Congestion.
It’s a problem.
Drive into downtown Victoria or Vancouver.
Frustrating!
There are too many cars!
The traffic lights are timed incorrectly.
Or, maybe my trip is timed incorrectly.
What happened to all the parking spots?
There are lots and lots of cars.
But, there are more empty seats.
Single occupant vehicles.
Overwhelm the road.
Transit.
It’s not convenient.
Not convenient enough to overcome the inconvenience.
I hate waiting.
Busses don’t stop where I need them to stop,
when I need them to stop.
It’s easy to get there.
It’s getting back that’s the problem.
I need to go somewhere,
at the time I need to go there, you know.
It’s complicated.
And…
I pay for transit but it does not serve me,
like I want it to serve me.
Cars.
My car serves me.
It is obedient.
It stays right where I leave it,
and it waits for me to get back,
ready to take me exactly where I need to go,
at exactly the time I need to go there.
Convenient car culture.
…
I am pretty sure that I am the problem.
It’s my attitude that needs to change.
Image by RettungsgasseJETZTde from Pixabay
When other countries seem to be able to build bridges across places exactly like the Malahat or crossing water in various situations why can we not build a bridge across the water to the reserve lsands on the Saanich penninsula?
Maybe this is a First Nations solution that could be explored?
It seems when there are no other solutions sometimes the obvious is the best.
A toll bridge would be welcome I’m sure as opposed to the daily gridlock and monthly shutdown with accidents. Just a thought from Squamish BC
While I empathize with your sentiment, for people with disabilities and families like ours, transit is inaccessible. While BC Transit has a 100% accessible fleet of busses, the communities they serve have not chosen to provide 100% accessible bus stops.
For our family, of 6 stops within 1 km of where we live, only 1 is wheelchair accessible so our son (and family traveling as a group) can use it. While we are working on the issue, it is just another advocacy job that parents of children with disabilities have to add on top of dealing with supports at schools and in the health care and other government systems. When am I supposed to get time with my family when I am expected to do all this?
And when transit works, I personally do take the bus to work, but I am a 24-hour on call shift worker in a “safety critical” position. With a service that shuts down as early as 11pm and other days doesn’t start until 830 am, many days it cannot get me to work.
While I can accept some of the “blame,” it also lies in a broken system of fractured government services that do not interconnect – be in transit or otherwise.