transit rant

I like donuts but I donut like buses

I had to go back to my doctor today to confer about the unwelcome lump of something or other and lay out the next steps in what to do. He also mentioned that my blood sugar level in the previous test was 2.6, which is apparently exactly on the line between “this is okay” and “this is not at all okay” so I have to get a formal blood sugar test, the ultrasound and who knows what else.

The ultrasound is already scheduled so I’ll probably get the blood work done the same day in the morning. And the ultrasound is at Richmond Hospital instead of Royal Columbian. You know, the hospital I literally live right next door to. Anyway, it’ll be a fun day with poking and prodding and the actual topic of this post…

Buses.

I had to catch a bus at the Brighouse SkyTrain station (the 410, to be specific) to get to the clinic today. I checked ahead of time, noted when it departed and all that. Then I got on the right bus (410) but headed in the wrong direction because I wasn’t paying attention. I managed to get to the clinic only 10 minutes late as a result (and still had to wait 10 minutes more) but this particular bus reminded me why I dislike buses so much. Compared to trains:

  • they can get snarled in traffic and delayed. It took five minutes just top move past the first block.
  • the seats and aisles are unpleasantly narrow. I am not a wide person but even I find the space on a bus cramped at the best of times. There’s a reason they evoke sardine cans. The cramped space also makes it difficult to exit the bus as you must squeeze your way past everyone between you and the door.
  • constant stops. For the first two-thirds of the trip, the bus pulled in at every stop and the stops were usually spaced only two to four blocks apart (WHY?!) This stretches out the trip nigh unto infinity.
  • too many drivers don’t understand that they are carrying humans, not cargo that has been secured to the floor. They stab the brakes, causing standees to stumble about, then stab the gas, causing the standees to stumble again, but in the opposite direction. They gun it before people can sit. They forget to release the lock on the back exit, even though people are standing there waiting to get off. They run yellow and even red lights. Not all drivers are bad, of course, but the point is NONE of them should be bad drivers. It’s their job.

Anyway, if I was king I’d retire every bus and put in light rapid transit all over the place. I don’t care how much it costs, I’d do it and my loyal subjects would love me. They’d call me King Transit, Master of Trains.

A possible compromise might be to put the buses in transit-only tunnels. This would effectively turn them into trains. The cost could be partly offset by plastering every last cm of the tunnel walls with ads. I’d even be okay with sponsored stops. “The next stop is Boundary Road, brought to you by the refreshingly crisp taste of Coca-Cola.”

Or better yet, someone should invent teleporters. Screw this transit stuff altogether. You can keep the flying cars, just let me beam to the doctor’s office in five seconds instead of taking over two hours.

The Jerk: SkyTrain edition

This guy is a jerk. Why is he a jerk? I will tell you.

transit jerk

This picture was taken during my commute home, on the Canada Line, around 4:40 p.m.

Transit Jerk Explained

  1. He’s sitting on the outside seat, making it more difficult for other people to get by to the empty window seat next to him
  2. He has his legs crossed, which makes it even more difficult and sends the implicit message, “Go away, don’t even try.”
  3. He is doing this during rush hour when the train is inevitably going to be crowded.
  4. He has his bag in the “Keep Area Clear” space at the front of the car. Stuff left here can go flying if the train makes an emergency stop.
  5. His water bottle is on the verge of popping out of his bag and rolling onto the floor.
  6. Bonus: He’s wearing a vest.

Today on the commute home four of the seats up front were occupied by people’s baggage (said people obviously riding in from the airport). Question: What is more deserving of a seat: your baggage or another human being? Answer: You know the answer, jerk. Move your damn luggage.

This concludes my yearly transit rant. Since switching almost exclusively to riding the SkyTrain rather than the bus, I find most of my complaints are of a mechanical nature–that is, taking issue with problems besetting the system such as stuck cars, failed switches, etc. In the olden days of bus riding my complaints were almost exclusively about the people on the bus rather than the bus itself. So in that sense, my complaints now are a lot milder.

