After working all day I wait outside for my bus in the cold. The first bus doesn’t show up. Neither does the second run. Finally we see our bus coming…and then passing us bus as we wait outside right under the bus stop. We all tried to wave him down but he chose to speed by. He saw us alright. Everyone on the bus saw us and tried to get him to stop. Overpaid asshole. I hope you get yours. Halifax’s transit system is a joke. —Pissed off Transit Hater
This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2014.
This bitch is a crock of shit…frankly. Let me get this straight, the first two didn’t show up and the next drove by for the sake of it. Unless there was a snow storm, this doesn’t add up. Do yourself a favour, call the HRM Call Centre and lodge a formal complaint, stating the fleet number of the bus that purportedly left you behind. All buses have cameras in them and the DVR can be pulled to see if your story squares with the video, which doesn’t lie. If you haven’t lodged a complaint and have no intention, this venue isn’t going to do jack shit to gain redress and this amounts to nothing but Transit bashing.
Out of Service you either work for Metro Transit or are fucking someone who does.If not,you have no idea what some of those rude shits do to people who pay their fucking salaries.Transit users can call that HRM line to lodge all the formal complaints about the rude pieces of shit drivers(not all drivers are),eventually there tossed into the trash anyway. There’s not enough Transit bashing done in this city.
This just in…there are definitely two transit hating bashers alive and well in HRM.
Oh yes…I forgot…the driver featured in the aforementioned bitch was stabbing a puppy to death as he drove by you and Whatacrock…where are my manners!
Let’s see. Two previous buses did not show up, and you say there were other people on the bus, which means your bus stop was not the first on that route. So I’m guessing that if two buses did not show up that now there is three times more people waiting for this bus than normal at every stop. So depending on how many other stops there were before yours, there may not be enough room for you or anyone else on that bus because there is a limit to how many people we can carry on a bus. As to the other people on the bus telling the driver about you, so what. If the bus is full, it’s full. Some bus drivers allow way too many people on the buses as it is as to not piss off your sorry fucking ignorant to how the system works asses. If the driver was to get in an accident with a overcrowded bus, you can be sure it won’t be the passenger getting in trouble. So shut the fuck up and take a taxi home, or wait for the fourth one.
Yours truly.
OB, you need to get this on video so that you have proof. Put your phone to good use.
I’d call Mayor Savage, somehow involve a potential stadium in your conversation, or not only won’t you catch a bus, you won’t catch his attention.
“Oh yes…I forgot…the driver featured in the aforementioned bitch was stabbing a puppy to death as he drove by you and “
Most likely the driver sped up in order to hit a puppy who was crossing the street at a marked crosswalk.
Besides ,Transit drivers don’t stab animals to death while on the job,they beat them to death with a baseball bat.
Not all Transit drivers are rude SOBs.
CBC coughed up some interesting stats on Metro Transit drivers this morning:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/…
Yeah just keep making excuses and calling OP a liar, that’s it. That’ll change people’s perception of you as a bunch of irresponsible spoiled little whiney brats who can never EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EEEEEVVVEEEEER take responsibility for anything no matter the circumstances.
Drop dead.
As the bus approaches, I step onto the road surface, yelling and waving my hands as I stare the bus driver right in the eye. (exaggerating but not by much, I don’t actually yell). When I lived in Europe which is supposed to be the transit-mecca where everything is on time and connects well and blah blah blah whatever this was the only way to get the bus to stop for us in York 🙁 Here, some drivers thank me for being so ridiculous in alerting them to my presence, others give me a hard time and say things like “You didn’t think I was going to stop?” (No, actually, I didn’t, thanks for asking!)
the NS Government should hand out free segueways to everyone!! then watch the bus drivers have noone to shuttle around and that the transit system will disappear. OH they should also put a parallel lane just FOR the segueways beside the bike lanes. that way everyone in a bike lane can high five the segueway drivers YAY!! i feel like skipping!!
If the bus is full to capacity; it still has to keep its destination sign on, and continue on its route. So if it drove past you, full as anything, doing the duty of not only its regular load – but of two more loads; then lay off the fucking driver.
I can’t even imagine taking the same transportation as my employees at my very successful retail business on Spring Garden Road. They complained about the buses going out of service during that one storm in January and I had to give them a stern talking to. On the phone from my beautiful waterfront condo of course! I wasn’t going out in that. That’s what I pay them minimum wage for!
