Public Transit, Part I
Does anyone else here ride public transit on a regular basis? I have two words of advice for you - kill yourself. Seriously. Find a gun, or a knife, or the nearest large object (might I suggest your monitor) and just bludgeon yourself to death. I guarantee you'll be much happier dead than you will be riding the bus tomorrow morning. I rode the bus today. The TTC as it's known around here. That stands for Toronto Transit Commission. I could try to be clever and come up with some stupid negative three-word combo starting with those letters, but as an organization it's not worth the effort. Needless to say it's terrible. They call themselves The Rocket in their ads, which is so ironically horrible it makes you feel like vomiting. But more on that later. The TTC is a constant source of blood-boiling, brain-thumping, burn-down-your-house-in-a-fit-of-uncontrollable-raging-mania anger, and therefore we will be coming back to it again and again on this site. Meantime, I'd like to describe my typical transit experience:
It starts an hour and a half before I need to get where I'm going, and it begins with the wait. No, scratch that. It begins 3.2 seconds before the wait, when the bus I need to get on, the one with the driver looking right at me through the window as I yell and run with all the shit in my pockets flying out onto the sidewalk, pulls away just as I arrive to pound on the door. Only after that daily test of the human capacity for restraint does the wait actually begin.
There is a schedule posted at the bus stop I stand at in the freezing cold every morning. Now close your eyes and imagine you are in the delivery room at a hospital giving birth or with your wife while she is giving birth. Then imagine the baby is breached, and it's suddenly necessary to perform an emergency c-section. Now imagine the doctor gets on the telephone and calls for assistance from a specialist. Finally, imagine that in response, a giant ham sandwich with no arms, eyes, or medical training of any kind walks in the door, miming. That is how useless and annoying the presence of a TTC bus schedule is.
The first thing that happens while waiting for the bus is that seven buses go by the other way. Of course this makes no sense, since that's the direction toward where the majority of people live and away from where they work, and as a result they're all empty. I even have an added twist from my own route.
There are five buses that stop where I get on - the 36, the 36A, the 36B, the 36C and, you guessed it, the 36D. I take the 36B, which goes the farthest of all of them (which to me suggests it should be the most common, but that's another story). Invariably, a 36 will pass. Then a 36A. Then a 36C. Then a 36D. Then a 36 again. Then something called a 36S, which means that the bus is short-turning at a point ridiculously near to where it started. Then two that say NOT IN SERVICE. By now, reading this, you're either bored or annoyed. These are the two emotions that best describe how I feel at this point while waiting, the former gradually morphing into the latter as the minutes add up. Finally, after an inordinately long period of time considering it's rush hour, and at a moment so far removed from the one stated on the aforementioned schedule that I have to fight the urge to run amok through the streets naked and screaming like a mental patient on crack, the bus arrives.
The first thing I notice is that through the frost-and-grime-encrusted windows I can only see a shapeless, writhing mass. I can't even see the spaces between people's heads, because there are no spaces between people's heads. It's that packed. I get on, and make it as far as the first step before I run smack into someone's ass with my face. Then the door smacks into my ass as it closes, with part of my coat still outside. The driver yells at me for having the audacity not to fit on his cattle car. Then I spend two or three minutes trying to get my hand out of my pocket with my ticket, which I then have to snake past four or five crotches (remember I'm still two feet down from the floor of the bus) so I can reach the farebox.
"Please move to the back, people," the driver keeps saying through his little phone intercom thing. "Get behind the white line." The idea that anyone is moving behind the white line is so laughable that everybody forgets to laugh. The heat is turned up way too high for the number of people riding, and the stench of body odour and shitty perfume permeates every inch of the bus. Now someone's stepping on my foot. Now someone's hair is in my mouth. Now two ladies are fighting over a seat that's only really half a seat since the guy to the left of it is fat and the woman to the right of it has decided her purse needs to take a load off and an empty seat on an overpacked bus seems just the place.
We finally start moving. It's funny how your attitude can change. Half an hour before I'd been cursing the name, family and future of the driver who had left me scrambling when he pulled away as I arrived at the bus stop. Now, as the hour edges toward me being late, I take a savage pleasure in watching others (you know, old ladies, little kids, whoever) run up to the bus door only to have us pull away. Fuck them, they should have got there sooner.
