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By GO Transit to Peterborough for the Day – Execution

Monday, June 22, 2015

I set off in the early morning, having woken early I figure I may as well catch the early train. Not 3 minutes into my walk I cross College Street at Bay Street. Who knew? Apparently the white paint used to mark crosswalks is capable of derailing street cars! Why else would you decide not to paint a full pedestrian crosswalk?

I arrive early at Union Station on Bay Street and try to gain entry through a pair of doors to Go Transit which (doors) are labeled 5:30-0:45. Well, truth be told the sign doesn’t actually say that THESE doors will be open, but I ask myself why I, at 5:53, cannot gain access to the station?

I walk around and find a way in, wait for the platform announcement, tap my Presto card, and board the 6:13 train which gets me to Oshawa 58 minutes later. That’s, say, an hour to travel vs. in the Transilean network. We all have a long way to go ...

Trip	Distance	Duration	Speed	Average
Rambouillet	67	60	67
Etampes	55	60	55
Mantes la Jolie	53	60	53
Coulommiers	62	60	62
Provins	91	60	91
Montereau	92	60	92	70
Union-Oshawa	57	58	59
Union-Peterborough	143	150	57	58

The table above is not a fair comparison; but it is at least a comparison.

I have not checked the figures, but roughly speaking no station on the Transilean network is more than 60 minutes from Paris, so I entered “60” in the column for Duration.

The distance to Peterborough is about that of the longer dimension of the Transilean network (which I estimate at 140 Km).

The GO transit service to Peterborough is about 80% the speed of the Transilean network. Hence my comment above that “We all have a long way to go”.

I am curious about the cost of my trip. The balance on the Presto card reads $39.54 before I tap it and $34.24 after I tap it. Is $5.50 the maximum possible cost of a trip on Go Transit? Since the swipe-device is within Union Station does the system assume that I’m going by train, and if so, is $5.50 the maximum length trip possible at this hour of the day? Only Lakeshore East and West train service is available at this hour.

It is nigh impossible to understand the announcements in car 2761; we have a perky little creature making excited announcements in a high-pitched Canadian accent with overtones of “Aren’t I important” rather than “There might be people (newcomers to the system, foreigners, hard-of-hearing) who want to know.

I already know all the stations, but it is hard for me to work out what she is saying. My experience in France and Germany reminds me of the difficulties in hearing announcements in a foreign tongue on/in Public Transit systems.

Here is the route taken by the Go Transit bus. The trip leaves Oshawa GO station and heads straight for highway 401; no roadside stops, then barrels up highway 35/115 stopping only at car pool lots. In consequence the trip is fast and on schedule, for there are no random stops to pick up or drop off isolated passengers.

My experience has been that Go Transit drivers do have discretion in these matters and can cater to passengers needs.

I hop aboard the GO Transit bus and get a seat at the front by virtue of the dog in the manger moving her handbag; she slept most of the trip anyway, so why sit in the best-view seat in the house if you don’t plan to use it; that’s my heavy-handed approach ...

The trip leaves Oshawa GO station and heads straight for highway 401; no roadside stops, and straight up highway 35/115. Except for popping in and out of carpool lost, we are effectively an express service. Unlike the Barrie bus that has bus stops outside every small farm house (it seems) and functions as a local bus service way from the towns.

Our GO bus made two or three stops between the Peterborough South Carpool (Sir Sanford Fleming Drive and The Parkway) and the Peterborough Bus Terminal. It appears to be the driver’s discretion to make these Courtesy Stops, and I thought it a good thing.

While it may be untrue that GO provides a good service, it is always true that the front-line operators – in this case the drivers – are the real service providers. Today was warm and sunny, the air fresh, but I’d hate to have to walk across the carpool and along the major streets in pouring rain to get to where I was going, knowing that the bus goes right by my door.

(But see also my story of the wonderful driver who picked me up, orphan-like, at the DRT stop in Uxbridge)

Here we are trundling into Peterborough just two and a quarter hours after leaving Union Station. I took a photo of the water tower because I’m keen to absorb potential landmarks for my navigation.

The GO bus pulls up outside the Peterborough Bus Terminal and as I descend the kindly driver says to me “Get the bus home here”. How did he know I was traveling home? Anyway, it is a nice an re-assuring touch.

My overall experience on these trips is that the front-line troops, the clerks and the operators, are without exception friendly, helpful and forgiving.

Here I am in the Peterborough Bus Terminal; my hands are shaking with excitement and anticipation. Either that or I am too excited to wait for the green in-focus light to come on.

