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.
—Saving My Pennies for Driver’s Ed
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.
My former neighbor could have written this 10 years ago. Same exact theme: 2 kids, granola lifestyle, a prime transit customer. Except transit was so bad she couldn’t take it any more and bought a car to go to work and shuttle her kids around.
Transit needs to be blown up as an organization. Maybe it should be privatized.
Metro transit should be privatized, but only if there are at least two or three companies to choose from.
Privatize all you want but remember that a private business has to make a profit so they’ll cut the less busy routes, operating hours and frequency of service will be reduced and you’ll end up with the same type of driver turnover like Stock Transportation has because the drivers are paid way less than municipal employees and do the same, if no more, duties.
So if you are happy with only the inner-city routes operating at 50% of the current service levels then by all means try to get a private operator but be ready for the rest of the riders to disagree with any service reductions.
And to the OP – all buses are stroller accessable, just pick up the fucking thing and haul it up the stairs. But I suppose you have one of those SUV sized ones. ALF stands for Accessable Low Floor, which means accessable for people with mobility issues NOT ease of stroller boarding.
Let me guess, HKM? No one else rites as gud as you in teh intarhnets. Nice bitch, I will add my small complaint that a bus that goes to “Burnside” should PROLLY go up Burnside Drive. But maybe that’s just me and my plebian way of thinking.
I can think of a couple of stupid route designs, but the 32 isn’t what I’d call one of them. Generally though, the 32 tends to get the cream of the junk as far as buses go. Not sure where you get on, or when, but I know the middle runs get behind due to Quinpool traffic, and that can delay a bus getting back to Spryfield for another 32 trip.
RIP granola lifestyle. Now you get to be one of the bitched at -that car nearly hit me in the cross walk-that car nearly took out me and my bike out-that car is red and i dont like it- proud automobile owners. Damned if you do,damned if you dont
I use the 32 to get to and from work, and I think the OP is grossly exaggerating. The bus is rarely late in the mornings, and when it is it can usually be attributed to heavy traffic or bad weather, which would also delay you if you were driving a car. The return trip after work is often delayed, but that is because the route takes the bus through very heavy traffic (Barrington, Spring Garden, and Quinpool). The money I save on downtown parking more than makes up for the delays, especially considering that I would be sitting in the same traffic whether I was in my car or on the bus. Sure the bus is often very crowded and getting a seat can be a challenge but realistically when you factor in the cost of parking downtown and the gas you’d burn idling in traffic, you’re getting a pretty good deal.
Not to mention all the other expenses associated with car ownership.
Metro Transit has the worst service I have ever seen and I am married to one of their drivers. I am pretty much late for work everyday by about 5 minutes no matter how early I leave… sometimes 1 or2 hours before I have to be at work.
Hate to say it Bon but perhaps you should take an earlier bus than you already do if the bus(es) you use get you to work 5 minutes late. Transit management and scheduling staff aren’t going to change a route’s timing points for 1 person but I really need to ask how you can still be 5 minutes late if you take a bus 2 hours earlier compared to 1 hour earlier.
Whats routes and times are you talking about? It’s not like transit (drivers or management) can control traffic if that’s what makes the buses on your trip run late. Don’t forget that staff schedulers have drivers doing one run then right onto a second, third, etc, etc. all back to back for the most part. So if trip 1 is stuck in traffic then the driver is 10 minutes for trip 2 and no time is made up then obviously trip 3 is also going to run late.
It’s a no win situation and certainly isn’t the driver’s fault and often time the delays are caused by situations outside of management’s control – ie. detours, accidents, traffic congestion. But I can assure you that as a rider on many bus systems in Canada and the US, Metro Transit isn’t the worst one out there.
Travel 2 hours to Moncton and discover Codiac Transit where many of their major routes still only give 40 to 60 minute frequency and they cut back the operating hours this summer, leaving many riders out there scrambling for alternate rides to/from work when buses started an hour later and finished an hour earlier than normal.
If someone at Metro Transit reads this board then hopefully they can look into the unprofessional conduct by a gaggle of rider-counters on the #52 around 2pm Friday out of the Sportsplex. These bus bunnies with clipboards sat in the back of the bus talking trash about many of the passengers seated around them. Those of us on the bus were quite happy when you got off in front of the bus barn so we could continue into Burnside a bit more quietly.
Go live in rural NS, fucktards (i.e.: those of you complaining about MT and how OMG HORRIBLE it is)…I lived in buttfuck, NS for 13 years and if you didn’t have a car you weren’t gettin’ nowhere. So I’m thankful for MT because when worse comes to worse I always get where I need to go relatively cheaply ($70 for an adult pass/month versus HOW much for a car? plus gas. plus insurance. plus maintenance?)
Fact *is* all busses are generally backed up during rush hour. Hay! It took 45 minutes to get from SMU to Scotia Square last wednesday on the 10 during rush hour (and detours, but that’s not MT’s fault)…so just be thankful you’re able to take the bus, OP.
Also, VOR’s right — ALF busses are designed for persons with mobility issues, not strollers — I could see a wheelchair not being able to get on a non ALF route, but there are plenty of strollers on non ALF routes. I’m pretty sure bus designers don’t put strollers on its list of priorities when designing busses. but kudos on the snuggly. Those things are a fuckload better than those SUV strollers every welfare-bus-riding mom seems to have these days.
I’m not that old but can remember when Shubenacadie was served by 4 buses to/from Truro each day and it was around the same number to/from Halifax. Of course Acadian Lines reduced the service while I was a teen and now the nearest stop is Stewiake, one time a day in each direction and it means overnighting and coming back the next day in most cases. The provincial and federal officials should be offering incentives for the inter-city bus operators to serve the smaller communities again.
I think we’ve kinda got it made when it comes to transit services here and at least they are getting into the expansion plans already. You could have buses running every 5 minutes and on time but someone will still bitch for the sake of bitching.
Voice of reason… I do take an earlier bus which shows up late and then I miss my connecting bus so I am late whether or not I take an earlier bus or my usual bus. Just last week I had to tell the driver of the #42 it was time to leave at 515 but she told me she was leaving 15 minutes late so she could have a smoke. My husband is rarely late on his route. Once I had to take our son to the dentist and it took me from 430 to 730 just to get there from downtown to Clayton Park. And no I will not tell you which routes I take because I dont know who you are.
Voice of reason… I forgot to mention the#42 is not one of the routes I take to get to work and home. Just needed to take it that one day for an appointment which I was late for in the end. I should try coming back from lunch 15 minutes late and see what my supervisor says to me.
Bon: Instead of whining on here about it on here why not call Metro Transit’s planning department, not the normal 490-4000 number but get the number for the receptionist upstairs and ask for planning/scheduling and explain the concerns.
Telling the driver to leave cause it was 5:15 – was it 5:15 on your watch? What did you use to determine the correct time. I ask this cause I have an question for you but will wait for your explanation first. But a 42 leaving from Lacewood at 5:30 instead of 5:15 would be unacceptable, especially if the story is like you tell it. Once again, call the transit authority with the bus number and details if you want things changed.
You mention the 3 hour trip to Clayton Park – that virtually impossible for a driver to do unless they are stuck in traffic, which is probably or intentionally running at least an hour behind schedule, which isn’t very likely as the dispatcher would have questioned it long before that. The 2 or 4 only takes 40 minutes from Water St. to Lacewood so I can’t see how you took 3 hours unless you were stuck in traffic or did one heck of a bad job trying to make connections from bus to bus to bus. So tell us the scenerio that led to this 3 hour journey.
No worries about not telling me what buses you take because you don’t know who I am. I can assure you that after a day of driving civilized passengers on charter buses I am not interested in stalking any or knowing most Metro Transit riders. Though taking transit after work is an eye opener out of Burnside, the ones coming from the fenced facility at the top of Akerley tend to carry on full conversations between the window pane and themselves. At least they understand when the bus is late due to traffic 🙂
Voice of reason… I have a watch and it was set correctly and yes I can tell time, I am not stupid and It DID take 3 hours to get to the dentist. The bus was due at 430, it showed up at 630 and my connecting bus was 25 minutes late. This made me late but 1 hour for the dentist. I DONT LIE AND HAVE NO MORE TIME TO BE BULLIED BY YOU.
Um, bon. I travel from DT to clayton park daily during rush hour and my mom travels to clayton park (CP west, actually) from Dartmouth and it takes no longer than 40 minutes for either of us….so maybe you should pick another bus or route? There are lots of express busses that go to and from CP during rush hour. When I worked at Stad it would take 20 minutes during rush hour to get to/from the lacewood terminal to/from stad so…
Three hours? Someone’s exaggerating a bit, Bon. Yeah, I’m talking about you *wink*
Well good for you pk but there are no express buses in front of our home and it takes me alot longer than 40 minutes to get to work. And yes it did take 3 hours to get to the dentist so fuck off and go bother someone else. I doubt very much you take buses to begin with.
Bon, please say you’re joking for hilarity’s sake….
WTF OP, you need a wheelchair accessible bus for your stroller?
I’ve taken the buses out of Cole Harbour for 20 years, 10 of which were into DT Hali every day. Late because of bus maybe 5 times from noshows and schedule mistakes. Everything else, my fault or traffic. You want a real shitty bus system try Moncton, then get back to me about how goddamn bad we have it.
And you’re not supposed to insulate your tampons with a pound of sand, Bon. JFC.
There should be tags made for parents who think the universe should revolve around them and their kids.
“Voice of reason… I have a watch and it was set correctly and yes I can tell time, I am not stupid and It DID take 3 hours to get to the dentist. The bus was due at 430, it showed up at 630 and my connecting bus was 25 minutes late. This made me late but 1 hour for the dentist. I DONT LIE AND HAVE NO MORE TIME TO BE BULLIED BY YOU.”