We're moving along okay, when suddenly we run into a traffic jam. Now I can't blame this on the TTC, of course, it's just another stupid construction project during rush hour that has closed two of the three lanes and has everyone bottlenecking into the third. I could go on for hours about this sort of thing on its own, but again, that's for another day. But don't worry, the TTC still finds a way to make the situation worse. After 20 minutes of inching forward, we're finally through and moving again, albeit now running very late, when we pull over to a stop and the driver blows everyone's minds with his callous indifference to the fact that he is operating a vehicle filled beyond capacity with an angry, sweaty mob of malcontents who are now all running late - he gets off the bus, walks over to a coffee shop, buys a coffee, and SITS DOWN AT A TABLE! The people on the bus are flabbergasted. They honestly can not believe this is happening. Here we are shoehorned into a rolling stink factory at five minutes to nine o'clock and this guy's taking a coffee break?!? I think if that driver had returned to the bus he would have been lynched, strung up by the bellcord you ring to signal that you want to get off. Luckily for him, another driver emerges from the coffee shop to finish off the route. Not that that stops a number of angry passengers from making comments about him, his mother and his apparently questionable sexual orientation, but he remains unfazed, simply closing the door and driving on.
It finally looks like I'm going to arrive. The rage has built inside me to a point where I'm hoping someone picks a fight with me so that I can put a cigarette out in his eye. But at least we're moving. And then, the ultimate transit indignity - three-quarters of the way to my destination, the PA speakers above our heads squawk, and then the garbled voice of the driver tells us that he's been instructed to short-turn the bus at the next stop, and we all have to get off and wait for another. By now I'm breathless with anger. A string of creatively arranged expletives escapes my throat, prompting laughter from some of the other disgruntled riders. We all file off the bus, light our cigarettes, and commiserate with eachother about the horrid state of public transit in Toronto. Someone suggests we form a group and fight back. Someone else suggests we blow up TTC headquarters. Then someone says "fuck all that, I just want to get to work," a sentiment everyone agrees with. I'm now half an hour late, making the trip to this point a grand total of two hours long. I'm pissed off, tired, mentally drained and ready to kill someone. So I borrow some guy's cell phone and call myself in sick. I then get on one of the five empty buses I see heading back the way I came, and return home. As I get off the bus a paltry thirty-five minutes later, I notice an ad above the rear doors - "Master The Art Of Speed: Ride The Rocket." I feel like vomiting. I crawl into bed, pull the covers over my face and go to sleep. It's now about 10 a.m. Another day in the life of a public transit user. That is all.
It starts an hour and a half before I need to get where I'm going, and it begins with the wait. No, scratch that. It begins 3.2 seconds before the wait, when the bus I need to get on, the one with the driver looking right at me through the window as I yell and run with all the shit in my pockets flying out onto the sidewalk, pulls away just as I arrive to pound on the door. Only after that daily test of the human capacity for restraint does the wait actually begin.
There is a schedule posted at the bus stop I stand at in the freezing cold every morning. Now close your eyes and imagine you are in the delivery room at a hospital giving birth or with your wife while she is giving birth. Then imagine the baby is breached, and it's suddenly necessary to perform an emergency c-section. Now imagine the doctor gets on the telephone and calls for assistance from a specialist. Finally, imagine that in response, a giant ham sandwich with no arms, eyes, or medical training of any kind walks in the door, miming. That is how useless and annoying the presence of a TTC bus schedule is.
The first thing that happens while waiting for the bus is that seven buses go by the other way. Of course this makes no sense, since that's the direction toward where the majority of people live and away from where they work, and as a result they're all empty. I even have an added twist from my own route.
There are five buses that stop where I get on - the 36, the 36A, the 36B, the 36C and, you guessed it, the 36D. I take the 36B, which goes the farthest of all of them (which to me suggests it should be the most common, but that's another story). Invariably, a 36 will pass. Then a 36A. Then a 36C. Then a 36D. Then a 36 again. Then something called a 36S, which means that the bus is short-turning at a point ridiculously near to where it started. Then two that say NOT IN SERVICE. By now, reading this, you're either bored or annoyed. These are the two emotions that best describe how I feel at this point while waiting, the former gradually morphing into the latter as the minutes add up. Finally, after an inordinately long period of time considering it's rush hour, and at a moment so far removed from the one stated on the aforementioned schedule that I have to fight the urge to run amok through the streets naked and screaming like a mental patient on crack, the bus arrives.The first thing I notice is that through the frost-and-grime-encrusted windows I can only see a shapeless, writhing mass. I can't even see the spaces between people's heads, because there are no spaces between people's heads. It's that packed. I get on, and make it as far as the first step before I run smack into someone's ass with my face. Then the door smacks into my ass as it closes, with part of my coat still outside. The driver yells at me for having the audacity not to fit on his cattle car. Then I spend two or three minutes trying to get my hand out of my pocket with my ticket, which I then have to snake past four or five crotches (remember I'm still two feet down from the floor of the bus) so I can reach the farebox.