I have negotiated a paper Transit Map from the information officer.

Tricky.

They don’t have any Transit Maps; there might be some on the buses, or I could look online, or even ask the bus drivers.

I point out that I am here to learn about Peterborough, am not carrying my laptop, there lacks WiFi access, and I was contemplating buying an all-day bus pass, but can see no point in buying one if I can’t plan what routes to ride or follow them as we go. With an air of unbridled enthusiasm (after I name-drop “Keith or Ken somebody”) my new friend manages to scrounge one from one of the staff members.

Hooray for her!

We have the same problem in the TTC’s subway station booths. About one time out of five when I ask for a Ride Guide I am told “We are all out of them”. I am always asking for Ride Guides because I am always helping German and Japanese tourists by handing them my copy.

A free map is to my mind an obvious way to boost ridership and encourage newcomers to learn and use the system.

Why have “re-order points” dropped out the logistics business over the past fifty years? Not to mention “Feedback on re-order-points”? It was all the rage when we used 80-column punched cards to program inventory systems.

But I digress.

The buses leave at 8:40.

ALL the buses leave at 8:40!

This is my first, but not last, view of the ballet that takes place on the stage at the Peterborough Transit Terminal.

I think the dispatcher sits in the protruding bay, circled in purple in the photo above, with a view of all 12 buses. As the minute hand ticks over the 8:40 mark, if you are sitting on a bus you will hear something like this: “One George; Four Jackson Park; Seven Lansdowne; Five Charlotte” and those four buses, evenly spaced along the bays, will reverse out of their bays simultaneously, and then move forward out of the terminal and hit, in a manner of speaking, the streets. Whereupon you hear “Two Chemong; Ten Collison; ...” and the next four buses back out gracefully (there’s no other word), and exit the terminal. Then the remaining four buses are paged.

Note the time-stamp on the photo and the gaps appearing in the bays.

Note the time-stamp on the photo and the empty bays.

The third and final quartet begin moving forwards out of the terminal.

Note the time-stamp on the photo and the last bus heading out into The Exciting World which is the City of Peterborough. In somewhere between two and three minutes, twelve buses have departed.

And here’s the point: If you arrived at the terminal by one route to make a connection to a second route, YOU WILL NEVER FAIL TO MAKE THE CONNECTION!

Because none of the buses leave until all the buses have settled their passenger queues.

NOBODY GETS LEFT BEHIND

Indeed I was so impressed with the performance that I happily forfeited one of my chances to ride a route just to record the performance on camera.

Sigh.

And “Quartet”, “Performance” and so on are the right words. It is a Bus-Ballet.

A pas-de-douze.

I haven’t had breakfast, so I begin quartering the downtown core looking for a traditional bacon-and-three-eggs breakfast (but don’t tell my doctor!)

I walk past an old army barracks of some sort. Here is the entrance to the drill hall. You could ride your charger up the ramp and onto the tables in the officer’s mess, I’m sure.

I take photos of what I perceive to be landmarks, which turned out to be a futile gesture on my part this day in Peterborough. Why? Because the bus system provided a better way of recognizing the city. As I rode around I spotted intersecting routes. “Here I am on #4 Jackson Park; there’s a #3 Highland Road, it’s going to be north of us; we will be west of it” and so on.

I couldn’t resist The Whistle Stop Café. Had a lovely omelette, but Fried Green Tomatoes wasn’t on the menu.

Nor coffee fill-ups; nor a glass of water, unless you ask. I found this to be true in other eateries in Peterborough. Do they conserve water so as to keep the lift-locks running?

The food was good, the hash-browns excellent, but I couldn’t eat them all because of my thirst.

I still have no idea what this clock tower is, or is of; but it kept popping into view. Peterborough is blessed with low sky-lines, so different from my neck of the woods in downtown Toronto. It’s a real pleasure to see lots of sky.

I rather suspect that this might be the tallest building in Peterborough; about twelve floors.

There are two 68-storey condos going up on my short street that runs between Yonge and bay streets in Toronto. Plus tow more going up on the far side of Yonge street. This winter I counted seven 2015-01-29 2015-01-30 2015-02-06 cranes visible through a single pane of glass.

Fifteen minutes to go before the twelve bays fill up; twenty minutes and they’ll be empty again. The driver of the wheel-trans bus waited for me to take my shot. I told him I was impressed with the ballet, but that since HIS bus was the only one on stage he mist be a Prima Donna. Bless him – he laughed out loud.

The lady in the pink pants typified my conversations about the bus system. Many people told me that “a lot of people don’t like this forty-minute scheduling business”, but here’s the sad truth about humans: many of us aren’t logical.

I sat on the bench between this lady and another lady my age and we chatted. “I’m from Toronto”. “Oh” says pink-pants “I couldn’t stand Toronto, it’s all so rush-rush-rush anxious to get somewhere” I agreed, commenting that I couldn’t understand people attempting to break a limb by running downstairs to catch a subway train, when the trains run every two minutes.

Then, five minutes before the bus pulled in, pink-pants excused herself saying “I like to be first in line so I can get my seat on the bus”. So there is someone who decries the rush of Toronto, but stands in a non-existent line for five minutes to get a seat on a bus at ten o-clock on a quiet weekday morning in Peterborough.

What weight should I put on her statement that “a lot of people don’t like this forty-minute scheduling business”?

Well, anyway, here I am sitting on the “1 George” ready for my first trip. I had marked the #1 and the #12 as Grand Tours of the north-east and south-west corners of the city; an overview if you will, before focusing on smaller routes.

Sixteen, I think, parallel cables in this photo. Peterborough is a beautiful city, and the number of cables makes a sharp contrast with the lawns and trees and open spaces.

You might think you were travelling in parts of Lancashire or Yorkshire, but you are on a city bus route.

My first view of Trent University.

I asked my first bus driver (there were six more to come) if I had enough time to hop off and take a couple of photos.

Oh sure! She said. “Come on! I’ll give you a guided tour”. And she did. My unfocused photo still does her justice. She is laughing and clearly loves her job, is proud to tell me what she knows of the university campus, how students can get here from both sides of the river, the difference between the river and the canal, and much more.

What other transit system in the world can boast giving a spontaneous narrative en route?

And best of all, as long as I listened and paid attention, there was no danger of the bus going without me!

I think this is part of Trent University east-bank campus. I’ll just have to come back to Peterborough to find out.

The GO Transit bus was cold, the air conditioning on full-blast as we motored up the highways. I of course was traveling light – no bag, no jacket, just me in my shirtsleeves. I was glad to walk around in the sunshine once we reached Peterborough. The Peterborough Transit System bus had the heat on; my left foot and ankle were roasting in the floor-level heaters, the vents were pumping out hot air.

For that reason I was amused when the driver called out for passengers to close the windows so that the air conditioning could be turned on!

In retrospect I suspect that if they have both the cooling and heating systems on full blast, passengers can take sides and complain about it being too hot, or else complain about it being too cold. That way everybody is happy!

Bookshops on George Street. Do you have any idea of how much will-power it takes to stay on the #1 George Street bus as we head back to the Peterborough Bus Terminal?

I said hello to the driver as I boarded the #1 George and she immediately got off the bus; a different driver got on. On our way back to the Peterborough Bus Terminal an outgoing #1 George swept by us with the original driver on board, from which I inferred that there were two buses on this route and (since the second bus must have passed us inbound as we were outbound) three drivers.

Maybe the third driver rotates among routes, but since all buses operate on the 40-minute cycle (peak hour excepted) there can’t be any buses for the third driver to drive, just a 40-minute break between trips.

I know I got this next bit wrong, but it must be something like this: Some routes take under 40 minutes, the rest take more than 40 minutes. If a route takes under 40 minutes then one bus will suffice, but if a route takes more than 40 minutes, two vehicles will be needed.

I now think that even the inner-city #2, #3 and #5 must take close to 40 minutes to negotiate the streets; the #1, #9, #6 and #7 by comparison spend much time out in the country.

So my guess is that all routes sport two vehicles and three drivers. I am sure the real situation is different, but it is still a valid comparison for Toronto with thousands of surface vehicles; dozens on some routes (but only 3 or 4 on the little 49B Bloor West route) and hence dozens of drivers on each route.

And ... here we are back at the terminal. I have hopped OFF the #1 George and am about to hop ON to the #12 Major Bennet.

Which I do.

Only to find that the #12 bus is decaled to death, and I will be unable to see much detail, and certainly unable to take photos through these windows.

So, up to the front to ask my second driver-of-the-day if I will be able to swipe my all-day pass a second time within two minutes on a different bus.

Surely! Not a problem.

And to make it even less of a not-a-problem I am given a transfer. A nice souvenir for me.

Now. Is that service with a smile or is that Service With A Smile?

And on top of that I suspect that all the drivers would be able to recognize that (a) I am from out-of-town and (b) I have a validated day pass and (c) no one’s nose is going to be out of joint if I had hopped aboard a bus without inserting my day pass and (d) you are in Peterborough now, where we have more important things to think about, like, how sunny and warm it is today, and , how sunny and warm it is today, and, how sunny and warm it is today, and ...

