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| - I was a long-time Calgary Transit user. Those were some of the worst years of my life. As a university student I spent upwards of three hours a day commuting twelve kilometers (each way) to my assigned work-study placement: waiting in the freezing snow and rain for buses that never arrived, wasting hours upon hours on slow-moving buses that stop at every corner, standing on unheated C-Train platforms waiting for dirty trains... using transit actually took an emotional toll. As a young working professional I commuted by transit for a year while saving money for a car: sometimes the only bus to the neighbourhood where I worked wouldn't show up, sometimes it ran late while the driver ran into a fast food place to grab a coffee, and sometimes I watched drivers treat the young people who rode my bus with total disrespect.
I think that routes are poorly laid out, schedules are stupid (I live across the street from a junior high- why does the bus come two minutes before the school bell?), vehicles are in need of upgrades and all staff require extensive customer service training. I moved out at eighteen and relied on transit until I was twenty-four. During that time I lived in cities all over the world where transit was run efficiently, effectively and affordably. If Mexico City can do it, why can't Calgary? Heck, if Tiraspol(!) can do it, why can't Calgary?
I would like to end this review with an anecdote. This will probably reveal my identity to Calgary Transit, but I really don't care. Two years ago, mere weeks before I finally gave in and bought a car, I was taking a bus home from work in the mid-afternoon. The bus driver had a medical emergency which resulted in the bus veering slightly off the road, the bus coming to a stop off to the side of the road, and the bus driver laying down on the floor of the bus, unable to move. A fellow passenger called 911, and the driver asked me to get their cell phone from their jacket pocket and hit redial. I spoke to a family member on the other end and said there had been a medical emergency. The bus driver then gave me a phone number to call, which turned out to be something like a driver dispatch service (I'm not totally sure- it was an internal Calgary Transit number). I told the person who answered that I was on bus #XYZ, that the driver had a medical emergency, the bus was off the road and an ambulance was on the way. I was clear and concise. The person on the other end of the phone was accusatory ("How did you get this number? Hmmmm?") and did not provide any suggestions or reassurances. An ambulance showed up and I was asked by the EMTs to wait until they had administered some treatment; at that point in time the next bus came and the EMTs said I was free to go. That was a Thursday. The next Tuesday I took the same bus... and found the same driver operating the vehicle. The one who had been laying, seemingly paralyzed, on the floor of the bus only days earlier. You tell me if that's a bus you want to ride.
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