No one accused you of lying but I did question the 3 hour travel time. Now you cleared it up by stating you transfered buses and that the first bus was 2 hours late. You said downtown to Lacewood, downtown sounds like the Scotia Square area and a 2/4 would be the most direct route, obviously you weren’t in the area of the 2/4 when starting your trip, that explains the transer. Unless something was drastically wrong re. traffic tie ups I can’t see how a bus would be 2 hours late considering they could easily divert a bus to help out. Were you waiting at a stop where numerous buses go past and might have overlooked the bus you wanted as you got frustrated? But really, if you haven’t called transit officials and lodged a complaint on the matter you can’t really expect an explanation at this point.
Your watch means nothing when it comes to the time on the driver’s terminal display. I’ve seen different buses in the fleet with 5 minute time differences compared to others. Drivers aren’t suppose to use their watch or yours but are to rely on the display screen.
Your jumping up and down about how you arrive 5 minutes late for work no matter whether you leave 60 or 120 minutes before you need to clock in. Thats the part that doesn’t make sense. Are you saying that even if you go out 2 hours beforehand your can’t make a connection to get to work on time? I certainly don’t want detailed stop info but you could certainly mention the first bus/time you board and any connections you try to make that still result in being late. Do you have the same problems on the return trip as well? Some of us who understand the system might have a solution for you.
Bon = Reasoning, defense and debate skills of a 15-year-old
I recently moved here from CB where they have about 5 buses in total. I lived 40 minutes outside of Sydney (where buses do not go). I have a car here in Halifax but I still choose to take the bus for financial reasons. It takes me MAX 25 minutes to get to work and I have to take a transfer and I cross from Halifax to Dartmouth. I’m sure it’s more difficult in high traffic areas like Barrington and SGR but if you got a car you’d simply be sitting in a car instead of sitting on a bus; waiting. I’ve had shitty experiences with MT and I don’t trust GO TIME worth a damn but from someone who didn’t even have access to a bus, I think MT (aside from some obvious downfalls) is pretty stellar in terms of its purpose (it gets me from A to B in a relatively average time frame). It sucks that you have these problems but at least be thankful to have access to such a system. I spent 70 dollars a week on gas back home to get to and from work and school! Shiza!!
I have to admit that with the word “ode” in the title of the bitch, I would have expected a lot more rhyming. Otherwise a pretty good rant… In the spirit of my grade 10 english teacher, I’ll give it a D minus.
I love the assumption that because I would like the option of bringing a stroller with me a couple days a week I must be one of those Stuff White People Like parents with an $1200 SUV stroller. I have a cheapo smallish stroller-bought secondhand and it is relatively easy to collapse but I would like to see YOU take out the infant, haul the stroller on board, find somewhere to put it (which other bus passengers are sure to appreciate) somehow hold the baby and entertain the 5 year old while holding the stroller then haul the fucking thing off again. That’s reasonable.
The #32 is actually a great route-the issue is that it only runs one way in the morning and I have to come home seeing as how I cant be out that long because I cant bring a stroller. I love carrying her about but she would not want to be carried around all day long, it gets really uncomfortable for her after a few hours.
I have to take the #32 and then connect with the 7 which has consistently run about 15-20 minutes late. Then coming back I take the #7 back to Scotia Square hopefully in time to catch the one #14 that runs near my house-if I miss that (likely as the buses overlap by a minute) I have to take the #20 and haul the baby up Cowie Hill-no problem in this nice weather-not so nice when Cowie Hill is a sheet of ice from top to bottom. To get home in the afternoon I have to leave around 1PM to get to her school by 3-I have to take the 14 all the way through the South End then wait for the late #7. Coming home with my daughter I take the late #7 again to connect with the #32. I can bring the stroller coming to pick her up but then there is nowhere to put it on the #32 coming home. It is absurd that there are NO buses going to the North End that leave from Mumford and that there is only one bus that regularly goes up Gottigen.
I’m not saying that MT needs to privatize-that would be hellish-but that there needs to be clear, well planned, frequent routes in the downtown area. Is that totally unreasonable?
As for trading in my bus pass for a car there are ways to make vehicle transport more sustainable and reasonable too-alternative fuel, carpooling or car sharing. I dont need to go downtown or worry about parking as all I need to do is drop my daughter off in the North End and come home. It is my intention to connect with others who need to commute to the same area who are dissatisfied. I fully agree this is NOT the bus drivers fault (I thought I made that pretty clear) it is stupid policy, stupid route planning and not enough buses running at peak times.
It is true that in smaller cities all over Canada there is terrible bus service but Halifax is a major city and growing every year. It needs to make public transit a priority and to increase service to make it more of a viable option for commuters. It makes fundamental business sense. The more accessible the service the more use it is going to get, the more $ it will make and therefore more $ can be invested into more accessible service. I am a housewife and I can make that logical deduction all on my own. Halifax can do better and should. This great city deserves public transit that is equally as great.
Also, I am shocked at how mean and personal you people get online! Wow, it is one thing to bitch and another to get so upset about it.