TTC = Take The Car

I kid of course; I like public transit and am a big proponent of its use.

Now that I live downtown, it's so much cheaper not to have a car. I can walk just about anywhere I need to go (including work! Woo-hoo!) and take the TTC only when I need to get to events that are across town. A car? Who needs it? (Of course, I rarely get out of town these days..but like I said, I'm saving tons of dough)

Anyhow, the point of this blog is to bitch and bitch I shall.

I like the TTC, but I f***ing hate streetcars.

Forget the fact that they are a blight on the urban landscape, what with their wires running every which way across Queen, Spadina, etc., they don't even do their job effectively.

The major flaw with streetcars is evident to anyone who has lived in the downtown core: they are slaves to the tracks. See, up here in Canada we have this funny white thing (no, not Jim Carrey - he's barely even amusing anymore) called snow. Snow tends to get shovelled up and put to the side of the road where it creates these little mountains for kids to play on and risk their lives in. The problem comes when people try to (lawfully, mind you) park next to the snow banks - the cars tend to stick out a little further than they do in the summer. This creates havoc with the streetcars because they cannot manoeuvre their fat track-bound asses around the cars.

And so they get stuck, with nowhere to go until the car gets moved either by the owner or by a tow truck.

S-T-O-O-P-I-D.

Last night, I was trying to get home from my sports league. I waited for the streetcar. I waited some more. I waited some more. I waited for Godot. I waited on tables. I waited to exhale...still no streetcar. Turns out the damn thing had gotten into a fender bender with a minivan about 300 metres up the street, just out of view. It had to stop and wait for the police and TTC officials. Of course, this meant that not only was it not going to reach my stop to pick me up, but that every other streetcar behind it was stuck too.

Took me an hour and a half to get home. It's a 20 minute ride.

My proposition? Ditch the streetcars, tear up the tracks, tear down the wires, reclaim the streets and invest in some "green" buses that can go anywhere they damn well please.

'Cause what's the point of a streetcar system that's so easily de-railed?