The reverse side of the transfer issued to me after almost two minutes on the #12 bus (with the gravely graveled windows); the arrow shows how to insert the card.

So it’s Hey! And onto the #7 Lansdowne West which will take me to Fleming College, as near as dammit to the south-western corner of the city anyway.

Many of the streets we traveled (and remember, somewhat major streets rather than cul-de-sacs) sported large trees. Not quite the seventy-foot monsters we see on the streets of Paris, but significantly bushier and bigger than the salt-challenged saplings that get replanted every three years in Toronto.

I began to get the feeling that had I brought my shoulder bag with a packed lunch I could have got off at any bus stop and sat under a shady tree and then caught the next bus - in exactly forty minutes time!

Still trundling around the city, here is a paddock sown with something, maybe corn, maybe potatoes, maybe ... whatever; I am riding a city bus through farmland.

As we turn towards Fleming College I see a view of the valley of the Otanabee river; this valley is broad and it cradles the Trent-Severn waterway that connects lake Huron (Georgian Bay) with Kingston and hence Ottawa.

Here we are in a small grove of pine trees at Fleming College.

My photo doesn’t do it justice, but the walls appear to be in oiled red wood; could be well-painted steel paneling, but I’m going to lodge oiled red wood in my memory until told otherwise.

That’s how good Peterborough makes me feel.

The campus map.

I had studied my transit map as we drove up here and realized that I didn’t have to retrace my non-steps to go back to the Peterborough Transit Terminal; I could switch to the #6 Kawartha.

Disclosure: OK, I had a faint hope that the #6 Kawartha route went past a Kawartha Dairy’s ice-cream outlet. It didn’t.

“Sure” says my third driver of the day, “Six will be pulling up behind me any minute now”.

And more to the point, #7 is not leaving until #6 has arrived and they have coordinated the transfer of connecting passengers.

YOU WILL NEVER FAIL TO MAKE YOUR CONNECTION!

And so back to the Peterborough Transit Terminal along (mumble-mumble streets) and Sherbrooke Street. It’s almost like being in Ottawa but a million times better.

Heh heh!

And now it’s time to visit the Lift Locks. Hello lime-green #11 Ashburnham. Sure, says the driver with a grin, I’ll let you off at The Lift Locks. Later on I think I understood the reason for her smile.

You can’t miss the lift locks.

But if you are a slow thinker like me, you can miss the opportunity to take a photo of your bus as its slips through a one-lane opening underneath the lift locks!

There is, I understand, a museum of sorts here, but I have chosen to ride the buses and get the Peterborough layout in my head. Already by mid-day I know I’ll be coming back for a three-day visit here before this summer is out.

Here is a van waiting for a car to complete the traverse before diving in.

You can see why it’s important to have a Clear View before entering.

Here’s a bit of one of the rectangular boat chambers which is itself held within a lattice-work of girders.

I walked up the ramp to the northern end of the lock. The control cabin sports a Canadian flag.

There’s the control tower, top right of the photo. The small peninsula divides the approaches to the two boat chambers.

The rocks enclosed in wire mesh form the lips of the canal at this point, and they have gained a colony of bright yellow flowers.

Alongside the western chamber there is a diagram showing how the system works.

In essence, the two chambers are closely balanced; a slight excess of water in the upper chamber forces the slightly lighter lower chamber to rise. Then the process is reversed.

Here’s a view looking downwards from the western side; the chamber is below, almost out of sight.

The bottom of the eastern chamber is visible across the top of the photo.

The piston of the eastern chamber is visible at the right-hand edge of the photo.

Here’s a better view of the piston for the eastern chamber.

The locks were open to traffic, but sadly there was no boat traffic while I was there so I didn’t see the chambers in motion.

Each ram is about 2.3 metres (seven and a half feet) in diameter.

And so it’s time to head back to the downtown core. It was a short bus ride, so I figure I’ll walk back.

Up the hill, and then down the hill. There’s that ubiquitous clock tower; and the skyscraper.

I decided to drop in on The Examiner; once you are inside the front door lobby you are advised to leave and try again at the back door.

Now why wouldn’t you fix this note to the front door of the lobby so people can see it before coming inside?

Admittedly there is a sign saying “Ramp at Rear”, but nothing at all about the elevator being round-the-back.

I bought today’s Examiner ($1.75) and wandered off to get a coffee and read the local.

This struck me as a not good place to have a coffee. It might be Seattle’s best, but how good can it be after traveling 3,000 miles? Also, will it still be hot?