But still, the jerks are still out there, with their fancy bags and crossed legs and, “Oh, you want to sit here? I had no idea other people rode the train!”

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A transit rant from 2007

I posted this on the Martian Cartel forum back in 2007 and for some reason never included it here. Either that or I am inept at searching my own blog. If it is actually here, think of this as a summer rerun rather than an accidental repeat.

As context , in 2007 I took the bus daily to work and in fact have had to do so for nearly every job I’ve had in the last 20+  years. I have been on Vancouver area buses thousands of times.

I do not generally like the experience, as you shall see below.

A Salute to my Fellow Passengers

A salute to my fellow passengers! I bid you a warm and hearty hello, one and all. Especially…

Mr. “I’m wearing a backpack the size of Kansas and I am not taking it off.” Thank you for slapping me in the face with your backpack while grooving out obliviously to your iPod. Hey, that reminds me…

Thanks to Mr. “I like to share my music with everyone, even when I’m wearing earphones.”  Yes, your iPod really does go to 11, just like the speakers in Spinal Tap. The Europeans don’t like it much but what do they know? They gave us Wham! The important thing isn’t that you’re going deaf but that I can clearly hear the words that accompany your horrible taste in music.

Ms “I like the exit but not for leaving!” Hey, look, the rear doors don’t have anyone standing there, so why not head over and block the exit? When people try to leave the bus, act surprised — every time it happens. Bonus points if you’re grossly obese and think that standing sideways makes a difference in letting people by. Hint: every side of you is fat.

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Camera theft and why I hate public transit: Two semi-related tales

Tale #1:

I keep my digital camera in my pack/man purse so it’s always handy if I want to grab a picture of something while I’m out and aboot. While at work, the man purse sits under my desk, tucked beside the plastic box that holds my phone headset and a few notebooks. Last night as per usual I went for my half hour break, doing so one floor up in the 9th floor lunchroom. It is the only time during the shift that the man purse is left unsupervised, apart from a few quick jaunts to the washroom.

Today before work I pull out assorted clutter from the pack so it will be nice and tidy. I notice that the zippered pocket containing the camera seems to be camera-less. I check again and it is indeed gone. I know it was in there as I distinctly recall putting it back in after uploading the hiking photos a few days ago. The camera, it seems, was gently removed from my possession by someone at my workplace — either a co-worker or one of the cleaning staff, likely while I was on my lunch break. They would have had no idea the camera was in there, they just saw the pack and rooted through it, unquestioned by anyone else nearby, apparently. I have no illusions of ever seeing that camera again. I am equally disappointed and angry with my fellow humans.

Since I discovered this theft about a half hour before work, I was not in the best of moods for my shift. As it turned out, I would witness someone later in the evening in a much worse mood.

Tale #2:

The bus ride home from work was interesting — though nothing was stolen this time. Instead of the usual route out of downtown there was a detour down Hastings Street, with police cars a-plenty and several large swaths of street/sidewalk behind police tape but no sign of why the tape was there. I am guessing a stabbing with the perp still on the loose (update: turns out I was correct, though the suspect was caught). Once we passed this puzzling possible crime scene we picked up additional passengers: a set of about a half dozen or so early 20-somethings with some kind of light (lite?) faux punk thing happening, and a pair of heavyset men (more fat than muscle from what I could see).

These groups sat or stood in the front half of the bus. I was in one of the seats in the back, sitting next to a co-worker who lives in the same neighborhood as I do. We are quietly conversing when a rather loud conversation begins in the front part of the bus. It seemed the two groups that got on were exchanging varying levels of vitriol. One of the heavyset guys kept taunting the ‘white boy’ with ‘Last stop! Last stop! Last stop!’ with the then carefully explained threat that that is where he would beat the crap out of him. White boy (who probably weighed about 200 pounds less) murmured things back that I could not hear. The girls in tow looked somewhat alarmed at the events unfolding.

