UNFORGETTABLE SAGAS, SCOOPS AND SCANDALS
 from Toronto Life’slong-form archives

Dear Reader,

Torontonians are always on the move, and the way we relate to the city can’t be separated from the way we get around it. Whether we’re packing into stuffy subway stations, commuting on rickety streetcars, or getting into spats with other drivers or cyclists, nothing stirs up urbanites’ feelings quite like transit. This week, we revisit three transportation tales that excited and infuriated us: a shocking $6-million TTC fraud, Vision Zero’s deadly blind spots and Metrolinx’s increasingly messy Ontario Line.

The Great TTC Fraud

For years, hundreds of TTC staff scammed the employee health care plan and pocketed millions. The true story of the fraud, the investigation and the lives left in ruins

BY MICHAEL LISTA |  MARCH 20, 2018

When people cheat the TTC, it’s usually unremarkable: skipping a fare here, hopping a turnstile there. This story is a riveting exception. In his deeply reported exposé from 2018, Michael Lista reveals how transit employees fleeced the institution from the inside, swindling the city out of more than $6 million. The piece uncovers the inner workings of an elaborate benefits scam—a bizarre conspiracy involving some 700 TTC workers and one particularly entrepreneurial orthopedic shoe salesman—and follows the sting operation that finally brought it down.

The Walking Dead

In New York and London, pedestrian fatalities have plummeted. In Toronto, six people are hit by a car every day, and the death rates are climbing. We know how to fix it. So why don’t we?

BY MARK PUPO |  AUGUST 23, 2019

Walking around the city shouldn’t mean putting your life at risk. Yet, as 2022 comes to a close, 21 Torontonians have been killed by vehicles this year. Each of those tragic deaths flies in the face of the city’s commitment to Vision Zero, an urban planning initiative adopted in 2017 with the goal of doing away with pedestrian deaths and injuries entirely. As Mark Pupo reports in this damning feature, Toronto’s plan for safer streets was doomed from the start. For far too many people, the consequences have been deadly.

The $11-Billion Subway War

The Ontario Line will zip across the core and up to Eglinton, easing gridlock and alleviating TTC misery. It will also plow through peaceful Toronto neighbourhoods, displacing homes, businesses and everything in its path

BY NICHOLAS HUNE-BROWN |  JANUARY 19, 2022

The Ontario Line is the crown jewel of Doug Ford’s subway extension plan. The province announced this past fall that the original $11-billion price tag of the much-maligned project has nearly doubled to $19 million. As Nicholas Hune-Brown explores in this sweeping story, the undertaking has the potential to be as transformative—and as destructive—as any infrastructure undertaking in living memory. Hune-Brown shows how the line is dividing the city, pitting the sanctity of neighbourhoods against the needs of the region and the rights of current residents against the convenience of future ones.

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