Sasha on the Street

Last week I sat in on a webinar jointly hosted by AASHTO/FHWA/FTA on climate change and transportation; Climate Change 101: An Overview of Climate Change for State DOTS – An overview of climate change science, linkages to energy security, greenhouse gases (GHG) reduction strategies for Surface Transportation and risk-based adaptation to climate change. This presentation [...]

We will open doors for you. Say ‘Good Morning,’ ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye.’ We smile at you on the street for no other reason than to pass off a positive attitude. We are country known for our world-peace keeping efforts. People immigrate here for a chance at a better life… Canada has been known as one [...]

Just before I left for vacation I decided to take a big leap and write my LEED AP exam for New Construction and Major Renovations. I signed up for the exam about 10days before I wrote it and spent all my free time preparing for the exam. Thanks to a very supportive bf, a knowledgeable [...]

Have you ever been driving home during rush-hour wondering why it is taking so long to get through the traffic light? Through a busy interchange? Only to see it open up and you travel along smoothly for a few minutes or the rest of the way to your destination. Frustrating as it may be it’s [...]

Highway 401 – If it’s daylight it’s probably congested. The busiest section of the 401 runs east-west through Toronto and sees almost 500,000 cars on peak days (in comparison LA’s 405 sees about 380,000 cars per day), but the highway extends from the Detroit River in Windsor all the way through to the Ontario-Quebec border. [...]

Thanks to RenewCanada I had the unique opportunity to attend the Strategy Institute’s conference on The Future of Canada’s Infrastructure. The two days started with a keynote address from the Assistant Chief planner of the Directorate for the Built Environment of the Scottish Government and the remainder was filled with presentations about the current practices [...]

Thanks to my bf I was directed to the ‘ultimate’ TTC Map on torontoist.com. Dreamed up by Dieter Janssen, an architecture professor at the University of Toronto this map adds new lines, extends existing ones and tries to capture the GTA audience. Below vs. Above Ground Streetcar or Subway? Economically it just doesn’t make sense [...]

Asphalt Roads versus Concrete Roads … what is better long term? There is no easy way to answer this question; it depends on the climate the roads are subjected to, the traffic volumes, the maintenance contracts, etc. But yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a seminar that shifted my preference to concrete roads. What [...]

Toronto doesn’t have a true ring road instead Toronto is surrounded by a ‘box’ road made up of Highway 427, Highway 401, The Gardiner Expressway (Gardiner) and The Don Valley Parkway (DVP). I was inspired yesterday by a tweet by ReNew Canada to think about this issue again. As quoted from the Future of the [...]

As the term comes to a close here in Toronto (no I do not go to York, which is currently on strike) I am in the process of writing all my final papers. One of my classes is called Concrete Technology and Non-Destructive Testing and initially I thought the paper I was writing was not [...]