Toronto Transit Omission

So I'm eating lunch; the phone rings. I see it displayed as "Private caller", another telemarketer, no doubt. No. DOUBT! They left a message. It was the TTC public relations responding to a complaint I posted last month (details in a later blog post). Why does the publicly-funded TTC have a private number when they call a member of the public who has contacted them? Are they running so scared ?

Following on from Can’t Get the Trip Planner to Work I think I’ll ask for help. No! Customer Information is not open at 6:15 a.m. on a weekday morning. I find that odd. Now straight up, Toronto is not a world-class city, and the TTC doesn’t claim to be a world-class public transportation system, but still and all, it makes sense to me that people trying to get to work (car won’t start, spouse took child to hospital, spouse late home from job etc.) might want to enquire about getting to work before regular work hours. Or might want to enquire about getting home after stopping off for a few beers after work. But no. Since it is only 6:15 a.m. I can’t ask for help from the TTC. Disclaimer: See “not world-class” above. I’m not asking that the line be staffed 24 hours a day, but given that the buses leave my neck of the (Markland) Wood between 5:40 a.m. and 1:31 a.m. it might seem reasonable that someone planning to catch an early or a late bus might want to ask about it...

Having given up on the Trip Planner for now ( Can’t Get the Trip Planner to Work ) I reckon on taking an hour, door-to-door, and elect to leap on the bus that leaves here at 9:22 a.m. That’s actually when it leaves Markland at Bloor , but since it makes three or four stops before it gets to me, I reckon on walking out my door at 9:22. The bus is late 7 times out of 10 anyway. I catch the bus, the subway train to St George subway station, and hop aboard the next northbound train to Downsview subway station. As we roll into Wilson I catch a glance at the overhead clock display. 10:16 a.m. I am early, which is how I like to be. I don’t like to keep friends and colleagues waiting. As I climb out of Downsview station I catch a glimpse of the time from the transfer machine. 10:31 a.m. Allowing one minute for me to climb two sets of escalators, it has taken us a quarter of an hour to travel between two subway stations! Where did the time go? Well, immediately we arrived at ...

( Customer Service Hot Potato -2 ) “I ask to speak to a supervisor”. To the next young lady, Susan, who comes on line I explain again how, when I try to get from “4340 Bloor Street West”, to “Downsview Subway Station”, the Trip Planner fails me. We run through the scenario again. On her system she gets a drop-down box, and there is yet again the veiled suggestion that anyone with half an ounce of brain matter (NOT her words!) would know to type “Downsview Station” as a destination, rather than “Downsview Subway Station”. I’m not so sure of that. I remain unconvinced that tourists and travelers who land here would have an instinct for a very narrow definition of location. I think too that there may even be people currently sitting at their computers overseas who are wandering around the site thinking of how to plan their trip for Toronto. People from Waco Texas, Lodz Poland, Adelaide Australia, and other places where they don’t speak English, and write it worse. Susan se...

( Customer Service Hot Potato -1 ) “Mid-afternoon I decide to resolve the Trip Planner issue”. To the young lady who comes on line I explain how, when I try to get from “4340 Bloor Street West”, to “downsview subway station”, the Trip Planner fails me. “Just a moment” she says, and there is a wait of a minute or two. My guess is that she is trying to mimic my actions. Fair enough. But it’s only a guess. She comes back on the line; “It works fine for her”. As if that is a solution to my problem. I explain that I’m a customer trying to use the system and it doesn’t work for me. I need help here! No. It works fine for her. What’s the problem? The problem is that at the TTC end they know what to type. At the worried customer end we don’t know the tips’n’tricks. I experienced this about 4 years ago when I was struggling to understand why - according to the onlune schedules - the 112 northbound bus ceased running before 5 p.m. I’d seen it running up The West Mall much late...

Mid-afternoon I decide to resolve the Trip Planner issue. At 2:36 p.m. I call Customer Information at 416-393-4636. The menu system says “dial zero for operator”. I do. There comes an announcement along the lines of “an operator will be with you shortly”, followed by a “click”, then silence. Have I been dropped from the line? Where is the music or the raucous heavy metal rock that I love to hate? Where are the ads telling me how great everything is? Dead Silence. I dial back; again, “click”, then silence. I decide to wait and within a minute a voice comes on the line. We need more than a “click” and silence to keep us happy nowadays. And by the way, most of the time when we dial Customer Information at 416-393-4636, we are already a tad unhappy.

It is quarter past six Wednesday morning. I have to be at Downsview Subway Station passenger-pickup at 10:30. I know it takes about an hour to get there, and I don’t want to keep my friend waiting, so I check the online 49B bus route and reckon to catch the 9:22 bus from here. I see that TTC has a “Trip Planner” link, and for five years or more I’ve been using Mississauga Transit’s Trip Planner , so I decide to give it a whirl. In the “from” box I type my street address “4340 Bloor Street West”, for that is where I live. In the “To” box I type “downsview subway station”, for that is where I want to go; I don’t want to go to a street address near the subway station, just to the subway station. I change the details to read “Arrive at 10:25 AM”. I click the red “NEXT” button and am greeted with: Apparently there is no such place as “Downsview Subway Station”! I find this odd. I note that the TTC has changed my address to “Etobicoke”, although all five cities were amalgama...

It is about half-past seven Saturday morning. I board the 35 bus, Jane Street northbound, showing my transfer ticket as I board. Jane Street subway station is one of many where you need a transfer to board the buses. The young chap ahead of me is called back by the driver, who spends about two, perhaps three minutes explaining that one may not board a bus at Jane without a ticket or a transfer. Doubtless the youngster has been following the brouhaha at Bathurst Street subway station (“ Heated clash breaks out on TTC streetcar between passengers and driver ”), for he wound up his end of the conversation with “So, are you going to throw me off the bus?”. As a conscientious fare-paying passenger I side with the driver, because it seems to me that the lad is old enough to know better, and if he’s savvy enough to know about standing up to call the driver’s bluff, he’s old enough to know about transfer tickets. As a well-traveled user of the transit systems in Australia, England...