Yesterday, it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to work on the TTC. By car, it is a 15 minute drive - 30 minutes in traffic. Normally, it takes me an hour to get there via TTC (which is pretty un-acceptable to begin with), but yesterday, everything that could happen, happened.
As I left my building, I noticed an odd, buring smell. I thought nothing of it, and assumed that someone was buring wood in their fireplace - yes, it was 7:15am in the morning, but there is never a bad time to get the fireplace going, so I thought nothing of it. As I got closer to the streetcar stop, a construction worker stopped me and told me that there was an accident on Bathurst, and all the streetcars were being rerouted to Union Station. Normally, it is faster to take the streetcar to Union, but since the Union streetcar runs only every 20 minutes at best, I usually take the Bathurst car up to Bathurst station, because it's more reliable. Well, the Bathurst car was fucked, so I had to wait for the Union car.
I waited for the Union car for about 10 minutes until it showed up. The ride to Union is normally about 7 minutes, but since the Bathurst line was down, everyone and his brother had to take the Union car to get to the Subway, so it stopped at every stop on the way, making the trip to Union Station last 30 minutes!
The subway part of my journey went smoothly. I got off at Pape, and the bus that takes me to work came about 5 minutes later. It was 8am by this point, the time I was supposed to be at work, so I was already a bit panicky. That bus ride is about 5 mintues, so i calmed down a bit once I saw the bus. Being 10 minutes late is not so bad. BUT, I did not plan on having to sit on the bus for another 30 minutes because of the construction on the Millwood Bridge. I called into work while I was stuck on the bridge, and they said that it was no problem - THANK GOD MY EMPLOYERS ARE DECENT PEOPLE! A lot of my coworkers had similar problems with getting to work too, so they were aware of it.
The sad thing is that in the afternoon, after work (8 hours later), I ran into my coworker, who was on her way in to do an evening shift, and she had just spent an hour and a half on the TTC as well, and was hellaciously late. When I got to Bloor station, the paramedics were wheeling someone out on a stretcher... that person must have suffered a panic attack, because I saw all of the familliar equipment - unsued defibrillator pack and heart monitors. That poor person must have been just as fed up as I am from having to rely on this HORRIBLE means of transportation.
This HAS to stop!
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