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near death on the 501 Queen Street E streetcar

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The Queen Street streetcar follows a very long route, a distance made worse by cutting right through the worst congestion in the city's centre.

I suspect that it must wear on the drivers. Running 24km, all the way from the east end of Queen Street well out to the west end of the city at Long Branch, I'd be very surprised it could be done in under ninety minutes. The east-middle 10km stretch I do daily frequently takes me 45 minutes at a minimum, and for some reason can take twice that.

Anyway, tonight my driver had a run of bad luck. We had a very high-strung individual who hectored other passangers, held a rapid-fire conversation with her deceased mother, occupied no fewer than three seats in rapid rotation, and dumped quite a load of possessions near the rear doors. Then there was the fellow who stepped in front of the street car and just stood there waiting to be hit. The driver managed to avoid the guy with maybe 75 - 125cm to spare, but it wasn't more than that. He later told me that the salt on the tracks adds to the stopping distance of the street car because it makes the rails a good deal more slippery. The (suicidal?) pedestrian survived in part because that stretch of track hadn't been recently salted.

What a job!