the better way?

Sometimes when you follow the same routine everyday you only see the flaws.

Having just returned from Chicago where I opted to take the L into the city from the airport, mostly to save a few dollars on cab fare, I found a lot of familiarity and a few differences but mostly a comfort in knowing the all transit systems (or at least the few I’ve encountered) suffer from the same issues.

The truth about the modern transit system is that it isn't.  And now its summer, - the most volatile season there is - inside. 

Hopefully as people opt out of cars systems will change but for now it a mash of antiquated practices, outdated or nonexistent technology and bureaucratic choices that seem nonsensical.

Let me start by stating that I do not believe that a transit system executive who does not use the system routinely will ever get 'it'. Trying to 'envision' issues from an ivory tower is where so many bad decisions get made.

During summer in Ontario, if you’re lucky it's a sunny but pleasant day.  You relish getting to be in your shirt sleeves and sandals.  Alternatively it’s muggy and humid and the temperature is over 40 Celsius, or it’s raining maniacally.  Then you get on the bus and are stunned by the A/C into the worst thing ever - the summer cold.

I have asked many times over the years if there is a policy for A/C use on the TTC.

I have never received a straight answer.

And if you take transit, you know, there seem to be two settings on a TTC bus.  Off.  And stun.

And here I am thinking a standard setting of 25 Celsius would be great.  Instead I'm carrying a sweater around all summer because it's uncomfortable sitting in a refrigerator.

Why not open a window you ask.  And while that's a splendid idea the new low floor bus designs only have windows that open at the very top, out of reach to me at 5'4" but also mostly only capable of blowing a breeze across the ceiling of the bus.

The alternative is that the A/C isn’t on at all, and now you’re sitting in a human torture device for 45 minutes.

I’m somewhat convinced that not having the A/C on at all, and on a bus with no access to windows, somehow contradicts my basic human rights.

This is the same for the subway as it is for the bus, and the streetcar.  Although on the streetcar there is no A/C, but then again the windows open at face level so at least you can catch a good stiff 40 C breeze if the car is moving.

Don’t think another form of travel will be better.  The plane I took to Chicago was set so cool that when the back of my legs hit the vinyl seat, I jumped.  However it must have been a slightly better quality vinyl than the Greyhound because I wasn’t completely damp from sticking to the seat.  But on that Greyhound bus trip I had to wear my ever present summer sweater because the A/C was set so cold, but was uncomfortably hot when any part of my body touched the seat so the point that I wondered if my clothes were wet when I stood up.  My friend meeting me assured me it wasn’t the case.  Having said that, why vinyl Greyhound?  There must be a better way.

is it gonna go my way?

It doesn't take much effort to find a bad opinion of any company online.  There's always someone willing to dish about their negative experience in a public format.  Yelp seems to be a good place for these types of reviews.  And as I’ve said in the past, those opinions are worth looking at but also worth the consideration that one bad review does not a bad company make. 

(And we all know that people won't/don't/can't be bothered to give good reviews), so.

Having said that, and in the same breathe, it's pretty safe to say that as a company you can probably do 'OK' when servicing the bulk of the public, but it takes some special talent to blow it when it comes to people who are marginalized by special needs.  And I will come back to this point.  I promise.

But first let's talk about a growing trend in the lack of car ownership, in which we also need to talk about intercity mass transit - and when I say talk, but I mean bemoan the lack of decent options.  You can rent a car, or do car share, but that can be pricey and if you're heading out of town to stay with a friend you have to deal with parking.  Also forget getting either a car or a deal during the holidays, my experience is that the 'deal' is you get the pay extra for those dates.  You can use some sort of mass transit, such as VIA; which is expensive and have a laughable schedule unless you are going to Montreal or Toronto; GO, which is great during the week but forget the weekends; and lastly Greyhound (and I'm going to lump other bus lines in here) the final bastion of low cost mass transit and they know it.

Here's the deal.  Greyhound is as non-customer centric as you can get.  They're in the business of selling you a ticket and running a bus from point A to B.  It's up to you to figure out how to buy the ticket, how to get on the correct bus, make certain your luggage and you get on and off the bus and if there's an issue, you're just going to have to suck it up.  Having said that it costs me about $20 to go back and forth to Kitchener on a given weekend and generally, the price is the same no matter what - assuming you buy it ahead of time and pay a little extra for the convenience of printing your own ticket.

We've all seen the news.  Megabus (who is not Greyhound) runs into bridge, into another bridge, starts on fire. Mentally unstable man (on Greyhound) had a psychotic break and it's really, really bad. But the article that caught my eye was the one about a girl, confined to a wheelchair, essentially dumped in a snow bank on a cold day, for no reason that made sense, and in response, Greyhound states "We pride ourselves on stellar customer service and a stellar travel experience."

As a long time customer of Greyhound's my only response to that is 'whathPHFFF".  And I’m not just talking about this particular individual, who really got the short end of the stick on this one.  I’m talking in general. See and then after they decided that maybe they could do better than ‘stellar’.

