Fourth in the Time’s Up, TTC series
The strangest bus line in the system – I can back that up – is 31, the Greenwood bus. It’s the only bus that passes two TTC yards (Greenwood and Russell). Without it, your mail wouldn’t get delivered, because posties without cars are stuck taking it at ungodly hours like 12:30 in the morning. (Toronto’s postal plant is on desolate, antihuman Eastern Ave. below Queen.)
The main 31 branch has a one-way route length of ten minutes, a shortness that drives some “operators” crazy. (They transfer out. But others choose it because they like short routes. I have other lore about 31 drivers; ask me sometime.) It’s one of those routes that’s 90% regulars, and not many fights or fare disputes break out. (Though there was that one time when a completely overwhelmed mother allowed her unhappy son, who obviously hated her, to run straight to the front of the bus and tumble down the stairwell.)
And if you’re in the 10% that doesn’t use it every day, you don’t have a clue where to stand at its second-most-important point – the southern terminus, Queen St. (The most important point is up at the other end, at Greenwood station.)
The bus stops at Greenwood (and is invisible to the immediate east and west). It loops around Queen and two sidestreets, one of them amusingly named Dorothy, then hauls ass back up Greenwood. But the B branch, the one the posties take, drives along Queen and turns up Greenwood on the opposite side. You must simply know where to stand (most of the time, at the “wrong” place, the very end of the line) if you want to go north.
What do the schedules say? For the last two years, they’ve lied to you, or lied to you most of the time. Schedules on both sides of Greenwood at Queen pretend that only the B branch runs there (true only of the east side) and do not tell you where to stand. In fact, these skeds make you believe the bus doesn’t run every ten minutes all day, which it does, since the main 31 branch just isn’t listed.
So, after I saw people waiting on the wrong side of the street every two weeks, I took matters into my own hands and printed labels that I stick onto the schedules (PDF).
They don’t last long. I witnessed a teenage harlot pull one of the labels off with her bare nails, for example. But I just print more and stick them up again. And people still stand in the wrong spot; I yell for them to come over.
(For completists: The schedules are, in general, incorrect since last November’s service increase. TTC acts as though the stop on Dorothy St. is the terminus of the route, and its pole has a full schedule. The Red Rocket and iTTC iApps also show incorrect schedules.)
I’ve complained about this problem twice. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. Actual TTC employees from Russell stand there all the time visibly reading the labels. The 501 schedule across the street on Queen at Greenwood got replaced last winter. But still… nothing.
Update
(2009.07.08) That guy on Twitter whose presence on Twitter you somehow think matters in some way states “This will be fixed to eliminate the confusion.”
Excuse my French, but two fucking years later?