Came across this the other day and I wept.
It's from: "Porn for Torontonians": An Ideal TTC Map, and by golly did they hit the nail on the head with that one.
I've had the opportunity to live in various cities across Canada, and so I can speak with some authority when I complain about the TTC.
Let's take St. John's, Newfoundland for example. They've got a pretty horrendous public transit system. The buses on many routes only come once an hour, they take a circuitous route and so if you want to go back the way you came you have to hop on at the same stop and take the rest of the route (however long) home, their buses are in no way accessible to anyone with mobility issues, they have orphaned bus stop signs that trick would-be transit users into wasting their time in front of them, no buses go to the airport, and coverage outside the city centre is sparse when it exists at all. BUT, they've got electronic bus pass cards that are reloadable either for an entire month or for a number of trips, they've got WiFi on a lot of their buses, and their drivers tend to stop if they see you a block from a stop and trying to flag them down as opposed to speeding up and driving through a puddle to drown you out of spite.
Now, I don't remember as much about Ottawa or Vancouver's public transit systems, but I do know that they're more automated, have more dedicated lines (Ottawa Transitway, Vancouver Skytrain), they're cheaper than Toronto and I like them more better.
What never ceases to baffle me, is how all these cities can have one or more things done right and not have the foresight or peripheral vision to learn from what other cities are doing in order to improve the weak points in their services. Do theses people not talk to each other? Should I arrange an introduction? Should I perhaps send flowers to them all from secret admirers and arrange for them all the meet at dinner in an elaborate, romantic made-for-tv scheme?
Anybody wanna pitch for the flowers?
It's from: "Porn for Torontonians": An Ideal TTC Map, and by golly did they hit the nail on the head with that one.
I've had the opportunity to live in various cities across Canada, and so I can speak with some authority when I complain about the TTC.
Let's take St. John's, Newfoundland for example. They've got a pretty horrendous public transit system. The buses on many routes only come once an hour, they take a circuitous route and so if you want to go back the way you came you have to hop on at the same stop and take the rest of the route (however long) home, their buses are in no way accessible to anyone with mobility issues, they have orphaned bus stop signs that trick would-be transit users into wasting their time in front of them, no buses go to the airport, and coverage outside the city centre is sparse when it exists at all. BUT, they've got electronic bus pass cards that are reloadable either for an entire month or for a number of trips, they've got WiFi on a lot of their buses, and their drivers tend to stop if they see you a block from a stop and trying to flag them down as opposed to speeding up and driving through a puddle to drown you out of spite.
Now, I don't remember as much about Ottawa or Vancouver's public transit systems, but I do know that they're more automated, have more dedicated lines (Ottawa Transitway, Vancouver Skytrain), they're cheaper than Toronto and I like them more better.
What never ceases to baffle me, is how all these cities can have one or more things done right and not have the foresight or peripheral vision to learn from what other cities are doing in order to improve the weak points in their services. Do theses people not talk to each other? Should I arrange an introduction? Should I perhaps send flowers to them all from secret admirers and arrange for them all the meet at dinner in an elaborate, romantic made-for-tv scheme?
Anybody wanna pitch for the flowers?
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