Instead I found a small working-class café, the owner told me. I found again that there were no refills of coffee and no water unless you ask for it.

Then ... I saw a crane.

Five hours after arriving here it suddenly dawns on me what is different – no cranes!

Here’s a zoom shot; it is at work, swinging back and forth. Just like the 192 cranes where I live.

I wonder if Peterborough would like to take some of Toronto’s cranes off our hands?

Another spire; another navigational aid.

Back at the Peterborough Transit Terminal and there’s a GO bus; a double-decker GO bus. I sure would like to ride up top, at the front, says the ten-year old inside me.

Drooling.

Then into the library, three minutes walk from the Peterborough Transit Terminal.

I like the idea of gleaning. I glean a new idea every time I visit a library.

I liked this idea, too, “Your suggestions” on show. The complaint in the centre was bitching, in a manner of speaking, about the shabbiness of the library. I found the library bright and clean compared to some I’ve seen in world-class cities that shall remain nameless so as not to embarrass some of the one hundred branches in Toronto.

I left the beautiful library and wandered back to the terminal thinking to take another trip.

Look! There’s a bus whooshing past me, and another poking its nose out of the Transit Terminal.

Can this mean I wait forty minutes to catch a bus?

Yep! What a laid-back city.

Now I’ll have to go and sit still for half an hour with a cappuccino at a nearby café.

Sigh.

The smiling young lady in the café positively beamed when I praised the Peterborough Transit System and pointed out to her that I had time for a cappuccino because it was a 40-minute wait for the next bus.

We chatted a bit and she offered “Yabbut” (so we know she is Canadian born-and-bred) “All the other buses are held up if one bus is late”. “Yabbut”, I countered (I took out Citizenship some ten years ago!) “If you are ON that one bus that is late then you KNOW you are going to make your connection and be on time for your appointment with the doctor”.

We parted the best of friends!

Here I am ready to take my pick of twelve bus routes (well, fewer than that; I’ve already ridden the #1, #7, #6, #11...)

Can you guess which route I’ll choose now?

Yep. I thought I might witness a collision along the way.

This south-east corner of the city boasts some houses that look almost like post-war prefabs. The grounds are nice, but the trees are less developed. It is perhaps a newer subdivision.

As we crossed the Otanabee river I spotted a Fish and Chips restaurant. Next Time I’m here ...

Each bus sports a garbage bag at the front. You can toss your paper transfer ticket in here if you no longer need it. Or your empty coffee cup.

What a good idea. It must reduce the cost of labour to tidy and clean the fleet of buses.

Next the #9 Nicholls Park, up the east bank. In fact, between the river and the waterway canal.

“Rogers@Maria” boasted what I thought was a swing bridge in operation as we swooshed by; Note to self: next time I’m here I will ride the #9 or #11 or just walk here after lunch to inspect the scene. I think it might be a lock, actually; the lock below the Peterborough Lift Locks.

We head up to the terminus at Trent University. This is the other bus route that gets you to Uni.

On the way back I clicked away merrily, because there are pretty spots where I could sit and eat a packed lunch and drink bottled water.

And so we make our way back into town ...

... along the scenic bus route ...

Why can’t we have an Otanabee river in Toronto? All the really great cities have one.

An Otonabee river, I mean.

I made an effort to understand the bus-stop-naming scheme. Roughly: A bus stop is called out and displayed on an overhead sign by an automatic system as we approach each stop. So far so good.

The format of the stop identifier is “ON @ INTERSECTING” where ON is the street we are (or will be) traveling on at the time we reach the stop and INTERSECTING is the name of the closest cross street.

So, if the bus stop and shelter is on Alpha street at the intersection with Beta street the stop is “Alpha @ Beta”; but if we are traveling along Alpha Street and make the turn onto Beta because the stop is just around the corner, then the stop would be identified as “Beta @ Alpha” street.

I’m not sure of this, but I think it was on the #9 or #11 that I heard and saw “Hunter @ Times Square” and for the life of me could not see that intersection on my Peterborough Transit System map. I peeled another layer of my eyes and made a greater effort.

On the way back to the Peterborough Bus Terminal on the #9 I saw/heard “611 Rogers” and thought this strange. Of all the stops I passed during the day, I would estimate that less than one in 20 sport this number-on-the-street system.

Me I would have called it “Rogers @ Hazlitt” or “Rogers @ Tivey” or even “Rogers @ Oxford”; 611 Rogers is the street address of an establishment, an apartment complex or retirement village by the look of it, so my guess is that the majority of passengers are heading to 611 Rogers Street and so this make sense by popular vote; but not by semantic analysis!

