On the buses in the rain

Well thank god that's over with. This past week has seen me waiting for more vanished buses and broken skytrains then you could shake a fist at (and I have).

There is something quite unsettling to take a look a system that costs millions of dollars, is depended upon by thousands of people and is mostly dirty, broken and ignored by those we have entrusted it to.

I ride the buses alot and as such I mostly am used to them; but some days I actually wake up and look around me. Thursday was such a day.

Started out very good. I had made sure the night before that I was setup with everything I would need to get a good start to the day. Got up early and stayed focused as I knew that I had a complex day of meetings and would need to effectively use transit all day to do it. Got to the first bus early and caught one a full 8 minutes before my regular schedule.

My Thursday schedule requires me to get out to UBC for an 11:05 am meeting. Typically, it's one bus from Drake and Howe straight through to University Blvd and Westbrook Mall in about 30 minutes (this is a regular trip and usually I catch the 4 or the 17 at 10:18 am and get there with enough time to have a coffee before the meeting). Today though I'm early and I will have plenty of time to get to my meeting, no rushing today, NOT. The number of cars either parked in bus stop or double parked waiting for some one else to leave a parking spot or perhaps just paralysed with fear and horror at the rain (after all it is Vancouver and we are hardly used to rain) is beyond belief. Broadway past Arbutus has become impassable nearly to Alma. Road repair/sewer repair or installation and more condominium construction makes most of Broadway two lane side street.

We are going to get there in time but just barely, coffee is not quite as restful and focusing as it might be. And sitting on the bus starting to wonder if I will be in time for my meeting makes me look up and around. Most of my companions are young UBC students which means the bus smells good, a bit of wet wool but mostly of clean and healthy people, these folks have places to live, decent food to eat, a place to shower and perhaps most of all, purpose in their lives. Not much of a sense of desperation or fear; its a nice smell, human beings at their best, and since I first became aware of it one of the parts I like best of my trips in to UBC in the mornings. But the rest of the surround is not so pleasant; the windows and floors are dirty not just from today's rain and mud but several days worth. The fabric on the seats is worn and in place torn and where patched, patched with duct tape ragged along the edges. The plastic around the lights show dirt and a collection of unknown objects (dead moths? gum? discarded transfers?) casts amorphous shadows. The bus is dirty, shabby and run down a stark contrast to the mostly happy, industrious looking youth riding in it. They deserve better, I deserve better.

12:00 pm. Finished my meeting and it is on to the next. This the trip that I think will be difficult. I am going to try to follow the trip plan given to me by Translink's recalcitrant database (you know the one; the one that tells you that there is no bus service that will take you from Davie and Denman to Broadway and Granville at 7:00 pm on Sunday night or that you will need to make 3 transfers to get from Broadway and Granville to 4th and MacDonald) and go from the UBC General Services Loop to 8th Avenue and McBride Blvd in New Westminster by 1:30 pm.

It starts okay. The driver doesn't sit and watch us huddle under the inadequate rain shelter (by the way, could someone please tell me why (other than the City's and Translink's intense fear that a homeless person might try to stay dry ) we can't have bus shelters that actually provide shelter, I mean we all know that we will be standing there for a long time, could we at least be out of the wind and cold) but pulls up as soon as he arrives at the loop and lets us board even though we won't be leaving for another 10 minutes. This bus is a little better than the trolley that I came in on but the windows are still filthy and I don't think I would want to touch the floor with my bare skin.

12:15 pm. We leave on time this is looking good! Speeding through the campus, out on to Chancellor, down 4th. The time is work out perfectly. Whoops! Stop for someone in a wheelchair, nothing major, both the driver and the guy in the chair know what they are doing, so not too long a stop, I think. But you know the schedulers of bus routes and trip plans rarely put any wiggle room in there timing and certainly not enough to pick up someone in a wheelchair that require a little attention and assistance. Almost at VCC station and a final traffic snarl of timid drivers trying to make left hand turns slows us down for an extra light. Get up to the platform just in time to watch two trains flash their lights off and on for a couple minutes.

Finally some cybernetic resolution is attained and one of them rolls forward and let's us on, and then sits there burning more minutes and more minutes. I am now officially pretty sure that the schedule is blown and I am not going to make my connection. But I am not without hope, I think I will miss the connection with the 154 at Braid Station but I'm sure that I can connect with it on its way back from the 22nd Street Station. All is not lost and it is not certain that I will miss it at Braid.

1:15 pm. I am now rolling up to Braid Station and I have missed that connection, but I am confident that can catch the 154 on its trip back (my meeting is almost perfectly between the two stations and the 154 stops directly outside of it) so I will be late but only a few minutes. I call my client and inform them that I will be late due to transit problems but only a few minutes. I arrive at 22nd Street Station and I'm 5 minutes early!! Success.

1:35 pm. The 154 is now 7 minutes late and its sister route the 155 has pulled up. The 155 driver has no idea where the 154 has vanished to (I think that he is lying, but I also suspect that if he were to tell me what he knows about what happens to the disappeared buses, he would never see his family again!!).

1:42 pm. I bite the bullet I get on his bus which will get me within three blocks of my goal, not such a big deal except for the torrential downpour. I get to my stop and make my walk through the rain. I arrive for my meeting to a mostly understanding client. I have no idea of what the condition of the bus wa although I did engage in a slight murderous fantasy about the oaf standing blocking the exit door but that's just me.

4:30 pm. The meeting is over and I have plenty of time to catch the next bus, it's about 15 minutes before it leaves Braid Station and it takes around 7 or 8 minutes to get to the stop outside the office so I have plenty of time, except as I step out of the office there it is pulling up either 20 minutes early or 10 minutes late. The is a long line of people getting on which argues for the late scenario, which give me time to join the end of the line and step on board.

Heading home. It is a nice bus, happy humans going home, a woman and her bright and chatty daughter talk to a friend in seat ahead, people looking tired but happy to be on their way home. The bus has dirty floors and windows but that seems less of an issue at the end of the day then at the start of one. Everything has worked out but not because the transit system works well but because I'm reasonably patient and the people I work with understand that the transit system doesn't work very well and make allowances.

But why are we making allowances? A significant part of civic taxes, gas taxes and as far as I know income taxes go to make the transit system work. Why are we sitting on dirty, ill maintained buses, waiting in intentionally poor shelters for buses that never come, never informed if there is a problem, never assisted by supervisors, at the mercy of databases that are either psychotically optimistic or just plain wrong. Why are we held in such contempt? As transit users we are part of the solution to the great problems facing our environment, so why would most of us rather drive a car and push us all, our children, our partners, ourselves, into the abyss rather that put up with the contempt that we are daily treated to on our transit system? I don't know, if you do I wish you'd tell me.

later

jack