Pickering Village, at the corner of Kingston Road and Church Street in Durham Region is a great example of a village hidden in plain sight. Thousands of cars speed past Pickering Village, many destined to the nearby Pickering Town Centre shopping mall, or the big-box complexes to the east, near Salem Road, few even noticing the mostly intact historic core of western Durham Region. The area was settled by Quakers in the early 1800s, where the new Danforth Road to Kingston crossed Duffin's Creek. A post office, opened in 1829 was called Pickering, after a village in Yorkshire, England (which, 175 years later, confused early web designers for Metrolinx). The Grand Trunk Railway opened a station where it crossed Church Street, just south of the village centre.  The settlement, which shared its name with the surrounding township, was granted "police village" status in 1900, and full municipal status in 1953. (Police villages were settlements with limited autonomy from the parent township[s] - Thornhill, straddled by Markham and Vaughan Townships, was another example.) However, in the round of municipal reorganizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pickering Village was amalgamated with the Town of Ajax, and not with the rest of Pickering.

I was in my hometown of Brampton twice in the past several weeks to attend two transit open houses: a public information centre for the Hurontario-Main Street Study, and the annual Brampton Transit service plan public consultation. I plan to write more about public transit and land use planning in Peel Region for the next issue of Spacing, but with the presentation boards up on the internet, it is an opportune time to briefly discuss the latest progress. Over the past 18 months or so, a detailed transportation and land-use study has been commissioned by the cities of Mississauga and Brampton to examine options for higher-order transit along Hurontario and Main Streets. The project team has decided on a Transit City-style light rail line between Downtown Brampton and Port Credit, linking 3 GO Transit corridors and 2 major urban growth hubs. Interestingly, the light rail will leave the median right-of-way in the tight spaces through Downtown Brampton and Port Credit, with street trackage. A bi-directional loop will provide for through service on Hurontario and local service around Mississauga City Centre. Meanwhile, Brampton Transit will be starting up its quality bus system in September with the launch of "Züm" - a Viva-style network. Each route will offer all-day 15 minute service making limited stops, with fancier buses (unlike Viva, Züm will use Canadian-built New Flyer vehicles) and larger shelters with real-time next bus displays. Despite having fewer bells and whistles (no fare pre-payment, for example) "Züm" has required more construction than Viva. Each intersection on Queen Street has been widened to allow for bus queue-jump lanes to reduce traffic-related delays, and the mostly built third lanes of these wide suburban arterials will be restricted to high-occupancy vehicles. New transit terminals at Bramalea and Shoppers World are also being built as part of the project. The first Züm route, shown as 501 Queen (!) on the boards at the open house, will run between Downtown Brampton and York University, partially replicating Viva Orange, with an express rush hour branch via Highway 407. (Joint operation of route 77 will end). The next route, Main-Hurontario, coming next year, will run as far south as Square One Mall/Mississauga Centre, a precursor to the proposed LRT. Local buses will continue to operate at somewhat reduced frequencies. A new (and very much welcome) principle at Brampton Transit has been to provide service as far as necessary beyond its municipal borders to serve major trip generators to minimize transfers and improve connections; Züm and the existing 101 Airport Express route illustrate this.

Could traffic lights get any uglier than on St. Clair? In the Infrastructure Fetish feature of the new issue of Spacing, I wrote a lament to Toronto's standard one-size-fits-all yellow traffic signal, called "Not so mellow on yellow". In that article, I argued that the design of the ubiquitous "12-8-8" signal (named for the diameter, in inches, of the signal lights)  in Toronto is ugly, and a determent to the urban streetscape. I also discuss some viable alternatives, such as revised colours and mountings for downtown areas, while maintaining high-visibility signals for higher-speed suburban areas. Here, as a supplement to that article, I wish to present some alternative traffic light designs in North America, some even here in Ontario, that should be used in Toronto where appropriate. Worldwide, traffic signals are found mostly in one of two basic colours: black, the most common standard; and yellow, the standard colour in about 20 US states, Ontario, Manitoba and increasingly in British Colombia, but uncommon elsewhere but for a handful of Latin American countries. The Ontario Traffic Manual provides for recommended colours, mounting, and backboard use. The OTM specifies the use of yellow backboards, but as with many aspects of the manual, allows for deviation from its guidelines. Despite this rulebook, there are many deviations  across Ontario. The downtowns of Richmond Hill, Kingston, Kincardine, and Kenora feature all-black signals, which dramatically improve the local streetscape. In downtown Brockville, the signals are coloured dark-green (the same colour as used across the river in New York State as well as in Louisiana), and match all the downtown street furniture.  The OTM specifically allows for non-yellow traffic light backings as well, particularly grey and black. Downtown Richmond Hill, where they play by their own rules.

