10 Dec Why the TTC Transit System of the Year Award Is Actually A Load of Sh*t

I’m a Toronto native which means I was born and raised in this city and have been taking the transit for 20 years. I don’t have a drivers license so the TTC is my main method of transportation, as it is for thousands of daily commuters, and even if I did have a license and a car to use freely, I’d probably have to take out a loan to afford parking in this city. I don’t know about you, but I hate the TTC with a burning passion. It’s unreliable, unpredictable and overall sucks. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have been late for a function as a result of the TTC, or had to reroute myself to get around construction and delays. On major bus routes such as Lawrence West, buses are supposed to arrive every 12 minutes during rush hour, but instead people are left waiting for up to 20 minutes to pile on to an already sardine packed bus. With barely any standing room the bus typically ends up driving past many stops, leaving people behind, because they can’t hold any more commuters. There’s a simple solution to this problem… put more buses on the route. The worst drivers to have are the ones who stop to let more people push in than are able to fit, and then we can’t all fit inside the white line – you know the one – “I can’t move this bus until everyone is behind the white line!” But there’s literally no where to go so of course people have to either get off (which no one is going to volunteer to do) or push in and squish each other even more than they’re already doing so. There must be tens of thousands of transit systems in North America, and the fact that Toronto managed to win Best Transit System in North America in 2017, is absolutely mind baffling.