Like a Trudeau having to apologize in the House of... -

Like a Trudeau having to apologize in the House of Commons for unparliamentary language, this post was just a matter of time.

Does that picture up there look like it was taken in 1985? That’s because the RT is really old and terrible. But guess what else! It is the only cunting way to cover ground in northeastern Scarborough if you don’t drive. So get yourself to ye olde Peter’s Academy for Defensive Driving and pick up your license, because in 2015 you can kiss our trashy extension of the TTC goodbye for four years.

I read about this complete failure of a plan for the first time on Saturday. Initially my thoughts on the matter were very simple: “FOUR YEARS? FOUR YEARS.” They began to take the shape of other things, like “the life entire lifespan of my niece?” and “the amount of time people spent in high school assuming they actually attended and passed their classes and didn’t register for grade 12 English 3 times?” because I take public transit very personally. I even went to a party in Newmarket later that night and ranted and raved about it to someone who has probably taken the TTC 4 times in his life.

I knowyou don’t care about the SRT. You might be from downtown or the west end. Maybe you take the Go-Train (bless your heart) or maybe Kennedy Station really is as far east as you need to go. Maybe you can bone on the subway, so you don’t need an RT platform! Or maybe you’re Chief General Manager of the TTC, Gary Webster.

At a budget meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Webster said Scarborough’s decrepit SRT line will be down for seven years between 2015 and 2022 while it’s replaced with new cars that will form the eastern leg of the Eglinton-Scarborough line.

He reiterated the point to reporters after the meeting. But he re-emerged from a short huddle with TTC and the mayor’s office staff to correct himself.

“I was wrong,” he said. “It is 2019 that the SRT will be back up and operational.”

“LOL, I thought we were shutting down the entire eastern leg of the city’s train tracks for seven years, but it’s actually only four! What a normal thing for me to overlook because nobody gives a fuck about Scarborough even though amalgamation was 13 years ago!”

“We’re going to drive people away from transit, there’s no question,” he said, adding that a fleet of buses will pick up the slack.

“We’re going to drive people in Scarborough away from transit, there’s no question. I hope they enjoy their (at least) thirty cent fare hike over the next 3 years, at which point we’ll just yank public transport out from under them altogether and give them a few extra Bellamy 9s!”

Here are some tips for you future B9 riders out there:

You are going to wait at least 20 minutes for your bus, no matter how fast you run from your shitty mall job at the STC. You are either going to just miss it or it is going to leave 10 minutes early for some godforsaken reason. If you pick it up at Warden Station on a busy night, it might just skip your stop and let you walk home from 4 blocks away… it does that sometimes. Oh, and if you’re trying to get home after 10pm, you’re pretty much fucked.

At this point, I wish I could give you some statistics about how heavily relied upon and oft-used the RT is in Scarborough. Unfortunately I cannot, because the TTC recently took down their Operating Statistics page. Not that I’m implying anything sinister, or anything at all…

Anyway, future student from Scarbs: I know some dick told you that they were going to run extra buses to replace the RT… but did you really think they were going to set up enough to handle the load of passengers who don’t live on a bus line? Did you really think you were going to be able to get from Kennedy to the mall in 15 minutes on a bus the way you could on the rails? Did you really think they give a shit about whether or not you can freely move about the city?

They won’t. You can’t. They don’t. Send my regards to Peter’s Academy and don’t forget to check your blind spot.