🌡️ The day started with a frost advisory but it’s set to warm to around 15 degrees, a sign of things to come over the weekend.
🌍 The Local continues its reporting on encampments, this time using partial data from a freedom of information request to track where they are, how big they’re getting and why they’re expanding beyond the downtown core.
🏙️ Mayor Olivia Chow has grand ambitions for Toronto’s economic future. She wants to double the city’s $171-billion GDP by 2050 and has unveiled a 72-page plan to get there.
🚴♂️ Parkside Drive is one of the most dangerous streets in the city for cyclists. The road on the eastern edge of High Park connects Bloor to Lakeshore and practically asks drivers to speed. To solve this, the city wants to build bike lanes. This might be tricky, considering the provincial government’s recent move to curtail cities’ cycling network expansion plans.
✊ Columnist John Lorinc wants Olivia Chow to flex some muscles and seriously push back on the province’s plan to slow-roll bike lanes.
🚴♀️ More bike lane news. High Park cyclists held a rally opposing the province’s bike lane plans.
🚉 Heads needed to roll at Metrolinx, Edward Keenen argues. But does this latest show of accountability mean the trains will actually run?
📊 Global News has more details on how Metrolinx is reorganizing itself after firing two senior staff.
👩👦 The TDSB is failing kids with special needs, parents say.
📚 Press Internationale, a beloved Annex business you’ve probably perused before, will close after 30 years on Nov. 30 — after the rent increased from $7,000 to $11,000.
📞 Drake will not be pleased with Toronto’s new area code — 942. Forget six, there’s only one common number linking Toronto’s four area codes (416, 647, 437 and 942).
🚇 One more subway station is fully accessible but it will probably take two more years before the whole TTC network meets that standard.
🎤 The Rogers Centre is getting an $8-million renovation to help improve cell service ahead of Taylor Swift touching down in November.
Commuter corner
Until Oct. 18, subway service on Line 2 between Victoria Park and Kennedy will end at 11 p.m. for track work. Shuttle buses will run instead.
Until Nov. 3, the 501 Queen streetcar will divert both ways via Church Street, King Street and Spadina Avenue because of track work.
Events, dear boy, events
Justin Timberlake is at Scotiabank Arena on Oct. 17 and 18.
Brett Young performs at History on Oct. 17.
Coin is at Massey Hall on Oct. 17.
Dogs in costumes will be patrolling the Distillery District on Friday night for a Halloween event.
Roy Thompson Hall is hosting a live-scored showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Oct. 18 and 19.
OCAD is hosting its fifth annual gallery crawl on Oct. 19.
The 25th annual Planet In Focus film festival takes over the Paradise Theatre until Oct. 20.
Need a Halloween costume? Check out the Riverside Vintage Crawl on Queen East on Oct. 17.
The Waterfront Marathon is on Sunday. Tons of road closures in the downtown core.
