such a Karen move.
00:37:08
Speaker
A Karen? Is that a Sex and City reference? No, a Karen, like Karen move. Oh, Karen! Like, I'm going to create a Facebook group because I don't like this. You're calling me a Karen?
00:37:21
Speaker
That's probably true. Yeah, that's honestly legit. It might be like next door um these days, but back in the back was Facebook. Where was I even going with that story? That was my first little taste of transit advocacy before I even knew. Ultimately, um i finished my urban planning degree. Wait, wait, wait. You created the group and then what happened? Did you did anything happen? Yeah.
00:37:44
Speaker
In Guelph, I was kind of skimming over that part because I don't think anything could really happen. Like eventually. It's a good way to like dip your feet in the water of like having proactive and starting something. Yeah. Okay. I have a little clipping from the newspaper. We managed to get a story in the Guelph Mercury. hey And I think there were 700 people in the group, wow which is not nothing.
00:38:05
Speaker
yeah I mean, today the bus service in Guelph is way better. And eventually they brought it back up from 40 to 30. But I don't know if I can take any credit for that. Tritag has a similar story before I ever got involved. I think it A lot of people that started by like people who supported phase one Ion had like a Facebook group with hundreds of people. um So I guess that's, yeah ah that's, that's how transit advocacy was back in the olden days was Facebook groups.
00:38:36
Speaker
It was a revelation. Cause before that, what do you do? Like you put an ad in the paper. Like how do you even get people together? talk to other people at the bus stop. Never. ah No, we do that all the time. I'm fake outrage.
00:38:51
Speaker
Canvassing is actually the best part of the job. um But no, anyway, to to bring this really meandering story to somewhere close to a finish. After I finished planning school, I got a job at TransLink, which was kind of my dream. I didn't really even think it was possible, but I managed to get the job at TransLink, moved out here to do it. That was in 2013. worked there for years.
00:39:12
Speaker
And in that time, you know, the my first one of my first tasks there was to like answer angry emails and phone calls from customers, people whose, you know, buses weren't frequent enough or they were overcrowded, that kind of thing. And it gave me a really good sense of like all the transit problems in the region. And over my time there, i just kind of kept seeing the same problems.
00:39:35
Speaker
exist And like, never would I hear them discussed by an elected official or in the media. um And, you know, these we have really high transit ridership in Metro Vancouver. So these problems were affecting a lot of people, but they just weren't.
00:39:51
Speaker
ah rising up into the zeitgeist. And I was looking at groups across Canada and the US, like TTC Riders, like Riders Alliance in New York, who were doing it. They were making it happen. They were campaigning on distinct, discrete transit issues and like winning. And ah there's like a vacuum in Vancouver for that.
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah, there was a weird gap. Like part of me wonders if it's because it's so expensive to live here that nobody has time to like, start a nonprofit, take a risk like that. But ultimately, I could see that it was like necessary. And and actually, my wife had started a nonprofit just a few years before I had. So I kind of saw how she did it. And I had a lot of her relationships and like connections. And and so I was in this position where I knew a lot about transit. And I knew it a bit about starting nonprofit. And I kind of felt like I had to.
00:40:43
Speaker
And that was two years ago. my first actually interaction with, um, Dennis was, I think we talked about this before, but he made some great videos for TransLink that were goofy, uh, kind of selling the, was it like the Beeline or the Rapid Bus, the Rapid Bus, right? Rapid Bus, yeah. he was kind of like showing off like how the Rapid Bus had these, like there are these new buses with these like new, comfier seats and, frequent and fast. And I think a lot of people, a lot of transit nerds saw that video and really loved it. And, and,
00:41:14
Speaker
That was kind of my first experience with Dennis, which is kind of funny. We might have to... Those videos had enormous reach. Yeah. And, like, for the... A number of the view count is so small. But, like, it just seems like I've met so many people that have seen those videos. and like You're the bus I guess so. i It was so much fun to make. And it was, like, meant... we We made it a really, really, really goofy video. And at one point, we were touting, as you mentioned, that the seats had 20% more padding. And people, like, quote that to me now. Yes. That's still... That is...
00:41:48
Speaker
That is like branded in my head, like it lives in my head rent free. Has this ever happened to you? oh I wish this bus came more often, like every 10 minutes in the peak or every 15 in the off peak or better.
