Morning Brew: Pembina Institute takes Ford to task, TTC's H4 subway train makes last run, Pan Am Games shake-up, and the NYT on MLSE

Rob Ford took to his Facebook page yesterday to defend his subway plan over Transit City. Besides the annoying over-usage of caps and the word RAPID, there was another oversight on the mayor's page: citing the Pembina Institute as an advocate for the Sheppard subway line. On its website, Pembina clarified the mayor's so-called points of their study. Though the think tank agrees that a subway has the capacity to carry more riders than LRT along Sheppard, their research shows that it would also cost about four times as much, and that the population density along Sheppard is actually better suited for an LRT.

Were you one of the "lucky" ones who got to ride into the city this morning on the TTC's last H4 subway train? You know, the one that doesn't have air conditioning? The train makes it last run today on the Bloor-Danforth line. Better to take it now instead of in the dead heat of summer, right? We hope to have more about this transit relic later today.

As NHL all-star festivities get underway, the New York Times looks at the business juggernaut that is Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, running through the company's various holdings and its failings on the ice. "The streaks of futility in Toronto have led to finger pointing by frustrated fans," the writer notes. "This is particularly true of the Leafs, who have their own television network and a general manager, Brian Burke, who is perhaps more closely followed than the mayor."

The Pan-Am Games will look rather different from what was originally proposed. In response to accusations that the event is already drastically over budget, 2015 CEO Ian Troop revealed that organizers have decided to cluster events, a move that the Star claims will result in the loss of 60 per cent of the initially planned venues.

OpenFile's headline "Is Firefighting more dangerous than we thought?" seems a bit like a no-brainer. Firefighters run into burning buildings, so, yeah, it's dangerous. But then there are the deadly gases they encounter to consider on top of that. Though Toronto firefighters are better off than those fighting fires in small towns, the potential for exposure to dangerous gasses and substances is still present after the fire has been extinguished, and after the firefighters have taken off their self-enclosed breathing apparatuses .

IN BRIEF:

• Province hopes to create park on Wellesley Street West
• After three months, YRT expect to have buses running next week
• Too soon? Projecting Canada's 2014 Olympic hockey team

Photo by Barbs-- in the blogTO Flickr pool