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the_siobhanAlmost home going time!
It took me over an hour and a half to get home last night. Keep in mind that this is less than 10 km. And I travel at non-peak time, because getting on my bus before 9 AM is an exercise in, "I wonder if this one will have room."
Part of the problem is that it's construction season[1] in Toronto. I should be used to this after so many years of living in the city, but it never ceases to be a pain. This year they are building some kind of transit building right on my route to work (A new station maybe? For the Eglington line?) and of course Dufferin is always being repaired because it's one of the busiest routes in the city and it's always torn to garbage. Cycling on it is a complete shitshow.
Torontoist published an article a few months ago (that I can't find now, of course) talking about how the city keeps giving contracts to companies that repeatedly screw up the work. Road re-pavings are supposed to last for five years, anybody who drives here knows a city street barely makes it through one-freeze thaw cycle. There are companies that fuck up so badly they get fined for it and yet they still get the work year after year. Because they submit the lowest bid and that is the sole criteria the city is allowed to use when awarding contracts.
It's a ridiculous situation - it probably ends up costing twice as much and it explains why we have to deal with massive construction delays in the exact same spots every single summer. But I can't really see where the current setup provides much impetus to change. Why would a city councilor push to spend money during their own tenure when you know some idiot like one of the Ford brothers is going to come in afterwards and just coast on the work their predecessor invested?
On the plus side, I'm working overtime for the next little while. Getting home is a lot faster when everybody else is already home from work.
Oh shit, wait... You know what else is coming?
Christmas shopping traffic.
**shudder**
[1]Construction season, of course, runs right up to the start of weather season. Some years they overlap.
It took me over an hour and a half to get home last night. Keep in mind that this is less than 10 km. And I travel at non-peak time, because getting on my bus before 9 AM is an exercise in, "I wonder if this one will have room."
Part of the problem is that it's construction season[1] in Toronto. I should be used to this after so many years of living in the city, but it never ceases to be a pain. This year they are building some kind of transit building right on my route to work (A new station maybe? For the Eglington line?) and of course Dufferin is always being repaired because it's one of the busiest routes in the city and it's always torn to garbage. Cycling on it is a complete shitshow.
Torontoist published an article a few months ago (that I can't find now, of course) talking about how the city keeps giving contracts to companies that repeatedly screw up the work. Road re-pavings are supposed to last for five years, anybody who drives here knows a city street barely makes it through one-freeze thaw cycle. There are companies that fuck up so badly they get fined for it and yet they still get the work year after year. Because they submit the lowest bid and that is the sole criteria the city is allowed to use when awarding contracts.
It's a ridiculous situation - it probably ends up costing twice as much and it explains why we have to deal with massive construction delays in the exact same spots every single summer. But I can't really see where the current setup provides much impetus to change. Why would a city councilor push to spend money during their own tenure when you know some idiot like one of the Ford brothers is going to come in afterwards and just coast on the work their predecessor invested?
On the plus side, I'm working overtime for the next little while. Getting home is a lot faster when everybody else is already home from work.
Oh shit, wait... You know what else is coming?
Christmas shopping traffic.
**shudder**
[1]Construction season, of course, runs right up to the start of weather season. Some years they overlap.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-28 01:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-28 10:06 pm (UTC)I feel your pain. When I lived closer to the city the morning train, when it arrived, was packed, and getting on was always an issue.
I would also swear that since I've been back in the city there has been construction on the same road, constantly, since 2000. And, out the front of work, they are now digging up the same section of road for the fifth time in three years.