"Please move to the back, people," the driver keeps saying through his little phone intercom thing. "Get behind the white line." The idea that anyone is moving behind the white line is so laughable that everybody forgets to laugh. The heat is turned up way too high for the number of people riding, and the stench of body odour and shitty perfume permeates every inch of the bus. Now someone's stepping on my foot. Now someone's hair is in my mouth. Now two ladies are fighting over a seat that's only really half a seat since the guy to the left of it is fat and the woman to the right of it has decided her purse needs to take a load off and an empty seat on an overpacked bus seems just the place.
We finally start moving. It's funny how your attitude can change. Half an hour before I'd been cursing the name, family and future of the driver who had left me scrambling when he pulled away as I arrived at the bus stop. Now, as the hour edges toward me being late, I take a savage pleasure in watching others (you know, old ladies, little kids, whoever) run up to the bus door only to have us pull away. Fuck them, they should have got there sooner.
We're moving along okay, when suddenly we run into a traffic jam. Now I can't blame this on the TTC, of course, it's just another stupid construction project during rush hour that has closed two of the three lanes and has everyone bottlenecking into the third. I could go on for hours about this sort of thing on its own, but again, that's for another day. But don't worry, the TTC still finds a way to make the situation worse. After 20 minutes of inching forward, we're finally through and moving again, albeit now running very late, when we pull over to a stop and the driver blows everyone's minds with his callous indifference to the fact that he is operating a vehicle filled beyond capacity with an angry, sweaty mob of malcontents who are now all running late - he gets off the bus, walks over to a coffee shop, buys a coffee, and SITS DOWN AT A TABLE! The people on the bus are flabbergasted. They honestly can not believe this is happening. Here we are shoehorned into a rolling stink factory at five minutes to nine o'clock and this guy's taking a coffee break?!? I think if that driver had returned to the bus he would have been lynched, strung up by the bellcord you ring to signal that you want to get off. Luckily for him, another driver emerges from the coffee shop to finish off the route. Not that that stops a number of angry passengers from making comments about him, his mother and his apparently questionable sexual orientation, but he remains unfazed, simply closing the door and driving on.
It finally looks like I'm going to arrive. The rage has built inside me to a point where I'm hoping someone picks a fight with me so that I can put a cigarette out in his eye. But at least we're moving. And then, the ultimate transit indignity - three-quarters of the way to my destination, the PA speakers above our heads squawk, and then the garbled voice of the driver tells us that he's been instructed to short-turn the bus at the next stop, and we all have to get off and wait for another. By now I'm breathless with anger. A string of creatively arranged expletives escapes my throat, prompting laughter from some of the other disgruntled riders. We all file off the bus, light our cigarettes, and commiserate with eachother about the horrid state of public transit in Toronto. Someone suggests we form a group and fight back. Someone else suggests we blow up TTC headquarters. Then someone says "fuck all that, I just want to get to work," a sentiment everyone agrees with. I'm now half an hour late, making the trip to this point a grand total of two hours long. I'm pissed off, tired, mentally drained and ready to kill someone. So I borrow some guy's cell phone and call myself in sick. I then get on one of the five empty buses I see heading back the way I came, and return home. As I get off the bus a paltry thirty-five minutes later, I notice an ad above the rear doors - "Master The Art Of Speed: Ride The Rocket." I feel like vomiting. I crawl into bed, pull the covers over my face and go to sleep. It's now about 10 a.m. Another day in the life of a public transit user. That is all.
posted by Andrew Ryan Fox at 2:04 PM
6 comments
He has all the charisma and charm of a limp penis, and the sex appeal of that guy who can't ever leave his bedroom because he weighs 1400 pounds, and when he finally 
