Lemmings

As much as I'd like to rant right now about my first two weeks dealing with Translink and public transit in general, I'd like to rant instead about the lemmings that use the system every day. Despite all intentions to maintain a civil society, some units in the machine will do anything (or maybe that should be 'do nothing'?) to ensure we can demonstrate having no intelligence whatsoever as a group. There is no better place for us to collectively look like morons more than on public transit.

The Broadway-Commercial interchange on the Skytrain system is wicked enough just the way it is...a complete bottleneck, however the eastbound Millennium Line train causes even more problems when it doesn't come. Twice in the past week, the service has knocked out a couple of trains heading eastbound. Of course, the ones that did come from VCC-Clark were only double cars. By that time, the crowd has ballooned in size to double what it should be as the train comes on its 15-minute interval so everyone is sardined in the cabs once loaded.

But this morning, several test trains came through and announcements on the intercom very clearly stated that the next trains were out of service trains and shouldn't be boarded. What happens? The trains arrive, and EVERYONE clamours on! Once on, the soothing intercom voice says once again, "this is an out of service train, please get off". Everyone gets off again, completely packed against the yellow security lines waiting for the next operational train. Then one comes, and the Voice of Reason comes on the intercom again, "there is another train immediately after this one", and should have continued, "...so there is no reason for everyone to pack on the first train". No matter, everyone packs on the train anyways, apparently overjoyed about the prospect of rubbing up against all the other lemmings packed into the cars.

It was a wonderful example of our lemmingness. And it was almost as fun as my transit party at the corner of Hastings and Willingdon on Friday evening, but that's another rant for another day...