After several minutes of increasingly loud taunts and threats, the bus pulled into the stop at 12th and Clark — a tantalizingly seven blocks from my stop. And there it sat. The driver got up, walked over to Large Threatening Guy and told him, ‘This is the last stop.’ He made it clear that some people would be walking if the tone of the conversation didn’t take a turn for the kinder and gentler.

This did not happen.

The bus rider returned to his seat. Large Threatening Guy went to DEFCON 1 and promised to murder Skinny White Boy at the last stop. At this point I really was content to walk those last seven blocks but the developing altercation was square in front of the rear exit. I am thin but not thin enough to squeeze out of a bus window. So I sat and watched where developments would go.

The friend of LTG got off the bus and gingerly tugged on his ill-tempered buddy, managing to coax him partly through the door. Large Threatening Guy suddenly snapped and shot back in and quickly delivered a punch to Skinny White Boy. The crowd on the bus ravished, like the audience at a gladiatorial fight. Those standing shifted position, some striking defensive poses, others girding for the coming battle.

Instead, the friend of LTG successfully pulled his friend off the bus and the rear doors closed, leaving them to taunt from the sidewalk as the rain pelted down on them. The faux punk group all tittered in the same way people who jaywalk and barely miss getting flattened by a semi do. The remaining seven blocks of the ride proved uneventful.

So to summarize my day:

I hate my job.
I hate camera thieves.
I hate public transit.
I hate people.
I think I hate the planet.

I still like a nice slice of toast with almond butter and a hot cup of chai tea which has almost made me forget the other things.

Why I generally avoid the bus

Today I was riding the bus back home and being a Sunday, the trip frequency is reduced so that means every bus is crowded. Sure enough, the #19 was packed, though I lucked out and got a seat when I got on downtown. Eventually the standing-only room fills up and this rather large gentleman ends up parked beside me. When I say “rather large” I mean he is about as overweight as I weigh in total (that being 150 pounds). His belly is bulbous in a way that suggests he has recently consumed whole and intact a small planetoid. He is wearing a powder blue polo shirt and gray sweatpants. The vast expanse of the shirt does a brave job of mostly covering his upper body but the pinkish white flesh of his gut can be spied jutting out over the protesting waistband of the sweatpants.

Let me back up a bit. I don’t dislike fat people. We each all must come to terms with our individual lifestyles. Some of us cannot lose weight due to medical conditions, others because they think fat and chocolate are recognized food groups. Hey, whatever floats your (gravy) boat, I say. I do not judge, even after discovering that a sensible diet will indeed lead you to the prescribed weight for your given body type.

If you’re fat, I only ask one thing: keep that tremendously huge gut of yours out of my face when I’m on the bus. It makes me nervous.

The fat guy pulls out a cell phone and begins talking in a very loud manner. This is hardly unusual, as most people use A VERY LOUD TONE WHEN TALKING ON A CELL PHONE IN PUBLIC. I’m hoping technology will eventually solve whatever is causing this to happen. I glance up briefly. He is holding the phone with short fat fingers and the nails on each are trimmed. I know, you’re probably wondering why I am taking in so much of a person I apparently find kind of yucky. It was just a glance, really, then I noticed that the pinky finger of his right hand did not have a trimmed nail. In fact, the nail was quite long — as long as the nail on the finger itself. The words popped into my mind instantly: the scoop. That nail was deliberately left to grow long so it could serve as a scoop that would operate in the nostril mine, digging into the lodes and pulling out deposits, to be delivered to the awaiting truck — or as we call commonly call it, the mouth.

Blargh.

He moved after a few minutes to the rear exit, a popular place for people on the bus to gather when they are not planning on getting off any time soon. Blocking the exit sticks it to the man, I guess. He puts away the cell phone and puts on some MP3 player and begins listening to music AT A VOLUME THAT EVEN PETE TOWNSEND COULD STILL HEAR. When I get off the bus, I manage to slip my skinny frame by without making body contact and in this H1N1 world, I consider it a victory.

And I think again about why I generally avoid the bus.