Dear, Sweet Translink

HI! How are you? Congratulations on your not fucking up everybody’s commute yesterday! Maybe this is because things were actually better and maybe it’s because you’ve been crowing like a doom-dealing raven for a month about how we should Expect Delays on The First Day of School and we should Plan Our Trips Accordingly. Either way, all the people on the news seemed really pleased with your service. Of course, all the people on the news were at Broadway and Commercial, riding your Golden Child, the 99 B-Line.

I have no quarrel with the 99 B-Line. I have taken it. It is a fine bus. It gets places fast and is rarely discourteous. Saint Aardvark takes the B-Line every day as part of his three-pronged approach to work commuting and he has never complained about it.

My quarrel, Translink, is with your insistence that you can only keep your 99 B-Line happy with additional buses. The B-Line must feed, feeeeeeeed on the buses from other lines. A few weeks ago I waited 20 minutes for the 135 that runs along Hastings Street. The week previous, a 135 came along every 5 minutes. While I bumped along, crushed against my fellow passengers I overheard this exchange:

Fellow passenger who was at the bus stop before me: So, busdriver, wassup with the long wait for the bus?
Busdriver: Hmmmm. Don’t know?
Passenger: Usually the 135 comes every 5 minutes..today it was half an hour! And it’s a short bus! (not a real short bus but as opposed to the “articulated” buses with the accordian pleats in the middle)
Busdriver: Well I know they took all the accordian buses off this route so they could go onto the 99 B-Line route
Passenger: Oh
Busdriver: Yeah, but the buses should be running as frequently. They just, you know, won’t hold as many people so maybe more people will be waiting for the next one.
Passenger: Oh.

Or how about yesterday, Translink, when I went to my usual bus stop after dropping Trombone at daycare. Every tuesday and thursday I take this bus at 7:40 am. Yesterday it didn’t come. No, I didn’t miss it. I know because I walked to the next bus stop and there were all the people who usually get on the 7:40 bus, waiting, smoking, fuming. Is it a coincidence that buses are mysteriously disappearing from suburban routes while the B-Line grows fat and accomplished? Your success story but at whose expense? Mine and my suburban compatriots.

Here’s how it looks to me: urban dwellers who have the choice of this, that or the other bus, or a cheap taxi ride, or a vigorous walk or cycle; they get more buses. Suburban dwellers, the ones you are simultaneously trying to woo out of their vehicles, who depend on one particular bus, whose taxi fare would be exorbitant, who wouldn’t be able to walk or cycle to work without a) taking 2 hours to do it and b) risking their lives on the highway, who pay more for their fares because they have to travel multiple “zones;” they get fewer and more irregular buses.

I came up with a great idea for you yesterday. Because I don’t expect you to ever actually serve the suburbs (“we gave you a skytrain, what the hell else do you want?”) I would appreciate some kind of registration system at your website. Transit users would sign up if they wanted to. They could enter in their normal routes.

“Hi, I’m Cheesefairy and I take the 155 on Wednesday mornings, the 135 on Monday and Friday mornings and the 112 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.” (Dear readers: please don’t stalk me)

You store it away in your database. Then, if you ever decide to change the routing, you send me an email. YOU don’t even have to do anything. Your COMPUTER can do it for you.

“Dear Cheesefairy. You have registered with Translink as a regular rider of the 112. Just a note to let you know that we are canceling the 7:40 bus for the month of September. Suck it.”

See? All that waiting I did yesterday (let’s not discuss the 30 minutes sitting on the skytrain yesterday afternoon at Waterfront Station because that wasn’t your fault) gave me time to think fabulous thoughts!

Anyway Translink, stay real. You know I have no choice but to use you because if I had to drive downtown every day I would die by Christmas of apoplexy.

Love,
Cheesefairy