Don’t mind me, but as a regular TTC user, who remembers her glory days (is the TTC a she, he, or it?), I just have to make a couple of observations.

I had the rare opportunity the other day to drag my tired butt to the subway shortly after it opened for business. First of all, no-one should be as chipper and perky as the group of TTC chatterboxes I passed at that hour. Second, the subway really moves when it first gets going for the day. The speed with which I arrived at my destination shocked me awake. The train zipped through the stations, stopping only long enough to allow people to disembark and board. No hanging about every few stations for who knows what reasons, other than to add on a heck of a lot of minutes to our ride, as I now realise. And what a ride it has become.

More and more these days I seem to have someone plonk down beside me who thinks I make a great cushion. In what universe, do I look like a nice buffer between them and the door partition? The subway universe obviously. Apparently, a subway patron is completely incapable of holding themselves upright when the train driver accelerates and decelerates sharply, as they’re wont to do. I often wonder if the drivers scratch out those little lines, like WWII pilots of old, for every passenger they can throw onto the floor. But I digress. These limp people just move with the flow, so to speak, either mashing me into the door partition or pushing me off the 3-seater and into the guy sitting on the 2-seater. And another thing, when they try to shove you off the end, just where are you supposed to put your legs? Did the designers of these new seat configurations actually measure anyone’s legs? Or did they just assume that our legs would conveniently slide up into our abdomens and out of the way when we sat at the end of the 3-seater at the same time as someone sat on the end of the 2-seater? No wonder riders have taken to facing the aisle. Aside from it being way to cosy to sit “properly,” there’s just nowhere to put your legs. Then there are the women who apparently don’t know the size of their purses. They blithely plop them on their laps and into your ribs. And unless you tersely say, “it’s in my ribs,” they don’t take hints like when you elbow it away. They just shove it right back in. And why is it such blithely unaware people, squishing and poking you, are the only ones in the entire car to ride past your stop?

It really is not surprising Toronto is in the shape it’s in. With Torontonians so unaware of their immediate surroundings that they can’t see the human being next to them, is it any wonder they’re unaware of the bigger issues.

Related posts:

1. Ribfest @ Thompson Park
2. Danforth Subway Down
3. Escalator Closed at Sheppard Subway
4. More Yak on Moribund Toronto Subway Building
5. The bus driver