The funniest part of the stop naming scheme arose as a result of a diversion on the #4 Jackson Park. We thundered along Parkhill Road West and got bumped off the regular route at Wallis Drive. The moment we switched, the stop announcement changed to “Ravenwood @ Ireland” which puzzled me for the longest time.

I have traced out our actual route. Near the top-centre of the map we divert southbound onto Wallis Drive; the purple line I’ve drawn shows us on the right-hand side of Weller Street then turning north onto Fair Avenue then on to Ravenwood and finally (!) passing the bus stop at Ireland.

Then we followed the normal route eastwards along Weller Street.

I found it odd that the stop-detection-system (whatever it is called) didn’t identify intermediate stops westbound along Weller by the names of those stops applicable to the normal eastbound leg. “Fair Avenue”, “Weller Crescent” and “Hawthorn Drive” were likely candidates, but I wasn’t paying attention by then.

In fairness to the Peterborough Transit System I must state my belief that had I asked the driver about the diversion en route and explained that I wanted to get off at, say, Firwood Crescent, the driver would have asked me the house number and stopped the bus as close as possible to my destination; probably offered too to come in and make a cup of tea, wash the windows, weed the lawn and all that sort of stuff, the drivers are so helpful!

Bus stops on most routes are much closer together than in Toronto, I feel. This may be an illusion. With the Peterborough Transit System map on my lap I am tempted to equate it with the TTC map but Toronto is geographically larger, so we seem to reach the end of the line very quickly. Street intersections flash by.

It doesn’t help that I didn’t bring my reading glasses!

In the map above I have circled northbound stops on the #9 Nicholls park route. The stops for Carlisle, McFarlane and Caddy are the foot of each cross street!

You be the judge! OK you might have to go to the Peterborough Transit System web site to read the detail. The schedules for route #7 (left) and routes #2, #8 and #10 appear to me to be identical except for the first two lines on Route #7 and the final line on Route #7. Since all buses depart the Peterborough Bus Terminal at the same time throughout the day, all the schedules appear to be identical, except that some routes (#2, #7, #8 and #10) have 20-minute service during peak hours.

I asked one driver why the schedules weren’t printed as a single schedule, with auxiliary schedules for specific routes. The answer wasn’t clear to me.

Pick a route; any route. It departs the Peterborough Bus Terminal at 11:20 a.m. It reaches the midpoint (indicated by a star on the Peterborough Transit System maps) at 11:40 a.m., and it arrives back at the Peterborough Bus Terminal at noon, right? Any route. Now pick a different time. Same result.

I didn’t use Transcab this time around, but I will next time. It is an on-demand service linked with the local taxi company.

Above you see a portion of the #9 Nichols Park route. If you live on Frances Stewart drive east of Bisonette a local taxi will take you from the “TC” bus stop on Armour Road to your door. Likewise you can have a cab pick you up at your door and deposit you at the TC bus stop in time to connect with the next #9 bus, northbound or southbound.

I suppose that this makes great economic sense for both the bus and the taxi company. The taxi company makes some money it might not otherwise have made, and the bus company doesn’t add five minutes to a 40-minute schedule – putting scheduling out of whack – for the sake of one passenger.

I asked a passenger who was using the service and she said that it was an extra fifty cents on top of the regular bus fare. I think that would be good value if I were laden down with, say, four bags of books culled from the bookstores on George Street, or two weeks groceries from No Frills.

My guess is that if the #9 route gets busier – as in increased passenger traffic elsewhere on the route slows it down – then the appendage that runs along Burnham and Maria streets will be a candidate for Transcab.

But what do I know, right? You get the idea.

I bought the day pass and got great value out of it with a half-dozen round-the-city rides. It is great value too for peace-of-mind; no matter where you end up, you can just hop on a bus to come “home” to the Peterborough Bus Terminal.

Not until I began typing up these notes did I realize that SIX humans can ride all day for $8. Can that be right? If so, that is a great family deal.

Here is the excellent street map I collected at the Peterborough Public Library. I could probably have ordered one mailed to me from www.thekawarthas.ca had I known.

Now you know, so order one before you go. Paper maps are best when asking directions, because both of you can follow the route on a single source.

The back of the map sports Peterborough County so, if one wanted, one could rent a car from Enterprise and go for a day’s tour of the countryside. Maybe even find a Kawartha dairy ice-cream outlet. Or two.

Here is the technical side of a pamphlet about the Peterborough Lift Locks.

