And add to that the worst New Year’s eve to boot, and I might as well begin with it. I left for home later than I should have. Make that a lot later, 1.5 hours later. There was blowing snow although not too much accumulation downtown, and there wasn’t even too much of the stuff (from what I could see) at Finch station. But it was coming down hard, and one of the worst routes out of Finch station was made increasingly terrible as a result.
There was such a backlog that I eventually got onto the second bus that came along, and the driver initially refused to pull away unless some people got off and stopped blocking his mirror. Over an hour in, things at the back got a bit tense as words were exchanged between a standing woman who wanted to open the window to get a bit of air, and a man sitting down that didn’t snow being blown onto him. I think the consensus is, if you’re standing for over an hour on a bus while sandwiched in on all sides, you’re going to want some air too. And there were a lot of sandwiched people yesterday.
Over twenty minutes was spent sitting on a hill, not because the bus couldn’t make it up the hill, but because pretty much everyone else couldn’t make it and clogged the road. Eventually an opening appeared and the bus weaved in and out of the lanes dodging stuck vehicles. It wasn’t even a particularly steep hill, but given stop-and-go traffic conditions, it’s a lot easier to get stuck on a slushy and somewhat icy hill.
But speaking of sandwiched people, there was a lot of that today, too. What boggles the mind is if anything, the roads were worse this morning than they were yesterday morning. Sure, the snowplows came, when the storm still had 5 cm left in it. I waited a solid half hour more than usual for a bus, and buses did arrive, except they were so packed that a few people were able to squeeze in at best each time. My number eventually came up on the third.
It was an absolute slog until everyone got kicked off at Bayview. The bus was ordered to turn around and we all piled into the bus behind it. And then it was a slog to Yonge, but the road was actually clear in both directions so there was no hold up to get Finch station afterwards.
I think that all this being sandwiched on a bus for an hour plus two trips in a row got to me, and I was so out of it that I woke up just as the subway doors were closing, at Museum. And so I had to wait at St. George and head back south two stops. At least I got to see how the renovation (or “rejuvenation”) of Museum station was going. While it doesn’t blow me away, its purple paneling is a bit warmer than the unadorned concrete walls of stations along the Sheppard line, and it’s a lot less dated than the bathroom tiles at other Yonge/University/Spadina line stations.
I think it goes without saying that I missed my first class. The university should have closed today, like they did when the city got nailed last week.
Tags: logistics, toronto, ttc
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