Dear Halifax Metro Transit,
I now ride on your buses one, two, three, four hours a day.

Yes. Four hours a day

To bring my daughter to her wonderful school, groggy with sleepless nights, I rush out twenty minutes early to meet you.

Since you run on Zen time (ten minutes early or twenty minutes late) and I on real time I wait with my infant on my chest (in a carrier as your commuter bus the #32 is not stroller accessible), 5 year old in hand, playing endless games of I Spy. How I just love your generous windows for arrival and departure. It makes planning so easy, facilitates meeting connecting buses and will generally be a blast in the winter-obviously all part of your brilliant strategic plan.

Let us bless Halifax bus drivers for their friendly consideration; idling their non-idling buses for people running from three blocks away, yielding to single occupant cars, securing wheelchairs with 5 seat belts (simple testament to the ingenuity of non-busing engineers) and stopping for coffee at McDonalds.

I understand you run late, due to traffic congestion, courtesy to pedestrians and the stupidest route designs ever. Let’s blame your car driving policy makers for having a few too many lunchtime martinis when they planned routes out to suburban hell before creating a downtown bus system that doesn’t take an hour and a half to make a thirteen-minute drive and then charging us plebian serfs two twenty-five for the inconvenience.

Please understand I have nothing against you bus drivers (seal clubbing veil hating road crazed racists notwithstanding) but your administrators are totally inept and your infrastructure needs a facelift.

Radical me, I vowed at 15 to never conform to our culture of car and to go by foot, thumb, bike, carpool or bus anywhere life takes me. I always recycle, what I can’t make I thrift and happily tote home my local organic fair trade fare in my cloth bags while listening to folk music and reggae-you know the type.

In every major Canadian city I have eagerly tossed in my change and jostled along with the masses, righteously self-satisfied with my lofty ethics despite the reek of piss, rude drivers and downright violent passengers in less genteel provinces.

So, my dear Halifax Metro Transit, I must end this unhealthy relationship. Even your smiling drivers and friendly bus riders can’t sell me on your service, or lack thereof. I am tired of leaving my house an hour and a half early and STILL being late. Consider this consumer officially alienated. I grant you the dubious honour of finally making my ethics take a backseat to simple math.

How’s this for a sum:
Two small children + A Stupid Transit System = This Mama Getting A Car.