I never knew a mini skirt could be so offensive.

Today while boarding my usual bus to work I was assaulted by the sight of a very large woman in a very short skirt with her feet up on the seat adjacent to her so that absolutely nothing was left to the imagination. I can't blame her for not wearing leggings in the summer heat-- what I can blame her for is baring her rear end in the middle of such a public and already uncomfortably close place. After partially succeeding in ignoring this woman's butt, she shifted both her feet to the seat in front of her. This apparently was the last straw for the bus driver-- I can only assume he got a head-on view in his rear mirror (no pun intended). The stock Bus Lady voice (you know, the one that says "Please move to the rear of the bus" every morning on your way to school?) comes on to say "Please keep your feet off of the seats". The lady, now rather shocked, proceeds to lower her feet and put the rest of the bus at ease. Go bus driver.

The moral of the story is, even though I admire the confidence of this woman (in fact, of anyone who is comfortable wearing a miniskirt), you have to be careful about what you're wearing and what you're baring in public. Or bus drivers may get desperate and start programming "Pull up your pants" and "Please cover your nether-regions" messages into the Bus Lady's voice. Please don't make them.

-Sean

If this isn't a transgression, I don't know what is.

Today on my bus ride to work the woman next to me pulled the cord to stop the bus and, since I was beside her in the aisle seat, I stood to let her out. Instead of getting up, however, she put her shopping bag and purse on the seat I was in and remained in her seat through the stop she pulled for, and the next, and the next. I looked at her and she looked at me and the bags stayed in the seat.

I don't want to whine about this, as there happened to be another seat for me on that bus and I don't think she did it on purpose to steal the seat (though her body language made it clear that she wasn't giving it up). Still, her actions illustrate an issue that's been bothering me for a while, an issue that I've seen put countless other commuters in an awkward situation: Your bag doesn't need a seat. Period. Please don't force someone to move your purse so they can sit. Some will never ask regardless of how much their feet hurt or how long they've been chasing their kids around town. Some people can't speak English well enough to request that you move your gym bag so they can take a seat. It's just a common courtesy that should be automatic, assuming you value other people more than your bag. 

What are some common courtesies you'd like to see honoured more often on public transit? Share in the comments, and remember to honour them yourself!

-Sean

I was not downtown last night. I wasn't afraid for my life or well-being in the face of the riots in Vancouver following Boston's Stanley Cup win. I was not franticly searching for a way home. I did, however, receive a steady stream of tweets from Translink regarding bus and SkyTrain service in the heart of Vancouver during the chaos.
 
Anyone who knows me knows that I have no shortage of complaints about late buses, SkyTrain delays and rude drivers, but I have no compla last night Translink's response to law-abiding hockey fans just trying to get home was really admirable. Though service was cut off for some time, the Twitter Team at Translink promptly sent information to the masses on available routes and transit services, when otherwise no one would know where the buses were running. Seeing their diligence in such a hectic situation, I'm likely to skip the Translink website and just check the Twitter feed when I need to know what's going on.

You can see Translink's tweets from last night here http://twitter.com/#!/translink
If you have a Twitter account, give them a follow. You never know when you'll need minute to minute transit information.

    You'd think that once the school year ended that it would have marked the end of a year of transit oddities. It appears that this is not the case.

    Today I boarded the Skytrain, part of my usual 1.5 hour trip to school. In my experience, commuters in the morning are almost totally silent. Whether it's from sleepiness or from unwillingness to give someone else the excuse to strike up a conversation I'm not sure. In any case, my ride this morning was definitely not silent.

    Generally I try to avoid eavesdropping (or let's just assume I do) but this morning it was impossible. This morning I experienced the strangest conversation I'd ever overheard.

    I suppose the weirdest thing about it was the span of topics that two middle aged men were able to cover in the half hour that I spend on the train. Here is what they talked about, as I tried desperately to concentrate on my crossword:

 - Some scheme that the two of them were planning, involving a lake, some sort of trickery and a woman who they had yet to meet and convince to be part of the trick
 - The fact that one of them had no clue that the train was leaving Surrey and that we were actually not travelling towards Surrey, resulting in the other man gesturing around the train car stating "Ah yes; these are Surrey people"
 - One of the men explaining to the other how he would "find a girl" for the aforementioned scheme, who was then told he could never get a girl unless he had some cologne to cover his stink. The stinky man expressed his preference for Hugo Boss.
 - The stinky man's random outburst of "Rapper's Delight" which he performed in its entirety to the amusement and/or chagrin of the other passengers
 - The stinky man's notice of my crossword and exclamation to his friend that "crosswords are impossible"
 - A minute or so of silence, followed by the apparently-not-stinky man reminding the stinky man of his stinkyness, and the resulting altercation
 - Another semi-tuneful outburst from the stinky man and his claim that his singing voice sounds like Axl Rose ("claim" being the operative word)

    Completely strange. But I'm sure that if you pay attention to your own conversations (I know I do: "How did we start talking about THIS?") you start to notice how many weird, ridiculous, sometimes downright demented things happen in the course of one conversation. This is one of the few cases where I'm glad some people are loud/arrogant/secure enough to share their lives with a train car full of strangers.

    Ah, the randomness of conversation. Sometimes it's worth eavesdropping. 

Taking public transit is always an adventure. During my first year of university alone I've slept through my stop countless times, taken the wrong line to nowhere-land (aka the Millenium Line to Sapperton), experienced two skytrain "jumper" incidents, nearly been hit by a bus twice (both times when the bus had a red light, by the way) and been under the care of possibly hundreds of bus drivers whose possession of a valid driver's license cannot be explained.

When I come across something particularly ridiculous, it'll be here for sure, and I look forward to hearing about more transit mishaps in the comments!

-Sean