Every year I do a video reflecting on the stuff I have done in the last year and what’s changed with my YouTube channel, and so I thought it would be a nice idea to do something similar here but a tad more personal since at least for now this is a much smaller audience (share my Substack with your friends and colleagues please!)
All in all, 2022 did not really feel like a normal year, but it did feel like the most normal year since the onset of the pandemic, and that was a bit of a relief. Being able to travel to other cities — including across the ocean — was much appreciated, and I’d like to think also enabled some cool in depth videos that I could not have made otherwise; and of course, on the ground coverage of one of the biggest transit line openings that has happened yet this century — that in particular felt like something really substantial that set the year apart.
Now, travel is fun, but when it’s about YouTube (which, given I do genuinely like cities, it sort of always ends up being) it is exhausting, and I am already almost always exhausted, so it’s even worse. YouTube is a 7 day-a-week job, and most of each day is spent working — whether that be writing or tiresome recording sessions, so sometimes heading out to film/take photos for future videos or go to a transit-related event for fun.
At the same time, the YouTube channel has grown a lot. As I mentioned in my year in review video, the channel not only reached 100,000 subscribers in 2022 — but also grew by nearly 100,000, and it’s within short distance of hitting 200,000.
All of this was good, but I took a huge hit in views (and thus income more or less) in the middle of the year when I took a bunch of older videos down. This isn’t the first time I have taken videos I was not happy with down, but it’ll likely be the last. I explained my reasoning roughly in a YouTube community post at the time, but people do still ask, so the long and short of it is that when you make something you don’t like and put it out to a large audience it can be hard to contain. In the past (before YouTube) I used to delete posts on social media that I didn’t like, and this sort of represents a natural extension of that pickiness. Fortunately, new videos are made to a way higher standard, and comment feedback from the old ones was incorporated into entirely new scripts for the new ones.
To offset what was basically a halving of my videos around April-May, I have tried to release more videos than initially planned this year, including total remakes of the “lost” videos. This is mostly winding down and the only videos I have left to do (that I don’t plan on turning into different videos entirely) are high speed rail explainers, which in my eyes would benefit more than most from footage on the ground.
This has ultimately just been the year where I started doing YouTube at scale, and I also think I am large enough that I get way too many comments to read and they have also started to bother me. This is something that every YouTube creator talks about, but it’s hard to describe the feeling and stress a lot of comments cause — especially when you see the same one 50+ times. It can also be time consuming just managing things as viewers reach out very regularly — usually a few a day — via various platforms. On one hand as a creator, it feels really crappy to not respond to someone who took the time out of their day to write you, but on the other hand it’s completely impossible to provide reasonable responses to everyone — it’s a difficult balancing act.
While YouTube is my main job, I also do consulting and I did a fair bit of it this year. If it’s frustrating to be called an outsider when you comment regularly on a topic, it’s doubly frustrating to be called uninformed by more casual commentators when various firms and planners think I am totally qualified to work on transit planning projects in a professional capacity. If you’re wondering what kind of work I have worked on, it’s actually primarily been related to best practice reviews where transit agencies want to learn about what other systems are doing, something which I really love doing and think probably is quite useful!
While I don’t have an expiry date planned for YouTube and my channel, there’s always the concerning notion that its likelihood of lasting for, say, 10 more years, probably isn’t that high. Ad rates could fall beyond a level that can support the channel (this is a long term trend), people could become disinterested, among other things; it’s really something where I need to have a longer term plan, and consulting stuff I have done this year is probably a component of that.
Another part of that is a big project I am working on outside of YouTube in 2023; you’ll be the first to know when I make info about it public, so make sure to stay tuned for a big announcement!
Something else I’ve talked about as my channel has gotten bigger is that local stuff has bugged me more. I made a post about my frustration with not getting access to stuff to film in Toronto while being able to in all the other major Canadian cities. Even more bothersome is Toronto’s incredibly stubborn culture around small improvements with the transit system. From bad wayfinding, to unbelievably dated operations practices, to the lack of modern features seen on other systems — Toronto seems uniquely unwilling to improve the quality of life for transit users even when it would have little to no upfront cost.
Of course, cost of living is also a very real concern, and at the same time Toronto is a city with a lot of problems, so I have to lean hard on the “things are getting better” narrative — but with things like the TTC (which I rely on almost every day) getting actively worse, it’s very hard. The high cost of living here and the continued increase in costs along with the decline of a lot of things that genuinely matter to me and others really increases the pressure to relocate.
Interestingly, there are a lot of people in the space (transit/urbanism) here in the city, but a large number of commentators and politicians (including “transit-supportive” ones) do drive, so it’s not necessarily always the most fun environment to be in. It often feel like people still do not get why the stuff we are building is important even if they broadly support it. At the same time, the more intimately familiar you are with a place ,the more the screwups get to you. Maybe if I moved away from Toronto and came back I would feel better about it, but every time I see something that I know does not need to be a certain way, it annoys me.
Now, I do have a lease here so I’m staying around… for now. But, if a great opportunity were to appear somewhere else I would seriously consider it. While I love Toronto, I do worry that it could apply downwards pressure on me in the transit space, and that’s something I really do not want.
But hey, wherever life takes me in the future, I’ll continue to work towards advocating for transit and helping to make it better for everyone. So strap in and let’s ride into 2023 with passion!
Just another comment ;)
I don't talk much, but I hope you're hearing that your professionalism and high quality standards are greatly appreciated in the transit, transportation, and urban life space. It's great to hear that planning firms consider you experienced enough to bring you on as a consultant! A backup plan - one with hopefully more stable income than whatever trends the social media companies are chasing - is always a good idea, and hopefully the work balance is in your favour.
As for moving away from Toronto - I say that if the opportunity comes up to live in a place where the experience of being there is friendlier, absolutely go and do it. There are so many shortcomings about Toronto and its urban design, and I fear the upcoming few years will do nothing but worsen them as the city is forced to do magic tricks and cartwheels with its budgetary planning.
Here's to a better year ahead!
"But, if a great opportunity were to appear somewhere else I would seriously consider it."
We desperately need help in Boston with the MBTA. And we're getting a new governor next week who has talked a big game about improving it. And a new MBTA general manager. Maybe you could come help us :)