What an awful fucking company - but what a wonderful example of how privatization hurts everyone. Closed meetings, to lessen public scrutiny... $2.50 busfare, which I bet gets raised again before 2010 ends... Buses to some neighbourhoods that run so infrequently they're almost always SRO... Signs in subway stations telling everyone it's an "offense" to give away used transfers (by which law, exactly? Or does it just "offend their sensibilities?" What a fucking arrogant statement. Yeah, homeless people constantly cadging transfers so they can resell them are a bit of a pain in the ass, but jeezus, they're just trying to eat and/or get high, the same as all the rest of us. I mean, I guess we could just take them out and shoot them, but it might attract some negative publicity. Perhaps the city could flat out criminalize poverty, so that we can just jail all the bums? Has someone suggested this to VANOC? They seem to run the city now...). I've had an angry Translink rant brewing for awhile, but tonight was the last straw: I discovered they're doing track maintenance on the Skytrain at 11:00 at night, and have been, I'm told, doing this for awhile. They COULD wait a couple of fucking hours until the trains have stopped running altogether, but instead, tonight, they were forcing trains in both directions to stop at Stadium and making passengers get out and cross to the other side of the tracks, so they could keep one section of track closed. I didn't believe them at first when they told me "track maintenance" - I figured it was a euphemism for "some schlub depressed about what a horrible city this is becoming jumped in front of the tracks and now we have to clean it up." But when I invited one of the Translink staff on hand to level with me - "Doing track maintenance at this time of night is no sort of answer - do you want people to think you're stupid? What really happened, some accident?" - she bristled in such a way as to suggest that, yep, they're doing exactly what I was told. Replacing track, greatly inconveniencing dozens of commuters rather than running a night shift...
Oh, holy fuck, wait a minute - is my blog a free speech zone? I better shut up before someone Tasers me.
Fuck.
2 comments:
(I know your post was written in 09) but I gotta say paying the 110 bucks for a two zone monthly pass is ridiculous, yet the high school student only gets charged 40?! If their ass only took up half a seat I'd understand, I can almost pay car insurance for the two zone rate, (heaven forbid what I would for a three zone.) for the extra five bucks it would cost in gas I would have my own seat, own aromas, own music. instead of being owned by translink.
in a car it takes me 20mins,
in a bus it takes me 1hr 15mins.
eh, what a great system here!!
Yup. Sitting at stadium right now, as I do every weeknight from 10 on. Don't you understand that we are paying TO GO SOMEWHERE?.
Also leaving early from stops has to end. I catch the same bus everyday and sometimes run for it and the bus drivers pretend not to see me. Sometimes they just blow by the stop.
I understand that these people hate their lives because the didnt study in high school but this is a public service.
Again, people are trying to go to work or to home. This is the life you chose. Figure it out
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