journal features

the TTC is driving me crazy

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.09.23

Today the streetcar arrived after I'd been waiting for twenty-five minutes - the third such delay in a week.

In fact, just on Wednesday night, it took me 75 minutes to get home, principally because no streetcar showed up for half an hour. And the driver that did show up belligerently told me that he wouldn't give me a transfer to continue my trip because I'd taken a seat just behind him before realizing that he hadn't offered me a transfer.

After Saturday's two hour marathon to travel fifteen kilometers, I'm beginning to see that the Beaches, while nice, is not adequately served by transit to make it really livable if you don't have a car. The obvious answer is to move somewhere that's at once more convenient and likely cheaper, but the problem immediately arises: what's better in Toronto when it comes to the strangled traffic?

Happily I have plenty of reading to do these days, and am able to make the most of the situation.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot