A few summers ago I had a friend from out of town visit me for Canada Day. I wanted to show him around the city, and because I’m a regular transit rider, I decided we’d use public transit to get around. So, I figured the best way to start off was to buy bus tickets for my friend. So we walked over to the Lacewood Terminal thinking we could buy the tickets and grab our bus.
Surely, if there’s one place in the entire city that’s going to have bus tickets for sale, it’s the brand new bus terminal right? RIGHT? Nope. Upon arrival we were told that the terminal does not sell bus tickets. The guy manning the counter told us he thought they sold bus tickets at the gas station down the road.
So off we walked down the hill. Surely, if anybody knows where to buy bus tickets, it’s going to be the person working at the bus terminal, right? RIGHT? Nope. Upon arrival at the gas station we were told they do not, in fact, sell bus tickets. But the guy working the counter told us he thinks they sell them at drugstore.
So off we walked down to drugstore. At this point my friend’s first impression of Halifax is that it is a place of confusion and frustration in desperate need of getting it’s shit together. Luckily, the store did have bus tickets. We then walked back to the Lacewood Terminal to catch our bus and get on with our day (which was wonderful, thanks for asking).
Several years later, the bus terminal still does not sell bus tickets, and now even the person manning the counter is gone. But it sure is a nice shiny empty building.
Don’t even get me started on route 18 and all of the long stopovers it does on it’s way from SMU to Lacewood. —IdLikeToBuyATicket
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2018.
This drives me bananas. I’ve come very close to enacting some guerilla-civic-improving and dressing up like a maintenance worker so I can install a bus ticket vending machine at the ferry terminal.
I think it has to do with safety. Can you imagine how much money they would have at that terminal if they started selling bus tickets? it’d become an easy target unless they started shelling out the big bucks for security and whatnot. Best to get the tickets at drugstores where they already have all that stuff set up.
Um, no offense Lily, but that makes no sense – said every other major city in Canada ever.
I might buy LILYFROMHALI’s money comment except for credit cards. It only makes sense to have tickets sold in the ferry and bus terminals.