00:42:11
Speaker
I wish this seat had 20% more pouty.
00:42:29
Speaker
I wish we weren't stuck in traffic. We can put it in the show notes. I've always wanted to say that we'll put it in the show notes. just I'm just living my dream here. I blurted it out. Yeah, it's like a two minute video. And like the the thumbnail is like you squishing the seat with more padding, which
Transit Advocacy in Toronto and Waterloo
00:42:48
Speaker
I love. Mm-hmm.
00:42:49
Speaker
I guess we can move on to how I got into advocacy. Yes. Because it took me so long to get to school. One of the buses I took, which was the 60 Steeles West bus that they were, there was a plan back then. This was like 2019 program is called rapid TO. They have like five of these, like most highest ridership routes with the good candidates with corridors that they wanted to roll up bus lanes for. And one of them was a 60 was on Steeles West. And i was like, this is so exciting. This would make my commute so much better. This bus is like always crowded. it just doesn't make sense that it's stuck behind so many cars that are mostly single occupant vehicles. And was like, great, this is something I should get involved with. And I got involved with TTC riders. They're trying to get people out to speak to council to support the bus lanes. And my bus lane was slated to be rolled out in like a kind of it was like at the bottom of list like 2025 and beyond and i was like this kind of basically means never i'll be kicked down the can which a lot of them were kicked down the can like the can was kicked down the road uh the only one that has been implemented so far is eglinton east which has been like such a success like reliability increased the speed increased and like they're trying to do it on jane now but like the counselors in that era don't really want it and because of fifa they realize that the congestion is going to be such a nightmare that they
00:44:11
Speaker
have to roll it out on Bathurst and Dufferin and that was like a kind of war that now now they've like rolled it out south of Bloor but like there's some like hesitancy to go north of Bloor but yeah getting involved speaking to council is something that was really scary that was my first time in Toronto it's like called deputing uh to council I did it online but the executive of TTC writer, Sheila, she kind of like walked me through it. She had a kind of template of like, this is how you like address counsel. This is how you make a convincing argument. This is how you talk about your experiences. And I think having, if you're like kind of a citizen by yourself and you're like I'm upset about this issue. It's really, really daunting to just go to counsel yourself and figure it out. I find having a group or like a person who's like with you,
00:45:03
Speaker
Or even going, one thing i i i I did in Waterloo, which was really successful, was like bringing other students with me. Like, let's take the eye on two council chambers together and let's all delegate together. And for some reason and in Waterloo called delegating and in Toronto it's called deputing. But yeah, I think that was kind of my...
00:45:25
Speaker
origin of like first getting into advocacy. And then since then, i moved to Waterloo because I went to University Waterloo for urban planning. And when when I went there, i was like, I want to continue doing this advocacy.
00:45:39
Speaker
ah But I was looking online. i found TriTag, TriCities Transport Action Group. But it looked like their last black blog post was like a few years ago. And they seem to be I sent an email to them, never heard back. So they kind of seemed like they were like dead or dormant. But what was funny is one year they were thinking of cutting service on the ion light rail and the in the region in the early mornings and late evenings from every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes, which I thought was crazy because who wants to wait in the dark for half an hour in the evening for the ion? And and their reasoning was during peak hours, it comes every 10 minutes.
00:46:14
Speaker
ah But there was like crowding then. So they wanted to increase service to every like seven, eight minutes, but they don't have the funding to do that. So they would pull service hours from the like shoulder periods in the early mornings and late evenings to fulfill that. And oh we were all like,
00:46:32
Speaker
Everyone I talked to was against that. They were like, I would rather be in a crowded light rail vehicle in peak hours than wait half an hour in the dark, in the cold, on shoulder hours. So we brought like dozens, over a dozen students and other people to council and they reversed the decision to do that. And that was kind of our kind of first campaign and success. I was really involved with at the time,
00:46:58
Speaker
The University of Waterloo NDP were doing, ah they wanted to do more local activism. And and my my my friend Damien, he really like led this campaign and kind of coordinated a lot of people. And yeah, like finding allies and other supporters is so important. But from this thing, someone reached out to me, Michael Druker, which was funny because he was like in the transit tweeting,
00:47:25
Speaker
kind of sphere. And like, we have interacted with each other. Like he, I found out about the possible ion cuts through a tweet that he, cause he's such a nerd. So he was like looking through the entire budget, found the screenshot of the slide talking about that. And I was, and he actually reached out to me. he was like Hey, I'm actually like one of the original like members and board members of Tritag. And we kind of are dormant right now because well, they were originally created to like support,
00:47:52
Speaker
the ION light rail, because before there was a big argument of should it be light rail or bus rapid transit or nothing at all. And once the light rail got approved and built, they started focusing more on like cycling and pedestrian connections and sidewalk snow clearing. But then some of their members got busy. Some moved to Toronto or out of Waterloo. Some had kids and then COVID happened. So it was kind of- Classic story.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah, there was like no, like it was like kind of of all volunteer run There wasn't really any like full-time person working on it. So it kind of went dormant, but he was like, oh, it looks like you and a lot of other students have kind of have a renewed interest in the region for transit. Like we should revive TriTag.
