City
Morning Brew: Kidnapping Victim Details Emerge, Storm Warning System Needed, Union Station Platform Reno Planned, KISS and Oshawa, Popularity Trumps Privacy
Photo: "The Struggle" by HighPlainsDrifter Photography, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
Police have revealed that Furqan Muhammad-Haroon, the 22-year old who was reportedly kidnapped at gunpoint on the weekend (and whose whereabouts still remain unknown), was arrested and charged with theft and fired from his summer job just three days earlier. Is this merely a coincidence, or is it reason to believe that the story is a fabrication and waste of police resources?
In the wake of the tornadoes that ripped through Southern Ontario last week, Dalton McGuinty thinks that we need a better system in place for giving advanced warning when potentially violent storms are approaching. Given that we're not really prone to these kinds of storms, I have to wonder if an elaborate emergency warning system is going to be worth the cost to build and maintain.
The subway platform at Union Station can be crowded and really hard to navigate during rush hour, but the TTC has intentions to fix this within the next 5 years. A new platform will be built, doubling the size of the boarding area. But with the massive, general Union Station renovation project also underway above, the place is going to be a total commuter and construction mess for a while.
There's no shortage of public support and adoption offers for the feline that survived a vicious attack. A woman from the far away land of Australia is one of many people offering to take the recovering cat (that survived a crossbow shooting) under her care. Resilience and luckiness are certainly two of this cat's traits.
A study is suggesting that young people are so keen to be popular online, that their privacy becomes less of a consideration. It may also be that a slew of complicated, buried privacy settings on sites like Facebook make it difficult to retain privacy by default.
And KISS fans in Oshawa are not particularly happy. They won an online contest to have the band add their city to the tour list, but only Toronto appears on the list as of now. Will the band make an appearance at some smaller Oshawa venue as well, or will they give Oshawa the shaft?
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The rendering in the story looks quite a bit different than what was originally supposed to go through.
The inability to switch trains without having to go up and down a set of broken escalators (you just -know- they'll be out of service within a month of opening) seems like such an antiquated way of doing things.
I'm sure it costs a lot less and doesn't require them to move tracks, but I think this is going to be one of those things we'll regret them not spending more money on 10 years from now.
Slitting Pigs throat before consuming? ah, thats ok.
:) and away we go.
Why would you switch trains at Union?
Usually its just a convenience thing, but sometimes its a genuine need when there are significant delays (such as when sections of the line get shut down or when its later at night and the already spaced out trains get backed up).
It is something that people tend to do even at Osgoode or St Andrew.
I'm sorry you'll have to take the stairs on the extremely rare occasion there is a delay in service between your normal route from Union to Bloor Street. I've noticed people in Fairytaleland do tend to be a lot fatter, so maybe it is quite a burden.
It's a minor thing, granted, but its one of the few places where stress can be taken off the system in the event of delays.
Personally I'd really like it if TTC did central platforms more often, when possible. It's a small hassle to realize I got on the wrong train and have to jump stairs at the next station to go back in the right direction. It's not even the physical effort, but the precious minute or so that can mean missing my train.
And hey, I'm as much of a walker as any other downtowner; I spend 40 minutes walking home every day, and several hours every weekend, and we don't own a car. But when I want to go home at the end of a work day? I'm not walking from Front St to Bloor to catch my train. So yes, I'd probably switch directions at Union too.
After reading these comments can anyone really be surprised by the billboard ?
I'm not one to complain about these things generally, but after seeing "cool white and grey" tiles in the new Canada Line stations in Vancouver, I can't help but think this is a mistake. First, it's bland. Second, white stuff shows dirt. It's a fact. Or maybe this is just a clever plan, to have the inevitable water leaks stain pretty designs all over a white canvas?