Hooning a TTC Bus

20Jan10

I’ve been itching to get back to regular blogging. And to kick things off in true Angry Chinese Driver fashion that my own mother would approve (only not all), here’s a story about the TTC. Yes, the TTC.

Take a look at the pic below…what do you see?

If you said “Why, I see a TTC bus travelling on a private road at 50mph!”, then you either have very powerful deductive skills, or you’re me.

Indeed, I was playing around with my BlackBerry’s horrible GPS and watching it track my speed and direction of travel, while sitting on the 196 bus.

Yorkies who commute will be familiar with the new road that the TTC built to connect Murray Ross Pkwy to Dufferin St, a straight 2km-ish stretch accessible only by TTC vehicles. It was constructed to make the 196 a true “express” Downsview-York U bus, instead of the “express” bus constantly stuck in Keele St and Sheppard Ave traffic, thereby saving anywhere from 10-20 minutes of the trip.

And boy, do some drivers put the “press” in “express”! As in, press the gas pedal and make that ten-tonne baby sing. I don’t even care the TTC spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars paving this road until the subway comes, seeing a bus driver hoon the 196 at over 80km/h in a 60km/h-zone more than makes up for it! I’ve always argued that this stretch could be used as a sweet yet illegal drag strip, but I never thought about getting bus drivers to race each other.

So the next time you take a ride on the Rocket, slip your driver a twenty and watch him light up the tires. Besides, he’s unionized, he can do whatever he wants without retribution!

Mom, I want to be a bus driver. Angry Chinese Bus Driver. (Not like this.)

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