00:48:35
Speaker
So since then we've run a lot of, a lot more campaigns on transit and cycling and pedestrian connections. Yeah, that was kind of how I got involved in Toronto originally and then tried to bring that to Waterloo again.
00:48:51
Speaker
That is so awesome. That is such an inspiring story. Like when I hear stories like that, I'm just, I'm just jazz that you kind of, you, you took that experience from your personal life and you just like, you got mentorship from someone like Sheila and you just like, you turned it into results and you're connecting with Michael. Like, ah I know. I love it. This is what gives me hope.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah. I, I, I think about how, serendipitous some of this stuff is like you meet all the people at the right time and people are interested in starting things and yeah i i feel like one like people always like the joke is like it's about the friends we made along the way but i i really no because at that point so i was kind of depressed at that time in waterloo and they were like cutting eye on service i was kind of spending a lot of time like in my bed sleeping uh avoiding like my school stuff
00:49:46
Speaker
I hope my mom is not listening to this podcast. um But one thing I've always had like a passion for transit and other people and the kind of campaign kind of renewed, energized me and like got me out to like talk to people and start creating like petitions and campaigns and like gave me the renewed passion.
Cultural Influences on Transit Views
00:50:07
Speaker
and since I'm like in school for urban planning, like that got me like up and out of bed and and working on school stuff as well. Um, so I think advocacy and especially around transit has been like a really core part of my identity and something that like keeps me going and out of bed. Okay. Last interview question, the most serious, the most important, any more random, interesting background lore about yourself? Question mark.
00:50:35
Speaker
I just, i don't know, bump into people on the bus and the subway, like way too often, more than should be statistically possible. um
00:50:46
Speaker
Just like friends and stuff? Yeah, like just friends or acquaintances or people I know or like people online. but I can't think of... um tren what what What were you thinking of sharing? Um, my usual, when I get asked this question, usually what I say is that, um, as a kid, I learned Mandarin Chinese for like eight years.
00:51:05
Speaker
And I guess the people on the podcast might not see that I'm extremely white. Uh, and that my dad, I grew up in the countryside and my dad was just read a global mail article about the rise of China. And he's like, my son should learn Mandarin. And, uh, so I studied Mandarin from like,
00:51:22
Speaker
I think seven to 15. And I remember almost none of it. Oh, that's too bad that your, your dad was so, your dad was so based for that. Like he knew that this would be the Sino-Canadian century.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he did he totally got it. And ah it was a really weird cultural thing because like, yeah, I grew up in a town that was almost completely homogenous ah Lee white. And then we would drive into Ottawa every Saturday for three hours a day. And like I was the only white kid in this class. um and yeah i very distinctly remember uh at new year's uh me being like brought up in front of a whole auditorium of people to recite a poem that was like 16 characters and like oh that's a classic nailed the pronunciation like that the intention was that it would be like perfect perfect and it was just huge standing ovation everyone was like shocked audience with impeccable chinese you know that we see two videos
00:52:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That was me before YouTube. God, I can't believe you invented that genre of content. It's true. It's true. Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
I went to, I also went to, i went to Chinese school when I was younger too, like a lot of second generation Chinese immigrants and Originally, I learned Cantonese because my parents are from Hong Kong and I hated it. It was like i like Friday nights for some reason, but like also like what is like a middle school kid doing on a Friday night. Like I'm not going out to party or whatever. And then later on, I took I switched to Mandarin because I was I took like IB Mandarin in high school.