They don’t call it public transit without good cause, have you seen some members of the public?
i hate taking the bus. but when i do i have to implement a plan to kill everyone on the bus in case the zombies suddenly realize i am not one of them. id start with braining the guy singing along with his i-pod at full blast (with his ear buds at least), then the woman zombie with the double wide stroller blocking 90% of the bus(actually not a woman, a child zombie with children), then id decapitate the zombie who wouldnt stand up so the old zombie couldnt sit down and rest its rotting flesh. the fat zombie taking up 3 seats and then the zombie with the bag it cant sit on its lap so it takes up an extra seat without paying for it would be my most relished kills. i will however let the zombie bus driver remain at the wheel, it might plow into some zombies crossing the street!!
“If the driver was to get in an accident with a overcrowded bus, you can be sure it won’t be the passenger getting in trouble.”
Overcrowded or not, why would a passenger get in trouble for a driver’s accident???
What the hell was the point of even typing that sentence out?
Pretty sure 50% of the seating capacity is the limit for standing passengers.
I can’t quite remember where on the metro transit site I read that though…
RSVP
TTFB (02/10, 12.06PM)
I read that story that you posted but I find that it is highly ambiguous and open for interpretation. Reason being is they state 600+ accidents and state some are preventable(self-explanatory) and non preventable, meaning that the driver did all he/she could do to prevent but accident still happened. Why couldn’t Mgmt. state the ratio or numbers to give the reader a better picture or is Mgmt. trying to spin this story to shed bad light on the drivers in the public’s eye? We all know how Mgmt. of any business are never to blame and take no responsibility for their bad decisions. If for example there were 500+ accidents that were classed as non preventable, would that change people’s perception to say that all bus drivers are bad drivers?
Is Mgmt. hiding the fact that their mantra of hiring practices is flawed for hiring people based on having customer service skills instead of driving experience with the belief that they can train them to drive a bus in 7 weeks the reason for the increase in accidents? More importantly, what credentials and qualifications do the driver trainers have to harvest this crop of accident prone drivers? Serious question, imo.
I’d rather get on a bus with a surly or burly bus driver with years of driving experience that will get me from point A to point B on time and safe as opposed to a driver with great customer skills that would make me wish and pray I was an another bus.
Klyde: from what I understand, some of those accidents occured at the ragged lake garage which I think I read was built improperly causing said accidents.
I’ve said it before: most drivers I’ve encontered have been great. The two I had today were awesome — one was a guy who lives in my building and is the most bad ass, friendly guy out there (always holding the door to/from the parkade and always hold the elevator and is a friendly chatty guy). The other had a smile and said hello when I got on the bus. Of course you get a few Wheels-like drivers, but most are ok. Maybe it’s because I lived in Ottawa where the vast majority of OC Transpo drivers are like Wheels (and even bigger pricks!) but I sure appreciated metro transit drivers when I came back.
Thanks Klyde and Kitty for having the guts to post here in a more objective way. Some others here seem to beak off here I figure, insulting demeaning and fabricating, to score points at another’s expense. Both sides of a story don’t seem to matter, so long as validation can be gained by beating the same well worn stereotypes to death. As much as stereotypes may have a grain of truth in them…they are inconvenient for the holder when contrasted with reality.
Stats are just that…stats. They rarely provide context. In that, any reported accidents eventually compiled and released under FOI requests lack detail and underlying factors. The CBC did a better job than previous years qualifying the data. That is the distinction between “preventable” and “non preventable”. But unless you’re dealing with collision while stopped, it is very hard to tease out the extent of and/or existence of a problem. Some here, who have their own axe to grind, seize upon the CBC story, lack of detail and all, and attempt to validate their own stereotypes.
You were perceptive Klyde, when you mused about one certain angle. We will never know for sure, because these are internal matters and I imagine certain individuals keep some cards very close to their chest. There are ideological bents in every organization, public or private. For some time now across the continent, Neocons have attacked and undermined public services, implying they are pernicious and unsustainable. Half truths are sometimes tossed out there to soften public opinion to gain a distant but inevitable result. As examples, the Harperites hollowing out Federal services and subjugating what’s left to their own political ends, defunding health care, demonizing federal employees to leverage contract negotiations.
Stats can work both for or against politicians and their high paid political appointees. This is what led to Harper neutering Stats Can early in his mandate. If the numbers didn’t support his agenda, they were inconvenient to him and his minions and were to be suppressed.
So what? You may ask. A certain scandal plagued former mayor supported contracting out of snow clearing operations. Curiously, his extended family benefitted from this contracting out while sitting as mayor. Some public services don’t translate as well when contracted out. They are public for a reason: don’t make money, have not and never will. When a return on investment for a private operator has to be realized, you either cut services, or pay more to maintain the same service standard. It has been a tough winter fellow residents…hasn’t it?