Image of a Viva kiosk

What do VIVA bus riders, Google employees, and Pearson airport bound travelers have in common? All have been envisioned as transit riders who can make use of wireless internet access on the bus.

The VIVA buses in York Region are sometimes described as innovative and high tech. This description is tied in part to the planned provision of wireless internet access on board. Online materials from York University and York Region from 2005 and 2006 describe this future vision for the system. Here in 2008, I rode the Viva bus down Yonge Street to Finch station with my laptop powered on a couple of weeks ago. There was no wireless signal detected from Viva yet. While, I wait to get online with Viva, let us consider other buses that currently offer wireless access with a green twist.

The Google bus service was started in 2004 to transport employees between San Francisco and the Mountain View location of the company. As reported on a Google blog page, the bus runs on biodiesel and takes employees’ cars off the road.

Locally, the Toronto Airport Express provides wireless for riders traveling between the downtown core and the airport. For a much higher fare than the TTC’s 192 red rocket route, the Airport Express fare of $18.95 allows riders to slide into leather seats and login to the internet. As reported on the CBC the bus engine is low-emission and a green alternative.

Following Sameer’s lead with his previous blog entry on parking perks, I think it is important to consider the benefits of particular transit choices. In the future, internet access integrated with green transit vehicles may be more widely available to us here in the GTHA.

My grade 10 geography teacher commuted daily from Barrie to Markham. My commute: Bloor and Christie to Queen and Spadina. This weekend I decided to have a short vacation; I took the 400 highway to Collingwood from Toronto. As far as driving goes, I considered it a ‘good’ drive. But I cannot see myself driving down the 400 as often as my teacher did, ever.

My ‘good’ drive depends on:

• the time of day
• the day(s) of week
• the season
• the reason for travel
• the type of car
• the driver’s driving ‘style’ (aggressive, lane-changer, space from the car in front etc)
• the volume of traffic
• the music selection and/or level of chatter

The drive back home to Toronto took place on the Sunday in the middle of Labour Day long weekend and started around 5:30pm. I had borrowed my parents’ new-ish Mazda V6 station wagon (note: without sunroof), which transported myself, my boyfriend and my sister. The CD selection was made hastily and included Buena Vistas’ Ruben Gonzalez, Willie Nelson’s Stardust, Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, Thom York’s Eraser among others. Usually for passengers (those not being official navagational assistant), when chatter dies down, and the car’s rhythm is constant, the internal activity of contemplation may set in.

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During the Metronauts event in Toronto in April 2008, one of the ideas that caught my attention was the possibility that public transit vehicles and the public transit system more broadly can be considered as a potential space for cultural activities.

Shortly after Metronauts Toronto, I came across an example of public art on public buses which seems to bring to life this possibility. In Winnipeg in the spring of 2008, artist Cheyenne Henry launched Trans Regalia, which is described on the Arts Building Community website as “an act of Indigenous cultural and political reclamation.” The site describes that in this artistic intervention,

Artist Cheyenne Henry reclaims the public transit system in Winnipeg to launch education about urban Aboriginal issues into the public sphere. People dressed in traditional Aboriginal regalia step onto city buses and share personal stories of reclaiming their culture and identity in an urban context. The lines between participant and performer are blurred as both become viewer and viewed, sharing a common experience, a bus ride into Winnipeg’s core. This act of transit reclamation opens possibilities for dialogue and understanding in the inner city.

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As those of us who rely on the TTC as our primary means of transportation know all too well, the legal strike of late April 2008 hit the city by surprise. Surprise quickly turned to anger, and the blogosphere and media erupted with calls for the union to not only be legislated back to work, but to permanently forfeit their right to strike. Quickly legislated back to work in a historic Sunday sitting of the Ontario legislature, the two sides have been negotiating behind a press blackout while people continue to call for the TTC to be declared an essential service.

On Friday, to much fanfare across the blogosphere and the newspapers, both the TTC and the Amalgmated Transit Union (ATU) local 113 spoke out against being declared an essential service.

Yet what I find fascinating is the quickness by which progressive transit activists turn against the right of organized labour to carry out a labour disruption. In this post, I’d like to quickly run down the historical roots of this antagonism, and then argue that in a liberal society – one in which many rights have been conceded by modern trade unions – we have to be willing to tolerate disruptions in the interests of both human rights and liberal democracy. This all speaks to a central question: Should the TTC be declared an essential service?

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This is the first in a series of observations, questions, interviews, opinions and answers about the human experience of using transit.

I grew up in the suburbs and couldn’t articulate why I disliked it. Then, in the middle of high school, I moved ‘downtown’ and couldn’t quite articulate why I loved it.

It’s having different destinations to visit. It’s getting around to different places. Transit is cheap and easy and I felt I had achieved a level of teenage urban independence.

After university, transit turned into an item of necessity. I was a commuter. Waiting for 2 minutes or 25 minutes – waiting was exhausting. Was it worse to have already paid subway fare and hear that there was a delay or emergency, or to calculate how many full trains I would let pass before I would squeeze into one and squeamishly smile at the unhappy commuters whose personal space I was invading.

There are positive transit experiences.

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