In detail, the cut-away diagram of how it works.

Here is my day pass, a thin card with a magnetic strip which, I hope, recorded every instance of my use on some central computer so that the Peterborough Transit System can evaluate the utility of the pass.

As far as I know there is no record of whether it was just me or my family group of two adults and four children.

Still, data-harvesting is a good thing if it helps planning for the future.

The first time the day pass is used it is “validated”. Here you can see that after breakfast at The Whistle Stop I made it back to the Peterborough Bus Terminal in time to jump on a bus that will leave the Peterborough Bus Terminal on time at 10:00 a.m.

I infer that when I return for a three-day stay I will be able to buy three day passes the day I arrive, and make use of them on separate days without having to return to the ticket wicket.

There you go – eight dollars for a guided tour of the city.

Above is where (I think) I walked quartering the downtown core before taking breakfast and my first bus trip.

The long leg to the east is part of my walk back from the Peterborough Lift Locks.

Here (above) is the area I covered on the Peterborough Transit System; all this for eight bucks. Plus conversations with passengers and drivers.

Great value.

Peterborough is about 12 kilometres north-south and about 7 kilometres east-west.

I could walk from one end to the other; or across from side to side.

And Ho! Here’s the bus to take us home; And what joy to this boy – it’s a double-decker and I get to sit up top, up front.

I have had such a wonderful day and I’m smart enough to leave now rather than wait for the next bus in two hours. I could treat myself to some nice Thai cooking across the street, but oftentimes it’s better to leave while everything is good than risk a disappointment. But read on, Dear Reader, read on ...

As we head out of town I notice a rather clever display. Read it from the bottom upwards.

The bottom line, largest font, is the next stop. As we read up, the font grows smaller as the stops recede in proximity (can I say that?) and at the top, the bus’s goal – Oshawa Go Train Station.

Once we have left the Crawford stop, the Syer stop will assume largest-font status as the bottom line.

Highway 115 stretches out in front of us. In front of the red car is a truck.

Here’s a shot at full zoom.

We pulled into, and then out of the car pool lot at Clarington North (I think; at any rate, the one with the sign for “Old Highway 35”) and there I spotted a full-size deer, standing in the middle of the old highway. Too late to take a photo, but the memory lingers.

An hour or so later we slide into the Oshawa Go Train Station we see our train to Union Station sitting, waiting for us, patiently, at the platform.

As we pulled alongside I saw a strange optical illusion; it looked as if the wheels on the train were going round and round, but very slowly.

And as I gained the platform I saw it was no illusion. That is Our Train disappearing towards The Big Smoke.

Therein lies a story.

We were supposed to arrive here by bus at 1923, but we had a fast trip and were here by 1909 - bad luck for anyone hoping to catch us on the way down; we had already left the car pool lot before you got there!

And our connection was for a train at 19:38. Makes sense. Fifteen minutes is enough time to go to the washroom and/or buy a coffee or a chocolate bar.

I complained loudly to the person nearest to me; “You think they’d wait for the bus, wouldn’t you?”. The gentlemen said quietly “Well; yes”, and then it dawned on me, the situation with buses and trains is asymmetrical. With one train every thirty minutes and lots of buses, it makes sense for the buses to wait for the train from Toronto to arrive before they (buses) speed off into the hinterland. But with buses arriving every three minutes FROM the hinterlands, and subject to the vagaries of road traffic, it makes no sense for the train to wait for any bus.

Let alone ours. For I have a self-centred view of the universe. Since I am on this bus, the train should wait for this bus. But of course this bus is indistinguishable from any other bus, from the train’s point of view.

And a schedule is a schedule.

So I went inside to pose a question to the man behind the wicket; I never let slip by an opportunity to ask a question. This time about GO Transit and the Presto card:

“So I’ve just missed my train to Toronto and have to wait another thirty minutes ...” but the nice Go Transit man interrupts me: “You haven’t missed your train. The train that just pulled out was the 1838 running 30 minutes late. Your 1708 train will be arriving in about five minutes. It will unload, load, and take off lickety-split for Toronto.

A young lady overhears part of this conversation; I reinterpret it for her and turn to check if I’ve got the story straight. Essentially yes, so we scoot off outside and I tap my gentleman friend on the shoulder “Come on! We haven’t missed our train; it’s pulling in now”.

Excitedly the three of us reach the platform to see the train pull in, passengers disembark and a fourth partner in crime appears out of nowhere saying “This train is being taken out of service!”.

She is correct, as the young lady confirms.

What the heck is going on?

