Transit Transition

I’ve written a great deal about my passion for public transit. Since leaving my rural childhood behind, I’ve always lived on some sort of transit line, and thus, I could always go wherever I wanted. I could walk, I could bus or subway, and I could go anywhere—the lake, the airport, the world! This has been very empowering for someone who lived her first 19 years often limited to the lawn of my house—nothing is walkable where I’m from, there is no transit, and I failed my driving exam a few times, plus even when I passed, there was not always a car available to me. I can drive but not always and not easily—but I can always step onto a bus if there is a bus available, and so I like public transit very much. And the flip side of this coin: I do not like public transit naysayers, including government officials, who suggest or imply that public transit is too messy or too difficult or too expensive or not well-used enough, or it is dirty or unsafe and we would all just be better off getting cars and not bothering with anything we would have to share. There is definitely class privilege—not even veiled a lot of the time—when folks say they are “scared” of transit or that it is “too complicated” or “too dangerous.” Many vulnerable people take it every day—I regularly see school kids alone on my bus, parents with newborns, the very elderly, people who clearly do not speak English and seem very worried about where they are going. Everybody figures it out because they have to, even when it’s quite difficult. If you don’t have to take public transitI don’t think there’s anything wrong with preferring not to—one can prefer anything! I just find it distressing to hear folks say that something that they don’t prefer is always bad and scary, as if those of us who do take it are settling for scraps, or that it is actually impossible, as if the millions of perfectly average folks who take it every day don’t exist.

…Of course, we moved to North York in 2023 and transit does not work as well up here. I have spent a lot of time walking slowly and carefully on unploughed streets to wait at a stop for a long time. You also see some clever things, especially involving electric scooters—people bungee cord chairs and milk crates onto them to make little motorbikes—but by and large it’s a challenging landscape up here for for TTC-ers. It makes me sad, but as with almost everything, it is what it is (I am still looking for the things that aren’t what they are). I don’t give up hope—even yesterday, I was crestfallen to discover I could not take the Eglinton Light Rail to the dentist. Despite expecting to ride it every year since 2004 (I moved to Eglinton East in 2003 and someone told me the LRT was “just around the corner,” which I interpreted to mean “next year”—perhaps the wrongest I have ever been) I still expect to ride it all the time, and it just never comes. Dejected, I told Mark that perhaps I would cheer myself up by going up to Finch and riding that line for no reason, just a little circuit to see some new transit. Mark told me I wouldn’t like it, as everyone is complaining that it is so slow, and a human runner actually outran it the whole length of the line. I guess they are going to fix the Finch Line soon and the opening of the Eglinton is “just around the corner…” I’m sure things will work out soon, although I have gradually come to accept that no one is going to re-rail the permanently de-railed Scarborough transit train that fell off the tracks one day in 2024 and they just…left it there? RIP SRT. You looked like a monorail and were very cute.

Anyway, we bought a car. This was always supposed to happen eventually—when we got rid of the previous car in 2019, that was only a caesura in Sampsenblum car ownership. But I did like the idea of carlessness, mainly saving money and not having to drive and not worrying about anything bad happening to the car (a lot of bad things happened to the previous car). But it is also nice to have a car again—it is very strange to arrive in a place in winter and not be cold and tired and frazzled and splashed by some unidentified icy grey sludge. Sometimes I don’t even do up my coat if we park close—a real car-person-privilege move! I haven’t driven any solo missions yet, because I cannot maneuver in and out of our tight parking spot without Mark’s guidance so I’m still somewhat limited, but even with just one of us driving, this has freed up a lot of time and energy, and bloodflow to extremities on cold days.

I’m very excited and also apprehensive about the car development, although a lot of people have just kind of absently nodded at my big car announcement. I guess cars are just…normal, for other people if not for me? Although normal is a mark I miss a lot of the time, so it would be great if the car was helpful in that regard. Maybe this will help me with fitting in in addition to transportation. Maybe when I don’t have anything to say to someone, I can try some sort of car-related topic…traffic on a major artery or the price of gas? Certainly no one wants to talk about bus frequency on North-South routes versus East-West, or what I think about the staffing levels in subway stations. Also perhaps I will be late to fewer things, which will also make more people like me.