Public Transit

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 12:53:44PM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> I normally used transit when I worked in downtown Toronto.  However, for  
> a few years, I worked in Markham and lived in Mississauga.  There was no  
> way to get to & from work, via transit, in a reasonable time.  Also, in  
> some of my work, I've had to travel to customer sites, carrying  
> computer, tools and several boxes of equipment.  I've driven as far as  
> Windsor, Sudbury and Kingston (also flown to Halifax, Vancouver and  
> points in between) to do that work.  Try doing all that on public 
> transit.

If you are doing service, and carrying around tools, then it makes sense
you have to drive.  But most people don't.  Most are going to an office or
some service job or retail.  They aren't carrying anything that couldn't
be in a small bag.

> Some people have health issues that prevent them using transit.

Not very many of them.

> Also many work schedules that cannot be accomodated by transit.  I  
> experienced that myself, years ago, when I had to drive into work on  
> Sundays.  Back then, it was impossible for me to take transit, other  
> than taxi, to get to work on Sunday morning.  There simply were not any  
> buses/streetcars/Go Trains etc. that I could take for that trip and make  
> it to work on time.  Incidentally, around that time (mid '80s), a  
> Mississauga councillor was saying we didn't need transit on Sunday.   
> When I called him to tell him that some people needed it to get to work,  
> he told me I should be going to church on Sundays!

Well that's just nuts.  Toronto's subway start time on sundays is pretty
dumb too.  I have heard Hazel say that mississauga completely messed up
transit in the past.  They are trying to fix it now.

I would think it would be great if I could take transit to work.
Unfortunately with the current service I would have to first take a
bus 5km north on don mills, which runs every 30 minutes, then take the
viva along highway 7 to york university (or promenade if I change to
the 77 instead), and then the viva orange from york university back up
to highway 7 to jane, and then either walk the last 1km north or wait
for another bus that runs who knows when to get up jane to langstaff.
It takes about 2 hours each way.  It's 20km.  I can drive there in
20 minutes.

If they made those right of ways on highway 7 that they have talked about,
the viva would go accross a lot faster, and if it didn't have to go down
to york university and instead kept going on highway 7 I would probably
save 1 hour already.  That york subway extension up to highway 7 past
the university would mean no reason for the viva busses to go down to
york university (going down keele from 7 to steeles takes forever during
rush hour).

-- 
Len Sorensen
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