Sneek peak  of new TTC  BRT vehicle. (Co-written with Steve Munro and cross-posted on his blog) Spacing exclusive - we have learned that the Toronto Transit Commission will announce a major service increase. Smarting from recent customer service issues including higher fares, sleeping employees, and rush hour service cuts, the TTC will roll out an ambitious plan for rapid transit expansion. New routes will utilize the city's waterways to link the downtown core with neighbourhoods across Toronto. The plan - Amphibious City - calls for partially grade-separated waterway routes as the means to quickly move commuters to and from the city's core. Several new routes will operate as soon as this summer. In mid-March, Spacing lamented minor service cuts by the TTC and GO - despite increased ridership and higher fares. We now learn that the cuts released enough operators for intense training allowing a "quick launch" of new services. The preliminary fleet of seven-year old "Hippo" buses will operate on two new routes by the end of June. Several routes will be added in coming years leading up to the 2015 Pan-American Games. The news of an upcoming official announcement, barely a week after the Ontario government's budget delivered a kick in the teeth to Toronto's LRT plans, is surprising. However, TTC officials explained to us that was already part of a contingency plan for any Transit City delays. Hippo buses will be cheap to implement, require much less money in construction costs, and the first phase can be implemented without going through a lengthy environmental assessment. The purchased Hippo buses, acquired by the City of Toronto from a defunct private tourism enterprise, will provide service until larger and wheel-chair accessible vessels can be acquired, preferably from a Canadian manufacturer. Some dredging and remedial work will be required for service on inland waterways such as Highland Creek or the Don River. Speaking to Spacing insiders, TTC Chair Adam Giambrone called this the "most exciting transit news since Transit City."

On January 1, 2010, the TTC raised the cost of adult tokens and cash fare by 25 cents. On March 20 2010, GO Transit will raise fares by 25 cents per single-ride ticket, with a corresponding fare increase for 10-ride tickets and monthly passes. But despite these fare hikes, and sustained ridership levels, both will be cutting service in March and April. To be fair, this isn't quite the 1990s, the so-called "lost decade" for transit. Most customers, apart from GO train riders with slightly longer rides, will not notice much of  a change. There is yet little sign of a transit "death spiral" of higher fares, reduced ridership, and service cutbacks that plagued much of that decade. The  TTC's surface route cuts are minor, and most of the cuts occur during the peak period. A handful of routes will actually be seeing minor service improvements during off-peak service periods, particularly on weekends, based on ridership counts.  The precedent set by the Ridership Growth Strategy 30-minute standard for nearly all surface routes remains. But some routes - where overcrowding is still a very common occurance - will be affected. For example, the 96 Wilson is seeing one bus cut from each of the A, B, and C branches - or three buses in total during the AM and PM peaks. Two sources I spoke with - a senior staffer inside the TTC, and one outside the TTC - confirmed that the cause of the cuts are due to the common problem of poor ridership forecasting. The expectation was that the 25 cent fare increase (one of the highest in recent history) would reduce ridership, hence some cuts on the highest-frequency rush hour services. The good news is that TTC ridership is still growing, even despite the fare increase and other customer service frustrations. The bad news is that earlier service projections and resource budgeting requires buses (and two streetcars - one each from the 505 Dundas and the 506 Carlton) to be pulled off the road. It will not be until September when the next major service changes will be implemented, though seasonal changes (an annual response to reduced loads over the summer period, reduced demand on the 196 York University Rocket, increased demand on the waterfront routes and the Exhibition routes) will still go ahead. GO Transit, on the other hand, will be making far more significant schedule changes, "to meet the needs" of a "growing ridership." This bit of transit double speak actually translates into some major service cuts: cancelling several bus routes, cutting  service on some other routes (beyond the usual seasonal service reductions on the Highway 407, Guelph and McMaster routes), and increasing run times on other buses and trains. Despite the usual claims that a fare hike will help to pay for current operating costs and "provide improved services needed for our growing ridership," these changes mostly represent cuts that reduce service instead.

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Bogotá. As late as a year ago, I had never expected to visit Colombia, as it was not on my radar as an interesting - or safe - place to enjoy some time away. But a family wedding brought me here, and many of my preconceptions went out the window. The people are friendly, the countryside beautiful, and the security much improved. (It was especially nice to be so far south at a time when even the US south was suffering from a lingering cold snap.) Bogotá, the nation's capital and largest city (with a population of about 8 million), is also one of the world's highest cities, with an elevation of 2600 metres. The city is spread out on a north-south axis, As Bogotá has grown, so has its transportation headaches. Like most Latin American cities (even including those with heavy-rail metro systems), the principal mode of public transit are private minibuses, which travel along all the major roads with the route posted on the windshield, merely a long list of neighbourhoods and landmarks the unscheduled service stops at. Huge fleets of minibuses, stopping anywhere they are flagged down, aren't exactly the most efficient mode of transport, though it can be convenient (and cheap) for passengers. Combine those buses (of varying age, upkeep and tailpipe emissions), with trucks, motorbikes, private cars and other street traffic, in a city surrounded by mountains, and you have a recipe for a smoggy, congested, mess. So the city, under the leadership of bold, clever (and sometimes near-dictatorial) city officials began to address it with a three-pronged attack: buses, bikes, and bans. During the last decade, Bogotá took the lead of Curitba, Brasil, and began rolling out an advanced bus rapid transit system, called TransMilenio. TransMilenio solidified the Latin American tradition of high-concept BRT systems (which has been replicated in Mexico City to augment its already expansive Metro system) with a complex web of routes operating in exclusive lanes and serving fare-paid platforms in simple, modular, stations.