00:53:08
Speaker
um So like now i haven't really used it much. I used to visit Hong Kong every year pre-COVID, but now I don't. go because I don't have time from school because before like middle school high school I'd go during the summer or March break or December break or whatever but yeah I really and i get oh i I guess I missed this part like going going to Hong Kong every year really radicalized me because right there's this joke I've I've made a few graphics that I keep on I cannot escape it I didn't watermark it but like people always reshare this graphic of like the TTC from like 2000 to 2025 and there's like
00:53:47
Speaker
almost no change and we've even lost a line and compare it LA or Chongqing or whatever.
Future of Transit Projects and Closing Remarks
00:53:53
Speaker
And I made this like picture and it's always like it reappears in my feed and like multiple social medias all the time. And it's constantly haunting me. But yeah, like, but that was you yeah, that was, have you seen it?
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that was me. really oh my gosh, you're like transit. You're one of these people that is like transit Twitter famous, but without attribution. No, it's it's funny being a ah micro influencer because like, nobody really knows me. But on occasion, like I'll have someone be like, Oh my god, are you at underscore chat face? And I'm like, yes.
00:54:33
Speaker
And by on occasion, I'd be like, this has happened to be like three times. Like this is not like a regular thing, but yeah, like going to Hong Kong every year, every year I would return, there'd be like an entire new line or an entire new extension opened.
00:54:43
Speaker
And I'd be like, this is so cool. And like, they have platform screen doors. Everything is clean. They have like a really integrated fair payment system. They're like Presto card, like works as like a debit card as well. Like they take at convenience stores and whatever. And, and then I just felt sad every time going back to Toronto. I'm like, why is everything so stagnant?
00:55:02
Speaker
Um, Yeah, I guess. Well, we're going to fix it. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think it's going to be a really interesting year for Toronto for like, especially next year with the crosstown opening as well. And with the next executive' ja that good with the next decade, there's so many, I don't think people realize how much, I mean, people see the construction, but there's going to be like a wave of projects that are going to open in the next decade that are like really going to transform how we move through the, I sound like a Metrolin's branding. Transform the way we move. What is this? Transform how we move. um Yeah, no, it's really exciting. it's ah I think that's a really good place to end. It's a really exciting time for like to be in transit, whether that's like as an advocate or like working in the industry, but it also like it needs that kind of
00:55:52
Speaker
push from like everyone. It's important to have advocates both in the public and as politicians and in in city departments as staff. um And we building those connections and advocating together, I think is like one of the most successful or optimal ways to do it.
00:56:12
Speaker
Heck yes. I'm into it. I think you're right. It is an exciting time to be doing this work. There's a lot of momentum. like YouTube, for better for worse, I feel like is is getting a lot of people into this mindset of advocacy. course yeah There's so many YouTube creators now. and Half of them are called Moose. There's like City Moose. and that there's like anddate There's another Moose. Do you know what I'm talking about?
00:56:34
Speaker
There's Flying Moose, who is dope. Incredible. Yes, amazing. And City Moose, who's also good. Yeah. Are there other mooses than the two? No, but it's like, it's like I, if I had a nickel for every time, there's like this meme, whatever. It's like, but I like, I'd only have two nickels, but like, that's still a lot it's still a lot of nickels. Well, you might have three because we also have a moose on one of our volunteers is named moose and he's awesome.
00:57:04
Speaker
And I actually don't know if he's on YouTube. He might be. You have been killing it with content recently, by by the way, I've been seeing your reels and all your new like content created creations. Nav Sharma has been leading our social media and he is like extremely ah just like inventive and creative at that. And we had a co-op student, Rashaan Kanete, who has ah been like filming a lot of stuff and yeah, and scripting a lot of stuff too. Anyway, we have really great people.
00:57:30
Speaker
um But this is turning into the weirdest goodbye. i guess it's not weird. We're just like, just the conversation seems to continue to want to go but I guess we should cut it off somewhere. Until next time, time to close the doors.
00:57:45
Speaker
It's time to end this podcast whose name we haven't yet decided, but will be inserted Maybe.
00:57:55
Speaker
You've been listening to Dwell Time. This show is hosted by Rodney Chan and Dennis Agar. Producer and editor is Carriette Heather Keir. Thank you for listening. Details about our social media and content mentioned are in the show notes.
00:58:10
Speaker
We would like to recognize that this show is written, recorded and edited on the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples across Canada.