Jon Loewen

Architect w/ @perkinswill_ONT. Tweets are all my fault. Do you like our owl? instagram: loewen_behold

[Gil Meslin @g_meslin]

Tuesday, December 3, -4°C, and every local bike share dock has been emptied out by 8:15am.

[Gil Meslin @g_meslin]

‘Poorly planned bike lanes’: Staff reports, consultation, parking impact evaluation, traffic studies, Moneris data economic impact study, pilot periods, before/after counts, collision/safety data…

Bill 212: anecdotes, a well-connected bar owner, and an hour of committee time.

[Jon Loewen @j_loewen]

“If we ignore a bunch of users, usage seems much lower!”

Exactly the sort of thoughtful, data-driven analysis we want to see more of in city policy

[Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic]

“If you take out the food delivery bikes, there’s not many (bikes).”

Here is Tory saying an entire class of workers - the young men who commute from Brampton to bring Rosedale its Uber Eats - don’t count.

Clearly, they should cycle in mixed traffic and risk dying.

[Paul Kulig @PaulKulig_TO]

By comparison, you can see how gridlocked the bike lanes have left University Avenue.

[Paul Kulig @PaulKulig_TO]

Removing bike lanes makes it easier for emergency vehicles to get to their destination.

[Paul Kulig @PaulKulig_TO]

Mercifully, the city never installed bike lanes on Wellington and traffic moves freely!

[Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic]

What is wrong with Toronto’s transportation department? This is flat-earther stuff. Will @oliviachow call them on this?

[Observing The City @observinthecity]

The day it leaked that @fordnation is planning on banning new bike lanes, there was a new @BikeShareTO ridership record, over 34,000 trips! At 12% of total micro-mobility usage, this corresponds to about 280,000 total trips in one day. 280,000 cars taken off the road.

[Damien Moule @damienmoule]

I don't really understand how staff can simultaneously believe congestion charges won't deter traffic but increasing the fine for blocking the box will reduce that behaviour. Either increasing price changes behaviour or it doesn't (it does).

[Paul Kulig @PaulKulig_TO]

In 2010 the Urban Repair Squad painted sharrows on Macdonnel Ave and the city removed them the next day.
14 years later, the city has painted sharrows on Macdonnel Ave. #bikeTO
https://t.co/lVLIX10mOU

[Tina Yazdani @TinaYazdani]

A temporary Science Centre location won’t open until 2026, and could cost up to $72 million, almost double what it would have cost to repair the roof of the original building. That’s according to a deep dive of Infrastructure Ontario’s request for proposals for a new space.

[Jon Loewen @j_loewen]

Excellent analysis. The province’s estimates for the time and cost of relaxation seem wildly optimistic, but even if they’re right, the cost is still orders of magnitude greater than fixing the Science Centre we already have.

[Canadian Architect @CdnArch]

The time required to set up a temporary location will mean that there is no Science Centre location for two years; the RFP also reveals that a new Science Centre at Ontario Place would not be ready until 2030-2034.
https://t.co/MIapDHAurE
https://t.co/MIapDHAurE

[Mike Crawley @MikeCrawleyCBC]

NEW: Engineers and architects say what's in the engineering report on the Science Centre roof doesn’t actually match what the government has said about it. They say closing the facility wasn’t necessary.
👇🏻Deep dive here by ⁦@bobbyhristova⁩ 👇🏻 https://t.co/HAKZOTGlE5

[Bryn Davidson @Lanefab @Lanefab]

A good dive into the need to manage operational & embodied carbon emissions from buildings, but missing the fact that the same cities trying to regulate embodied carbon are also mandating massive “carbon icebergs” in the form of min parking requirements and underground parkades.

[Devo Kneivel @DKneivel]

@moore_oliver Toronto is the economic centre of a G7 country that decided to do everything on the cheap without imagination for 30 years like some kind of minimalist colonial mining town.

[How-Sen @HowSenChong]

The fact that a 10.5% tax increase for homeowners gets all the press, yet is half the amount of a 2.5% increase for renters tells you a lot about:

(a) who has political power in a city that’s 50% renters; and

(b) how difficult it can be to understand percentages

[How-Sen @HowSenChong]

The proposed property tax increase in Toronto: $35 more per month.

Average Toronto rent for one-bedroom is $2600. The province allows for a default 2.5% increase in rent this year, which is $65 more per month.

50% of Torontonians are renters.

[Western Libraries @westernulibs]

Have you visited the newly renovated Weldon Library? Stop by to see the transformation. It's lighter, brighter, and downright brutiful. The @globeandmail architourist agrees. ✨😊🙏 @GMArchitourist @perkinswill #WesternU #LdnOnt

https://t.co/eb90RtpjQT

[Alex Mather @AlexDRMather]

A mayor leveraging her remarkably high approval rating to deliver on the promises she made during her election campaign by beginning to unwind more than a decade of dishonest fiscal management is good, actually.