Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car

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

1. The passenger should be charged with assault. Stop the bus and await the authorities. Citizen’s arrest.

2. Not condoning the act BUT, having also heard of stupid things that OC Transpo drivers have done over the years… I wouldn’t count out extenuating circumstances that drove the person to take exception to something the driver did… or did not… do. Some of those clowns need to be relieved of their duties, but are mollycoddled and protected by their union instead.

3. Read the follow on conversation.
   “Really? This just happened? Was the bus moving”?
   “Yes, yes it was. So awkward.”

4. You can get into serious trouble for pitching your fizzy drink in the face of a public transit minion.
   There do not seem to be any arrests nor convictions for this, as per the media bias against making Tapeworm-Canadians look bad. It must be an isolated incident. Did the driver mutter the forbidden N-word?
   The security cameras on board the bus would have recorded the entire incident. These will be used when the public transit driver, a member of a strong public sector union, gets early retirement on full pension for the emotional trauma of having a fizzy drink pitched in his face.
   Public transit is a gun free zone. Was the villain a white-black, white-mexican, or white-non-white, hefting his invisible knapsack of white privilege? You can blame racism. If the drink thrower was not white-X, then it was racism that made him do it. Why is there no sex change operations from public health care?
   If the incident had gotten violent, the police would have been there in only a few short quarter hours after the last second of violence. And they have the security tapes to look at. No doubt anyone killed would get a nice card or flower arrangement from some politician looking for the votes of their surviving relatives.

5. Only way to go. Nice of the good folks of southern SK to be worried about the big city.
   Anyway, the bus drivers in Ottawa are decidedly more obnoxious than those in Toronto, sad though I am to say anything good about Hogtown.

6. If you want to remember how and why life sucks, leave the porsche at home and take a ride on the bus.

7. Except for the singing bus driver they use to have on the number 2 route. He was pretty good.

8. Idle no less….

9. I’ve ridden OC lots of times and the drivers are nice to me. Maybe because I smile and say how’s it going type thing when I get on.
   There are two sides to every story.

10. That’s assault. Let her think about that in jail.
    Some people have to use public transportation. They shouldn’t have to share it with society’s rejects. If bus drivers can’t toss the more troublesome out on their @$$es, the inmates run the asylum.

11. Once again, some mighty fine logic from SDA.

12. When I lived in Ottawa but worked in Hull, I tried to take the Hull busses back to Ottawa as much as possible due to the incompetence/shittiness of the Ottawa drivers. Sad when the Quebec union is better than the Ontario union.

13. > You can get into serious trouble for pitching
    > your fizzy drink in the face of a public transit
    > minion.
    Especially if it was over 250 ml. Everyone knows those super-sized drinks cause diabetes, obesity, and are killing our public health care system!

14. I demand a fizzy drink registry if only to save one life.

15. It’s a risky business, driving DUI of bad passengers. At least the vehicle is on the ground.

16. Oh my god, you’re all a bunch of weiners. For the crowd that professes to be all tough and mighty, there are far more scary things than riding a public bus. Fact is, older cities don’t have the room for freeways and the like to accomodate a car for everyone. This tirade on mass transit is one of your most ridiculous, Kate. You live in the effing boonies for crying out loud. Don’t pretend to know how a real city works.

17. I live in the sparsely settled part of Canada and I don’t care what the urban leftards do.

18. Are you going to say anything about the assault on the bus driver by a total twit of a girl or not? Those who use public transportation in the older cities that cannot handle highways would like to know.

19. Osumashi, its much more important that Conservatives be chastised for not getting it about transit than social wreckers be called to account for common assault.
    Where are your priorities?!!!

20. I hang my head in shame.

21. The Phantom answer to mass transit can be seen at:
    http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2013/02/big-storm.html
    That right there is a 1986 Ford one ton dually with the 6.9L diesel. One of the heaviest non-commercial vehicles ever made, it gives even idiot city bus drivers pause. I have yet to see a city bus pull out in front of it.
    Also awesome for splashing weedy hipster types waiting for the bus out in front of university. John, less, now you know who gave you the slush shower. Important tip for you little boys, don’t wear the pink fedora with the stupid too-tight pants. I can spot you idiots two blocks away.

22. Yeah, the fizzy drink in a face is assault, even if the driver was a prick, which some are.
    I ride OC transpo, unless I can avoid it.
    The drivers, they are a diverse lot. In the last year, I have had 3 different drivers freak out on me. Most drivers are aloof. A rare few are so friendly that they really make a persons day. And just this morning my bus drove by me without even stopping. I guess me raising my right hand to indicate interest was offensive.
    Still, my attitude is more a “wth was that?” rather than a “my human right to never get in an altercation has been violated”.
    dkjones has the right idea.

23. I am an OC transport rider. If one is riding the normal bus routes one gets a pretty interesting cross-section of society (students, vagrants, mothers with huge baby carriages, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, etc). The only objection I have are for those people who don’t believe in deodorant or bathing. However, if you opt for the slightly more expensive express routes…the clientele tend to be of a higher calibre…usually office workers, older (30-60 yrs), neat in appearance, physically clean (ie. no BO or vomit odours assailing nearby passengers), sober, are usually reading, conversations tend to be “G” rated–and dare I say, I’m usually one of maybe four or five non-caucasians on the bus of maybe 40 or 50 people–all together a more pleasant riding experience.

24. Considering the aroma the last time I rode the TTC, I’d change your headline for these sorts of articles to “Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers To Urinate In Your Car”.

25. I used to think that public transit subsidies were a payoff to public sector unions under the guise of environmentalism.
    Now I realize that they are a bailout for automobile manufacturers and their union employees.