I'll soften this rant a little by stating that, for the most part, I’ve never taken issue with the drivers' themselves.  I use this service on average about 10 times a year and have for the bulk of my adult life, so I’m eventually gonna run into a dufas or two.  But as a company the service is laughable.

During the December ice storm that hit Ontario, I got up on a day I was planning to travel to a birthday party for my niece.  Airlines, trains, TTC and even CAA were filing news posts, twitter and updates to their own websites.  Greyhound 'cannot foresee delays by weather'.

While the TTC updates by the second, Greyhound has little to say.

So what do we do?  Take the train - which I would love to but at twice the price and a schedule that returns me to Toronto after 11 p.m. on a Sunday night (from Kitchener) this is not an option. So we stick with the reliable and annoying Greyhound until another low cost option presents itself.  In the meantime I'll continue to rile Greyhound on Twitter if only to amuse myself and feel some sort of satisfaction that I said something.  And since we all seem to be voting about something this year, why not talk about intercity transport options.  We're a big country but in places we're not. Like southern Ontario, where a few hours between cities should allow options for travel that are reliable, affordable and decent.

I mean, have you ever tried to pee on one of those things?

observations of an 8 week old twitter user

Ok, admittedly it’s been more like 11 weeks, but really my Twitter use is very much in its infancy.  At this point, we’re still counting my age in weeks.  Weeks. 

Yes I was late to the game but it took a long time before someone succinctly explained why I would like Twitter.  While I don’t recall having anyone say something specifically stunning, the suggestion that I would like the forum came from so many places in my life I finally gave it a whirl. 

Incidentally I signed up for Pinterest the same day and I’m not so much loving it.  And while I’m fessing up, with LinkedIn I continue to fail to find the a-ha so far, but I’m keeping it on the ‘not dumped yet’ list.

In many ways we are living through a very intensive and interesting change in consumer conduct and interaction.  The mobility of the average consumer makes them that much more in tune with their options beyond what is available to them.  The internet has become the best and worst gossip venue - ever.  So while you have to temper what you read with not only what value the opinion has for you but also whether or not it is an anomaly, it is now almost impossible to continue to deliver bad service without the word getting out.  Combine that with changing delivery methods for shopping as the retail space tries to figure out how keep abreast of very diverse habits, it’s almost like the Wild West out there.

As a consumer, and acutely observant of my own behaviour, and all while trying to not to get too far off on a tangent, I can’t help but notice, that I tend to browse on line but want to experience the item in person before committing to it, with rare exception.  However a liberal and easy to use return policy can be used to sway me.  And I’m slowly learning who employs a really good in-house photographer.  On the other hand I think the drug and grocery store industry is completely missing the boat.  But again I’m trying to stay on point and the point is; we’re changing the way we consume.

As already discussed in this space my limited interaction with companies via Twitter has been fascinating.  And influential.  While I’m astounded at some of the responses from companies I really don’t expect much from, I’m equally perplexed by companies that I expect to be on top of things, being not on the ball.

Influenced so much that I am considering whether or not to continue to shop at retailers that choose not to interact directly with their consumers when tweeted directly.  Ikea I’m looking at you, and I like Ikea, or I did, but now I’m on the fence.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve recently been blown away by responses from Greyhound, which is often on my top ten list of annoying but essential companies that I must deal with because I have no car.  Yes their reply was pedestrian but it was prompt.  And believe me when I say I’ve complained to Greyhound over the years, via e-mail, phone and in person essentially to no end.  PC Financial falls into this odd space too, as I didn’t even use their handle in my complaint, again a canned response but still a response.

The only issue that will come of this canned ‘thank you for your feedback’ responding is that it will quickly smell of what a good friend calls the ‘PFO’.  Back in the day when you went to a job interview and didn’t get the job, eventually you’d get a form letter, addressed to you via mail merge, basically saying ‘Thank you for your time, Please Fuck Off’ and then you knew for certain the job wasn’t yours.  Of course as I write about it, this feels so quaint.   Now you’re to assume that your resume fell into a big vat of computer rejected filters and you and all links to you were deleted upon receipt. 

So as Christmas approaches and I’m forced into the mall to shop for others on a deadline, with people who generally avoid the mall, do I consider taking up the challenge and confining my dollars to those who are harnessing the Twitterverse, early, and in novel ways?

ttc – truly trying commuting

The best advertising campaign the auto industry never ran was the public transit experience.   Nothing has pushed more people toward car ownership as well.

I complain a lot about the TTC.  My friends will attest to this.  But when you look at my beefs about 70% of the have to do with people's behaviour and the balance with the service itself, so while, yes we are dealing with, on a daily basis a system that essentially stopped developing in the 70s and tries to cover massive territory; that doesn't explain the lack of manners. 

