Transportation rant
I’m out of the loop. I’m not very good at games, yet I’m forced to play some of the most annoying head games that the city’s drunken arsehole city planners could come up with.
I’ve wasted a half a tank of overpriced gas just trying to find a parking space I can fit into and I drive a small car. I’m forced to go in huge circles amidst many one-way streets, all of ‘em in the same direction! It’s incredibly frustrating.
Not to say that I’m not grateful that I finally have a car. Getting around the city using buses can be a real nightmare. I know what it’s like to have a two-hour each way commute, most of that time spent waiting for buses, often in blizzards or in boiling humidity.
My reward for my patience is of course to be packed into a sardine-can of a bus, (Forget about a seat) and forced to breathe the gases emanating from the bus exhaust and the guy who ate beans for breakfast. On top of that, there is the blaring loud French radio that plays music which is usually irritating and can be grating on the nerves.
Yes it seems games are very popular. Mean nasty evil type games, of the variety that can get your teeth knocked out. I’ve had some idiot on the bus try to defend a random woman’s “honour” if that makes sense, by threatening my life. I’d have punched him in the mouth (the standard bar-room response) except it was six o’clock in the morning on a weekday and I was completely sober and on my way to work. The woman had no idea who this guy was, but she was a co-worker of mine and she must have thought this guy was crazy.
Or there was that time in Lionel-Groulx metro station at around seven in the morning when I was brutally assaulted by a maniac who was much stronger than me and he was wearing body armor. The police later called me in my office to tell me that they caught the guy and he confessed and that there was no way I could prove it was him, despite picking him out of a lineup, so they had to let him go.
While he was beating me up, around 300 or so people stood around watching, but nobody tried to help me. As he was beating on me, he kept muttering “Maudite Anglais!” at me, making this a hate crime. Naturally this guy is still out there probably mostly stealing purses from elderly ladies and the like, among other petty crimes. It makes me want to arm myself, but that would just attract more violence against me. A year later, they decided finally to post police in the metros. I feel like I’m forced to play a game which I find frustrating and somewhat painful, only to have my pain mocked and laughed at.
Something else that always infuriated me about buses was when the bus driver would stop the bus mid-route and take a coffee-break! I don’t have time for THEIR coffee breaks! The worst of these are the routes which have breaks pre-programmed into them, often with the buses going a mile or so off course so they can stop in front of the garage. Half hour stops are not uncommon.
So, yes, I’m glad to finally have a car. Every time I’ve been on the Metro since I got my car, there have been shenanigans of some sort on it, usually a slowing of service or some kind of delay, etc. Well, what used to take two hours now takes me twenty minutes.
However, driving in the city is a gauntlet of an obstacle course unto it’s own with all the obstructions, er, “construction”, are they actually building anything? They’re always fixing the roads but the roads are never fixed. They always need fixing and seem neglected. I guess you really can’t win when it comes to getting around in Montreal.
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Misha