An old street sign in the foreground, with a newer metric speed limit sign and the Disco Road waste transfer station in the background. Disco Road, a four-lane industrial road in northwest Etobicoke, is perhaps Toronto's most dated street name. Disco is most known as the name of a municipal waste-transfer station. These transfer stations are where garbage trucks unload their pick-ups for sorting and transfer to large tractor-trailers to the Green Lane landfill near St. Thomas, and where residents can unload their own loads for recycling and landfill. Other land uses ...

Brougham, a small village at the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Road in Pickering, doesn't quite make the usual criteria for a "lost village" - urban sprawl is still far from overtaking the historic buildings, and the village looks much like it did 20 or 50 years ago. But it is a lost village - or even a bona fide ghost town - in the making, and has been since March 2, 1972. On that date, the Government of Canada selected northern Pickering Township - along with sections of Uxbridge, Markham and Whitchurch Townships - as the site of a new Mirabel-sized international airport that would eventually replace Malton Airport (now Pearson) as Toronto's primary airport. Brougham - in its entirety - was now the southeast corner of this 18,000 acre (72 square kilometre) land mass that then had to be expropriated. I have touched on the subject of the Pickering Lands before here on Spacing Toronto. Before the federal announcement, Brougham was a small, yet growing, community, with a school, several churches, businesses and a community hall.  Commercial House, pictured above, is one of only a few roadside taverns  left in the GTA. Today, Brougham is largely by-passed by the extension of Highway 407, which skirts the southern boundary of the airport lands. When the brakes went on in 1975, Brougham and the huge parcel of Class I farmland to its north and west was frozen in time, owned by the Government of Canada and rented out to farmers and residents (many of which were the former land owners). As only minimal repairs were taken on by the landlord in anticipation of future construction, many houses - of which quite a number appear to be exurban ranch houses built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s - were simply vacated and boarded up. Approximately one-quarter to one-third of all houses in Brougham are now vacant.

Only a mere two kilometres  north of Meadowvale, in Brampton, is another "lost" village, Churchville. Both communities share a lot in common: both were established as mill towns on the Credit River, both were served by the Credit Valley Railway when it arrived in the 1870s and the Toronto Suburban Railway, which ran from 1917 to 1931. Both are removed from major roadways, perhaps helping their survival. In "Toronto's Lost Villages" by Ron Brown, published in 1997 and one of the inspirations for this series, the author lamented that Churchville was about to be inundated by suburban development. Luckily, because of strengthened historical interest, and the proximity of floodplains that restrict new development, it remains relatively intact and somewhat interesting. Churchville was the most northerly settlement in Toronto Township (which in 1968 became the Town of Mississauga) and is somewhat older than Meadowvale, established in 1815. At its peak, Churchville had several stores, a church, a hotel, mills and other local services. An ambitious network of streets was laid out, some of which do not exist today, but still appear on some maps (such as the Google Map linked above). After a a period of growth, the population level stagnated after nearby Brampton grew larger with the 1856 arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway and designated as the county seat. Many of the stores left, the mill was lost to time, and fire destroyed at least one of the churches.

The latest installment in this series brings us to Meadowvale Village, a well-preserved rural settlement that is now all but lost in Mississauga's sprawl. Indeed, without a map, Meadowvale is difficult to find, as road diversions and detours has removed all through traffic, with a complex detour necessary to follow long-established routes. Meadowvale was established in the 1830s as a mill town on the Credit River and as a service centre for northern Toronto Township, featuring schools, churches, stores and a tavern. The Gooderham and Worts distillery empire had a significance here, even constructing a mansion built as a summer house for the Gooderham family. Later businesses included a auto service station and additional shops, but until the 1990s, Meadowvale remained a separate, distinct community. Unlike Thistletown, Meadowvale had direct railway access. In  the 1870s, Meadowvale became a stop on the Credit Valley Railway, which went from Toronto to Orangeville via Brampton (with a "branch" to St. Thomas via Milton and Galt from Streetsville), but quickly acquired by the Canadian Pacific. In 1917, the Canadian Pacific was joined by the Toronto Suburban Railway's short-lived Guelph route, serving mostly small towns and villages between the line's Keele and St. Clair terminus and Guelph. (The TSR Meadowvale Station survives, but is now on the grounds of the Halton County Radial Railway museum near Rockwood, itself on the old TSR route.) However, Meadowvale never became very prominent; losing out to larger nearby communities like Streetsville, an incorporated town and a major railway junction; and Brampton to the north, which was larger still and the county seat for Peel.