On a recent trip, using the Greyhound bus to Kitchener, to visit a friend I overheard two students discuss the lack of manners on the transit in Toronto and posit how bad it might be in NYC.  Difference, in my experience on NYC subways - which is limited yes - is that people don't do the things Toronto riders do. On my midday travels in NYC no one blocked doors or tried to get on before everyone got off, people moved into the cars and only stood for their stop after leaving the prior station.  C'mon Toronto.  We're better than this.

Aren't we?

It is said that in a dense populous one needs to be more polite to make the society function.  And while Canadians do have an apologetic reputation it all seems to get dumped into the fare box and out comes the dufusness. 

In dealing with this old infrastructure with narrow platforms, stairs and mostly not working escalators and nonexistent elevators, could we all just use a little common sense.  Remember ‘Walk Right, Stand Left’?  It was removed because someone managed to successfully sue the TTC after falling on an escalator.   So we all suffer the fool who decides to buck the trend and stand on the left in spite of the fact that everyone else is standing to the right.  Arguably sometimes the outcome of these suits is great.  Those station arrival announcements that started a few years ago?  The end result of a case ruling outcome of a visually impaired rider trying to navigate the system with his disability – and in the end really quite useful. 

There are places where the needs of the few result in change that assists the many.  On the other hand, does anyone remember when the TTC tried to do away with WheelTrans, the service for people confined to walkers and wheelchairs who had difficulty with the main system?  Those affected protest in the form of showing up at rush hour to Bathurst Station and attempting to board streetcars with their assistance gear.  The result was a very long rush hour, and they got to keep their WheelTrans after very effectively showing that they really couldn’t use the system the way it was.

Unfortunately this is what also lead directly to those new low floor buses that the TTC is outfitting their entire fleet with.  For those of us, like me, who end up using the outer edges of the system – my damn office moved to the very edge of the suburbs – and civilization – but that’s another rant – we’re stuck, on those awful buses with no recourse.

I may be exaggerating but I firmly believe that no one actually test ran these buses.  Test ran as in piled a large crowd of people carrying a variety of oddly shaped and sized packages, closed the doors, hit the gas and stopped abruptly every 200 or so yards, let half of them off, and piled on as many or more people.  In software we’d call this a ‘test use case’.  I’m not sure what is it in the public service vehicle milieu, but very much seems to be a missing step.  Also no one tested the outward opening back doors in a snow bank.  And as you know if you ride these buses, the only recourse the driver has is to ‘reboot’ the bus, which means turning off and then on the engine to reset the computer chips.  Apparently our last fleet of buses lasted over 50 years – call me pragmatic, but I’m not seeing these doors last more than 10 at the current rate of failure.  Then again, we all have to enter and exit from the front door during any type of weather, so perhaps by being saved with lack of use, I’ll be proved wrong.

Recently on one of those internet trolls where one story you read links you to another and on and one, I found an article about a tongue and cheek set of Manners Cards make by an individual in NYC.  Of course, I can’t find the article again, and in the interview the creator admitted he was a little too chicken to actually hand them out.   Although not limited to public transit and including some suggestions, like not walking 4 abreast and blocking the entire sideway to the exclusion of all other pedestrians, the cards included violations for blocking the escalators by standing on the left.

In the end it’s all pretty simple.  Pay attention to your surroundings and acknowledge that you are in a crowd and not in isolation. 

• For instance don't stand at or block with your ‘insert here’ stroller, bundle buggy, 60 bags of groceries or big fat ass,  the top of; the bottom of; or in front of any escalators, and/or doors.
• Don’t put your nasty dirty shoes on the seats just because the car isn’t’ full. 
• Let everyone off the vehicle and THEN get on. 
• Don’t ‘tsk’ when the system is slowed down or stalled – you’re not the only one frustrated and it doesn’t help the atmosphere. 
• Don’t play your iPod without headphones- nobody wants to hear your horrible taste in music. 
• Don’t hit other people. 
• Don’t spit (anywhere, ever). 
• Keep the smelly foods to a minimum.  Yes we call smell it when you open a can of beer.
• Please, please do not clip your nails, especially toes on the transit. 
• Most people are pretty good with the offering of seats to the elderly and expecting, but don’t nip in and take their offered seat for yourself you selfish prat.  Or as I once witnessed by a 60ish year old woman, complain loudly that no one will give up a seat while standing there is 5 ½ inch stilettos – if you can wear those shoes, you can stand. 
• Don’t sit aggressively, blocking access to inside seats, or even worse, take up an entire seat with your precious bag of lunch.  Unless you can show me it paid $3 to get on, it doesn’t deserve that seat.
  

As an ending note I do think Andy Byford is trying, albeit with a very limited set of playing cards.  Although I do, regularly, consider joining Twitter, only to follow and harass… er… update Mr. Byford on the day to day taxes of the system.  I have, to date, resisted this urge. 

And to my fellow travelers, happy travels!

P.S.  Apparently I'm not alone.  I don't know this guy, but he's got some of the same pet peeves I do, and he uses pics as evidence. http://ihopeyourbagiscomfortableasshole.tumblr.com/