62 Replies to “Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car”

  2. Lion’s Park LRT station(Calgary North Hill) to SAIT(Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
    This was a sexual assault in public.
    Calgary Police Service better make an arrest in this case or this will be very bad publicity for those lazy louts.

  4. Revnant Dream: Learned the hard way not to not under-estimate seniors. Old timers are tough – believe you me.
    The story about the 85 year old man with the cane reminded me of a bizarre and humbling incident that happened to me personally while working as a recreation aid at a seniors center a number of years ago-I learned first hand just how strong seemingly frail people can be.
    I had only been working there a few days when the senior recreation aid and I came up with the idea of an outside game of wheelchair/scooter badminton/volley ball using nylons over coat hangers fashioned into makeshift rackets where balloons are used in place of a ball or birdie-larger and easier object to hit, and apparently, less chance of injury. For the activity, the wheelchairs and scooters are arranged in a circle where participants attempt to keep the balloon in the air as long as possible-batting it back and forth.
    I noticed early on that one tiny frail looking scooter lady was batting the balloon with so much force that she was constantly batting it right out the circle-not an easy task to accomplish by any means. I voiced my amazement to the other aid and she replied that, who I henceforth referred to as pitbull, that she was a 102 and not to be under-estimated. I had no clue that within a couple of minutes I would find out just how true that was.
    I happened to be the closest one to where pitbull had batted a balloon with so much force that her racket went flying with it. I picked up her racket while the other aid was busy retrieving one of the balloons. I went to hand her the racket, she reached out to accept the racket, or so I thought. Instead she reached out and gripped my wrist hard, so hard in fact that I could not rotate my wrist at all to loosen her grip.
    It didn’t take long to realize there was no way she was going to let go. I remembered that instead of instinctively pulling away, I should press toward her, but I first needed to steady my stance, so I took my free arm and grabbed onto the scooter armrest to stabilize myself not realizing until it was too late that I had centered my weight firmly on the reverse button causing the scooter to fly backwards taking me to my knees with it. I nearly ended up with my head in in her lap. I recall hearing the gasps, murmuring, and what I thought at the time were at least a couple of snickers echoing behind me. My submission seemed to satisfy pitbull and she let go of me.
    After I had regained enough of my composure, the other aid announced that it was time to change activities and suggested that we all go for a wheel around the senior center-everyone nodded in agreement. While we were making our way around the perimeter, the other aid and told me a tale about pitbull. I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to doubt her tale.
    Turns out that one day, pitbull, was deemed to weak/sick to eat in the dining room with the other seniors, so her food was brought to her room. The senior centre had a few therapy cats that roamed freely, but were not allowed in the dining area during meal times. Unknown to the food aide, one of the cats had snuck into pit-bulls room behind her when she delivered her meal. When the aid went back to collect the meal tray, pitbull had already finished her meal and was gently stroking the cat who had hoped up on her bed and was purring, so the aid busied herself with gathering up the dishes, utensils, and tray and left the room.
    A few minutes later, a nurse when it to take pit-bulls vitals, and found her sitting up with her arms outstretched as far as they could go with both hands tightly wrapped around the cats neck, so much so that the veins were bulging out of both her arms and hands. The harder the cat the cat tried to writher and scratch it’s way out of her death grip, the tighter pitbull choked the poor cat. The other recreation aid didn’t elaborate on how the nurse managed to loosen pitbulls grip, and I decided not to ask. She ended her telling of of the tale with the assurance that the cat did in fact survive, but required emergency medical attention and a recovery period before it could resume the rest of its lives.
    A couple of years later, I saw Pitbull’s picture in the obituaries. I’m guessing she lives on in legend in the seniors center among the staff.
    Just goes to show that a person doesn’t necessarily need to shave their head and have a bunch of tattoos to let others know not to %&*$# with you.

  5. Posted by: Osumashi Kinyobe on January 5, 2013 12:36 AM | Reply
    That is fine and dandy.
    Leftists, especially the NDP and Liberals, cry and whine about those tactics.
    They consider them “unfair”
    While they do whatever they want to normal people.
    dwright.

