I really dislike the TTC, today was a bad day. It’s probably no different that some other people’s days, and maybe this goes on a lot, but I’m really tired of this.

First of all, the massive snowfall was supposed to screw up yesterday, not today, but today was far worse. It took me around 2 hours to get to work today, you could drive it in 20 minutes, I bet if I was driven, point to point, probably wouldn’t have taken longer than 40, but for the bus factor.

What really gets me is the ads they have for the TTC. Here’s one of their own website

Advert for TTC (the image)

Okay, so lets look at the various things it claims. First, a safe ride home.. well, perhaps, maybe, if you are an unaccompanied female between 9pm and 5am (while in the winter it’s pitch black at 5pm, so that’s pretty useful). Secondly, cleaner air for my kids, again, perhaps, but 95% dead is still dead, so until it’s a more useful service and more cars are off the road, pointless point. Ah, the third one. Getting to work before my boss (she drives). Okay, neat that they made the boss female, but I’ll say that’s cancelled out by only having white people in the add. And it’s like the advertisers couldn’t seem to work in the fact that they are comparing against a driver without making it a sort of passing exposition in the speaker’s speech balloon. But the joke is that you can beat a driver using the TTC. Maybe if you only use the subway, and only if you live on the tracks at one stop and your work is on the tracks at another stop. Here’s how riding the bus is different from driving…

When driving, you don’t have to wait outside for 45 minutes waiting for your god damned car to arrive, watching other cars that won’t take you where you want to go fly by, sometimes several of the same.. er, numbered, .. car. Whatever. Still, the only car that could take me where I wanted to go was far later than it should have been. Cars were moving, buses were absent.

When your car arrives, you don’t normally get packed in because 60 other people are using it too, nor do you have to clamber over a snowbank because no one bothered to plough the city the stop, again.

One’s car doesn’t inch along slowly letting people on and off, making personal encountered with other people’s body odours very acute.

Nor does one car suddenly decide to ditch it’s god damn 40 passenger load and become a Short-Turn car and sit you waiting for another half hour, 75% of the way to your destination, waiting for another car that will take you (which you’ve been assured is ‘right behind us’). Bullshit. They claim it’s for scheduling… we are on FS, (laughably termed Frequent Service, more aptly Fucking Slow) which is supposed to mean approx 10 minutes, but no actual times. So why not just drive? We waited forever, so will other people, don’t screw over your current customers for the sake of those unknown. But then again, it’s a monopoly, we don’t actually have a choice. People don’t take the bus because they want to.

Of course, once the other car arrives, and you stop one stop before your goal and another 30 people get on, it’s very fun to force your way to the front because there is only a 3 foot wide opening in the snowbank and guess which set of doors will open there?

A lot of the crap later was due to Brentcliffe Ave once again causing a nightmare for motorists by having it’s lights out and cops directing the traffic, one. direction. at. a. time. And losing a lane. That intersection has been hell for a while, but it can be open and fine for 3 days, and then suddenly shit again. You can’t anticipate it.

And of course, same crap happens on the way home, wait 45 minutes (from 9:15 to 10pm) for a bus, 3 go by the other way… nothing for 45 minutes, and then 3 come trendling up. Why the hell would they short turn me in the morning, but not fix it at night.

The Better Way? Better than what? Better than death? Perhaps, but not by much.