The train is late so we’ll just pull the plug? Is it more important that the driver gets home in time for his warm supper, or that we, the paying passengers try to make up lost time?

Turns out the driver’s meat pie takes precedence.

The train’s carriages are checked to make sure no-one is left on board, then it would have slowly steamed out of sight has it been towed by a steam locomotive. “It slowly dieseled out of sight” lacks romanticism somehow.

So the four of us stood on the platform griping about Go Transit for twenty minutes or so until another train pulled in.

We were allowed to get on board this train.

I walked towards the leading carriages because I wanted to disembark at the new York Concourse.

Here is our new train, waiting and willing and eager to take us all home.

At 1945 a disembodied voice says “Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen; this train is your scheduled nineteen-thirty-eight making all stops to Union Station then all stops to Aldershot”.

That’s right. We are already seven minutes late and not moving, but this is the Scheduled 1938 Train.

Here I am sitting upstairs taking a photo of yet-another-train pulling in to Oshawa GO Station.

At 1948 the disembodied automaton’s voice returns “Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen; this train is your scheduled nineteen-thirty-eight making all stops to Union Station then all stops to Aldershot”.

That’s right. We are now ten minutes late and not moving.

But this is the Scheduled 1938 Train.

How comforting.

There is no explanation of the delay.

Here I am sitting upstairs taking a photo of the yet-another-train as it sits in Oshawa GO Station. A disembodied voice has just announced that “The doors are closing”.

And here I am sitting upstairs taking a photo as we glide out of Oshawa GO Station. If this is the scheduled 1938 train, it is already eleven minutes late leaving town.

For each stop along the way we are reminded that this is the scheduled nineteen-thirty-eight, but there is no apology, no explanation of the delay. No acknowledgement that we might be sentient beings with an interest in what happened.

We are sheep, or cattle, being taken somewhere.

We arrive at Union Station seven minutes late, if I have read the timetable correctly.

I push through the crowds who are westbound-train-deprived and from the far edge of the platform take a snapshot for the sake of the time stamp.

I have marked out our return trip in lime-green, to make it look like one of the newly-painted GO train carriages.

Sadly the lime green paint scheme doesn’t make the trains run on schedule.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 the day after my trip I heard on the radio that one Lakeshore West train was stuck between stations for about 50 minutes. It seems that GO hasn’t quite grasped the business of (a) running trains on railway lines and (b) doing business in a snow belt area (since snow and ice regularly disrupts service).

I’m left wondering: If you blame delays on snow and ice for four months of the year, what are your excuses in the remaining eight months?

So, through the new York Concourse opened what - two months ago? The escalator was taken out of service after two weeks and hasn’t had any work done on it since.

How can a two-week old escalator break down?

Who hired the contractor, and why hasn’t the hirer and the hiree been fired yet?

Why should I be caught smiling as the Pan Am Games start next month? Is this the best that Toronto has to offer? Is it too late in life for me to relocate to Peterborough?

Conclusions

My Presto trip on Go Transit cost me $18, within the $20 estimate I was told several weeks ago. It also cost me several hours of my life. When I return to Peterborough (which I will) I shall travel Greyhound. A web-purchased ticket seems to cost about $3 more than Go, but I suspect that the Greyhound Coach is punctual. The trip is shorter (in time) because we don’t have to hang around the GO station in Oshawa. That I have a shorter walk (only to Dundas from College instead of to Front) is immaterial, to my way of thinking, but I suppose that does shave another twice times twenty minutes of my trip.

Next time I will book into a hotel for two nights and spend three full days in Peterborough. Several hotels are clustered around the downtown core, and those that aren’t appear to be on Peterborough Transit System bus routes.

The Holiday Inn is just a short walk from the downtown core, and the Quality and Comfort hotels are on the #7 Lansdowne route. Motel 6 is accesible from Lansdowne East.

My Toronto-thinking suggests that from the Quality Inn one could walk to the intersection of Lansdowne and Parkway and flag whichever of the #5 or #7 arrives first, but given the 4-minute cycle, I suspect that both buses will pass that spot within three minutes of each other!

Peterborough Transit System makes things simple.

Museums

Besides exploring the Lift Lock Visitor Centre I could visit ..

The Peterborough Museum ...

The Art Gallery ...

The Canoe Museum ...

Peterborough City Hall ....

I might even take in a movie at Galaxy Cinemas! Now there’s something.

And the next time I visit a city I will pre-plan my walk around the downtown core!

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416-993-4953 CPRGreaves@gmail.com

Toronto, Wednesday, July 22, 2015 2:40 PM

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