Transit Blows

With the recent snowfall and today's fresh snow, I've realized how fragile is the Vancouver transit system! Okay fine, on Monday the Skytrain slowed to a crawl because they were wary of ice on the tracks. It took probably double the amount of time to get from Braid to Gilmore. Granted, the trains began going faster the next day (though still not regular speed), but what they failed is that they ignore the massive influx of new riders due to the snow. Trains running during rush hour are now PACKED!

And today... Man oh man... It took an hour for me to get from Brentwood to Production! The damn train stopped for like 15 minutes between EVERY station along the way. The controller on the train--oh yeah, they started putting a Skytrain attendant on each train now; really I don't know what good he is for, other than making silly announcements. He said that it was because a de-icing train got stuck around Sapperton. Some nutty woman called the cops on the de-icing train because the person inside wasn't wearing a Translink uniform and she was shining lasers in the driver's face. WTF is with that!!!

Finally I got up to SFU, got my quiz (aced it btw... hooray for never going to class!), and got on the 143 to go home. It went down Gagladi no problem but the articulated bus got stuck trying to go up Como Lake LOL! The driver was flooring the beast and it was inching up the hill a bit at a time, not to mention the whole bus was swing back and forth the whole time! As luck would have it, the next 143 caught up with us and picked everyone up. It was one of the new, small, New Flyer buses; I guess Translink made a good investment in those new buses :).