A Toronto Rocket train pulls southbound into Queen Station during the afternoon rush hour of October 15, 2024. Photo by James Bow.

Over the past few months, we’ve been receiving increasing complaints about the intrusiveness of Google Advertising on our site. Despite our attempts to control this advertising via our Google Adsense controls, these complain nts continue. Looking at the website ourselves, without benefit of ad blockers, we agree that some of these ads detract from the overall look we hope to achieve, and we’ve given serious thought about ending all Google advertising on the website itself. So, to that end, I’m starting the process of removing Google ads from most of the pages of this website, particularly those where advertisements have disrupted the usability of the site.

The funds received from Google Ads have been helpful in controlling the costs associated with maintaining this website, including the payment of webhosting fees and the software associated with maintaining this site. While I’m personally willing to swallow more of these costs in return for a cleaner-looking Transit Toronto, I would be grateful if more users would consider donating funds to cover the costs of maintaining this site through our Patreon page.

Please note that we will continue to serve ads on our YouTube channel to help cover the costs of taking and making our videos as long as the ads themselves remain relatively controllable and un-annoying. The ads may also linger in certain corners of this site, such as the individual photo pages, but should be gone from this page and the other articles.

Note that we also endorse the use of ad blockers to make your time on the Internet cleaner and more the way many content creators envisioned.

Patreon allows us to do more for our supporters, including discussion posts, previews of videos ahead of their launch on our YouTube Channel and more, and we will try to make better use of these benefits. We’re also aware that, frankly, Transit Toronto could do with a bit of a spruce-up, updating old articles, making corrections, and so on, and I do hope to tackle these projects in 2025. So, I hope you will join us in the New Year. Your support will help us make this website better.

Thank you for your time and attention, and for all your kind words and support.

Sincerely,
James Bow. Transit Toronto Editor.