Tags: public transit, Toronto, transit
December 15, 2009 | Rants
Queen Street transit user's interminable wait for that ride into the sunset
Offering all the convenience of an extortion plot, the Toronto transit system would be the envy of post-war Budapest.
With a pitiful two and a half subway lines servicing a city with a greater metropolitan area of 5 million plus and lumbering trolleys that roll at the pace of meals on wheels deliveries and skateboarders (or mobility scooters if their batteries have been recently charged), it’s no wonder the joke that circulated when we were kids still stands today: that the Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, actually stands for ‘Take the car’.
Recently, the TTC took a moral stand against placing an advertisement for the adulterous dating site Ashley Madison on one of its trolleys, ironic as it’s been routinely screwing us behind our backs and to our faces for years with often shoddy service, crumbling infrastructure and stupid make-work projects (see, the Museum subway station makeover, which looks like a sound stage for The Mummy Returns).
Between the both of us, we’ve visited upwards of 20 countries all over the globe and countless big cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including New York, Chicago, San Fran, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, Munich, Prague, Milan, Bangkok, Tokyo and there is absolutely no question that Toronto is a laggard.
Anyway, in the spirit of that long-standing and very true acronym injunction, we thought we’d compile a few of our own—to what end, we’re not sure as our children’s children will be interred before this city sees another east-west line…but whatever….
Here then, are our Top 10 TTC Acronyms:
1. Take the Car
2. Terrible Time-consuming Commute
3. Travel Tardily Consistently
4. Tarnishing Toronto Canada
5. Taxing Travelers Commendably
6. Testing Temperament of Commuters
7. Tortured, Trammeled Commuting
8. Transit to Chide
9. Tiresome Throngs Constantly
10. Terrible Transit Conveyances
Honorable Mentions:
- Treacherous Travel Complaints
- Trolleys That are Caricatures
- Transit Tuning-out Complaints
- Trumpery Transport Company
- Typically Tedious Cruising
- Trekking Tortoise-like Continually
- Tool-around Torpidly, Cruelly
- Too High Token Costs
- Towering Toil Charges
- Toronto’s Transit Caper
