Commuting Thoughts: 30 Days Later

June 21, 2008 - It has been about a month since I made that decision to move back to Markham for a few months until my condo is ready for me to be moved in. Moving home means a few things: living with my parents, free food, and a very long commute. I really did not want to start ranting on my commute, since I know from the date that I decided to move home, that the commute would be painful. Having said that, I have to admit that it has not been as bad as I envisioned it would be. Surely, there are bad days, but the majority of them have been surprisingly good. Of course, when it is bad though, it is really bad. Here's an example:

Saturday, June 21 @ 5:50 p.m.

Someone had jumped/fell/been pushed onto the tracks at St. Clair station. I was on a northbound train at Bloor station when they ordered everyone off the train. There was to be no subway service between Eglinton and Bloor. Sure, it's not the TTC's fault that a "track level injury" had occurred, but what came after really annoyed me. The PA system came on, asking everyone to take a shuttle bus to Bloor (this was in addition to the subway conductors yelling at everyone for not getting off the train fast enough). Past experiences have told me that shuttle buses do not work well in situations like this. As expected, hundreds of people gathered at the Yonge/Bloor intersection. There were no directions on where to wait, when the bus will come, or whether we need a transfer or not. Where were the TTC employees? could they not deploy someone from transit control to help organize the crowds or provide instructions? Ten minutes later, the shuttle bus was still nowhere to be seen, while the crowd at Y&B had grown much larger. It was chaotic and completely disorganized - you would think that TTC has a manual of some sort that actually guides emergency situations like this. I mean, what if it was a terrorist attack instead of an "injury at track level"?

Anyway, I ended up taking the Bloor train to St. George (got stuck at St. George because of "security reasons") and then up to Downsview, east to Sheppard on a bus, then up to Finch. By the time I got to Sheppard, trains were running northbound on Yonge again.

Time it took from Bloor to Finch: 1.5 hours

Really, is it that difficult for the TTC to improve its customer service? I know a huge emphasis is placed on track maintenance and making sure trains run on time, etc, but in today's day and age, you cannot treat your riders like cattles being shuttled to be slaughtered (that also applies to how airlines treat their passengers, but that's another story). At least pretend that you care, that's all I'm asking really.