Sunday, November 11, 2007

Bus Stories

Yesterday I took the bus downtown. Just as the bus driver was about to close the doors, a 30-something fellow jumped on and said, "Can I get a ride across the bridge this one time only?" The bus driver (and everyone else within earshot) knew it was complete B.S. but let him on anyhow.

The fellow sat down and then promptly pulled out a cel phone and started text messaging. So he has enough money to own and use a cel phone but has no problem ripping off the public.


My mom told me about taking the B-Line (a long accordion bus) from downtown. When it reached the middle of the Granville Bridge it deliberately stopped. A fare inspector walked through the bus, fining anyone who was cheating on their fare. He told my mom that there were 40 such people on that bus. That would be a minimum of 25% of the people.

Is it any wonder why Translink is consistently short of revenues. Has Vancouver become a community of cheats?

1 comment:

Tex_Thorn said...

Vancouver is not alone in having this problem. London has solved most of this by using the Oyster card but I still see this kind of activity in LA and in Houston when I use mass transit there.