  6. David Southam:
    I have no idea where you live, but clearly it’s nowhere near the Big Smoke. The last time we had a sustained TTC strike, in 1991 (that’s over 20 years ago, Davey, in case you’re deep into your single malt) the massive gridlock ground most business activity to a halt. Restaurants had difficulty getting deliveries; garbage wasn’t picked up; offices operated irregularly, according to when staff arrived. The cost to the city was enormous. Just because you don’t see the benefit of having half a million people carried in high capacity vehicles instead of single passenger cars doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Take the TTC away today, and Toronto wouldn’t work. You can bluster all you want to the contrary, but just seeing the effects of two one-day strikes in the last ten years caused the province to declare the TTC an essential service.
    So, why shouldn’t the car drivers whose commute is under thirty minutes pay a few cents towards the TTC’s operation? In effect, they’re paying to get all those other travellers off the road WHICH SAVES THOSE DRIVERS TIME. If you asked the average Toronto car commuter if he’d rather pay $0.25 or so per day to continue enjoy his commute, or save the quarter and double his commute time, what do you think his answer would be? Most people value their time at more than $0.25/hr; you may be an exception.
    Finally So, quite apart from the TTC serving maybe, um, 23 percent of the Province
    Boy, your arithmetic skills are on par with LAS’s. The TTC doesn’t just serve people in the city of Toronto; thousands pour in from the suburbs every day to use it (of which I’m one). The GTA’s population of ~6.5 million is about 20% of Canada’s, and about 50% of the province’s. Those of you who live in small towns like Saskatoon or Calgary or Brandon are welcome to enjoy your uncluttered spaces; I remember Toronto back in the early 70’s, when I could get almost anywhere in the city in thirty minutes. For better or worse, Toronto has grown, and you can’t have a major urban centre without either decent mass transit or massive urban sprawl (e.g. LA). I’ve been to LA many times; I prefer Toronto.

  7. KevinB
    You lost me at taxing people that make more money than you.
    Typical Liberal argument.
    I own a car, I like it.
    You probably force your kids to take the bus.
    To convince yourself that you are not a Hippocrate.
    dwright

  8. dwright…..not to be too picky….BUT big difference between hypocrit and Hippocrates( 1st do no harm)

  10. Good to the point comment by KevinB @ 9:31am.
    I don’t comment much on Big City urban planning because that would be akin to telling Pakistanis where they should put their mosques or gay bathhouses whatever. I exercised my inalienable and legal right to white flight from big city living many years ago, and would never look back.
    That said mass public transit is as dangerous to society as a gun is. It’s not the gun, the train cars, rails or rubber tires that injure, harass, rape or kill other people.
    It’s PEOPLE who harm other people!
    Mass transit, like a car or any other weapon is used by bad people to do bad things to other people. If we wish to stop problems in our society we need better people living in it and immigrating to it.
    Liberalism is at the core of all western societal problems.

  11. larben
    Nope (nice try at ad hominem arguments)
    Does mommy know you are out this late?
    Justthinkin
    Hippocrates is the correct spelling. My bad. Lack of sleep.
    My drugs are my business, BTW.

  12. Kevin:
    I’m more of a beer guy, myself; the single malt thing was a tongue-in-cheek rhyme about the double-fault — don’t forget your sense of humour!
    I’m hoping we can agree that there is simply no rhyme nor reason to public transit (and transportation policy, writ large) in Ontario. As you well know, the whole thing is an onion, featuring Cold-War-style jurisdictional competition/condominium (Via Rail, GO Transit, GTTA, GTAA, TTC, all other municipalities, hither and yon), inter-model competition/condominium (with roads, that is — and air-transport, to a lesser extent: one for-profit toll-road, and all others — see “jurisdictional” above) and the occasional non-aligned Pierre Elliott Trudeau-style dilettante advocating a high-speed rail link from Windsor to Quebec City, all featuring, or demanding, massive subsidies and cross-subsidies. All of which is systematically overlaid by a convoluted series of vested public-sector interests of the worst sort. In other words, public transit in Ontario is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma — Soviet-style, and we all know who benefits from that (certainly not the riders or the motorists, and certainly not the taxpayers).
    I happen to know, for our previous conversations, that you’re a smart guy, and I’m thinking that this situation is not any more acceptable to you than it is to me.

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