Discover the cause, find the cure.
Apparently, we have now located ground zero for the woes besetting the TTC.
Yep. It’s been right there, hiding in plain sight behind the plexiglass at every entry turnstile. Napping ticket collectors. If only I had some sort of camera with me to take a picture of this. Oh wait. I do.
For Peter Kuitenbrouwer of the National Post “…the snoozing employee is a metaphor for a transit system gone badly awry.” (To Penny out there, that last word is pronounced ‘a-rye’ not ‘ah-ree’.) Where else but at the TTC have employees ever been caught asleep on the job? I’m going to assume nowhere until I see some photographic proof otherwise.
Kuitenbrouwer’s reasoning goes as follows: if we had some sort of smart ticketing scheme like they do in most other relatively advanced public transport systems, then no one would give a sleeping employee so much as a second glance. We’d just slap our magic card against the magic pad, push through the magic gate, stepping over they supine worker as we head off to our bus or train or trolley car.
I’ve seen it with my very own eyes at some of the best metro outfits in the world. In Washington D.C., going about your business with your pre-paid card and everywhere you look, transit employees just lounging around, taking it easy. And nobody cares!!
It doesn’t take too much digging between the lines of Kuitenbrouwer’s piece to get to the real gist of what he’s saying. The TTC hasn’t brought in payment smart cards because of lazy, shiftless workers like the one caught sleeping who has a $100,000/year job (and I’d really like Peter K. to point out to us where he found that statistic of legions of TTC ticket takers pulling in 100 K a year) for life because he’s a member of the all powerful, self-serving union. If we could just bust up this union, the TTC would truly be the better way.
And hey, why stop there? This city’s descent into madness started 6+ years ago when we elected a union friendly mayor who handed over the keys to the vault to all his unionized comrades in arms. Let’s bust up all the unions. Outside workers. Inside workers. The police… no wait. We like the police. They can stay unionized.
Because, let’s face it (and to paraphrase Monty Python’s Life of Brian), what have the unions ever done for us? They are the source of all our problems and ending their reign of terror will usher in a golden age of bliss and contentment the like of which this city has never experienced.
Problem solved. It is that simple.
— assuredly submitted by Cityslikr
If one napping ticket collector is a metaphor for a transit system gone awry (truly a-rye? Who knew?), then is Tiger Wood’s adultery a metaphor for the game of golf gone awry? Is Charlie Sheen’s arrest a metaphor for Hollywood gone awry? Is John Roberts having his own gig on CNN a metaphor for journalism gone awry? (Okay, yeah, maybe that one…)Actually, Kuitenbrouwer himself is the metaphor for journalism gone awry. Nothing like anecdotal tidbits in place of research, facts, figures etc. He sounds as daft, and especially as lazy, as most journalists these days…not worth the ink it’s printed with and for sure not the poor tree that supplied the paper for that kind of drecky commentary.
and btw, maybe some of the problems could be solved by getting back to the subsidies (like most every other transit system going) the TTC used to enjoy, pre-Harris gov’t era. Perhaps then the ticketing system could be upgraded, service could be improved. Blaming the unions is as always the easy shot. Maybe Mr Kuitenbrouwer can tell us something about how the TTC can be expected to operate on fares only income, while still keeping it an affordable “public transit” system.