a translink incident

i just wanna recount this story before it slips away from me... so a week ago, i was on the bus headed to langley city to see a tutee. i had only been to my tutee's house a couple of times, but i clearly remember an elderly woman who had a walker and got on at a certain stop because the bus driver had to help load her walker and all her belongings onto the bus and it was a somewhat lengthy ordeal. it was fine though... the bus driver was young (probably in his 30's) but very patient and polite, and the old woman was very kind and bubbly. anyway, this time around, the bus driver himself was fairly old (with his snow-white hair, he actually looked older than the woman) and we stopped at the same stop and there was the old woman again with her walker and groceries. the driver opened the door and the woman got in and asked if she could have some help bringing up her things. the driver got out and walked around to where she was, and soon i heard yelling... something about how the woman had a ton of things in her walker basket and it was too heavy, he wasn't gonna lift this up for her, she'd need a truck or something to lift all of her things... then the woman was like, "don't worry, i'm not asking you to carry all of this, just let me take my things out of the basket first and load them onto the bus!" so she takes a few plastic bags and goes up the steps and puts it on an empty window seat in the front row. she has to do this several times because she did a lot of shopping... all this time the driver just stood on the sidewalk and kept mumbling at her, and i could sense that he was really impatient and trying to rush her. finally she took the basket off her walker with a few things still in it, and the bus driver took her walker and brought it inside the bus... he asked where she wanted it, and she said in front of her seat near the window would do (so she could sit closest to the aisle). so he hurriedly folded the walker and shoved it in front of the seat and let it drop. in the process, some of her bags got caught and toppled over, and one of her boxes got crushed. he didn't even bat an eyelash... just went straight to his seat and sat down. the poor lady was scrambling on the floor trying to get her groceries and things together and rearranging her stuff on the seat, and she was like, "see now, my box is broken! why did you have to shove it in there like that? couldn't you be a little more patient? geez!" and the old bus driver just sat in his seat staring straight ahead. eventually the old woman got her stuff somewhat together, and she was barely able to sit down amongst all her belongings before the bus driver stepped on the gas and we were off again. she was still in that same uncomfortable position (half-sitting on her things, half-falling off the seat) when i got off the bus.

i was so shocked and angry when i saw this happening... i wish i had gotten up and helped her instead of being glued to my seat :( what was the bus driver's problem?! if anything, he should've been more understanding of her situation since he's pretty old himself. does he think he has more of a right to be rude because he's old just like she is and he shouldn't have to be helping her lift things? whatever his reason, it's an awful attitude to have and to take it out on a kind old lady who wasn't even the slightest bit rude to him to begin with.

of course, there are grumpy old ladies who ride on the bus as well... there's this one lady that constantly complains about students taking up all the room on the bus, and whenever a younger person gives up their seat so she can sit down, she never thanks them... it's as though she thinks that's the least they can do for her. i myself have "missed" the bus several times last semester because the bus is too full and the driver has to turn other passengers away... you have no idea how much of an issue this was for me. you see, the C62 passes by three schools: langley fine arts school (an elementary school), trinity western university, and kwantlen university college. it's a shuttle bus (as opposed to the regular long buses) so it only seats 20 and has a maximum capacity of 25. the earlier in the route or the closer you are after a school stop, the greater your chance of getting on the bus. i am a couple of stops before langley fine arts school, so by the time the bus comes at 8 or 830, it's full of LFAS students and sometimes the bus has to pass by my stop and i have to wait another half hour for the next bus. of course when the bus stops at a school, there's a massive unloading of students and the bus has seats once again. anyway, i've had to improvise a couple of times... walk further to a stop earlier on in the route, take a much earlier bus... one time H and i even walked to school (a little under an hour) cuz we figured it would take just as long if we had to wait for the next bus. so back to this grumpy lady... once in a while a driver comes along that is willing to bend the rules and let more than 25 ppl on the bus, and i was standing at the front of the bus with this old lady one day and she kept going on and on about these TWU students taking up all the room and how it was our fault the bus was always so crowded... and since we're a private university, it means we have a ton of money so what are we doing taking public transportation, the school should just have its own private bus for its students and leave the public bus for other people to use. goodness gracious!! i was fuming... she has no right to place greater value on some passengers and lesser value on others. who is she to make that kind of call?? a student has every right to get to their place of study just as much as she has a right to get to wherever it is she needs to go... when passengers are turned away, it is never fair, but blaming other passengers is not the answer either. i think i did end up saying something to her... nothing rude, but i pointed out that there are more than just TWU students who use this bus, and it is nobody's fault that everyone needs to get somewhere. i've thought about writing to translink about replacing the C62 shuttle with a regular bus to seat more people so we wouldn't have this problem, but i had a conversation with one of the bus drivers about this one day and there are cost issues involved... a bigger bus uses up more gas, and other than the "peak" times when school usually starts and ends, there aren't enough passengers to warrant the use of a regular bus and so translink ends up losing money.

anyway, i digress! my point is...... wait, did i even have a point? i think i just wanted to share a story... yah, that's what it was :)