Public transit is more important than people realize.
Sienna Bilancia – Public transportation is a vital part of almost every city globally. Public transportation will never be perfect. There are simple things that go wrong all the time, human error such as forgetting your wallet and traffic.
“There was a situation where the person driving the bus had to stop their route because they realized they weren’t driving with their license. Which is illegal, so they had to shut that bus down for like half an hour,” Sophia Soares, A Laurier student said.
There are some things that can be changed like the convenience and frequency of stops. The main objective of public transit, after reducing carbon emissions by carpooling, is to get people from A to B in a timely manner.
As such, bus stops are set up in popular areas that people can have easy accessibility to where they need to travel. Sometimes, however, the routes the buses take do not always work to that advantage.
“I remember when I was at a co-op on King George Road. I had to go downtown to get another bus just to go all the way. The bus doesn’t go down Fairview all the way to King George, you have to take a bus down to the terminal, transfer over to another bus that goes up King George Road,” Aaron Paperz, a Laurier Brantford student said.
There are stops that get stopped at less than others and it makes the convenience of having such stops less convenient. While buses cannot run non-stop all day, bus drivers need breaks, and it is unreasonable to expect otherwise.
There are times of the day that would benefit from having more frequent stops. In the morning everyone is trying to get somewhere, work or school. When a bus only arrives in 30-minute intervals, the timing of a person’s day can be completely thrown off now starting significantly earlier or running to close to the wire.
When talking about bus arrival times, Paperz said, “come at 15-minute intervals rather than thirty-minute intervals because every single time I get the bus, it comes 15 minutes past the hour. If I miss it, I’m stuck waiting for a half an hour and if I have class within that half an hour, I end up missing part of class. Maybe we would prefer it the bus came in the closer trying makes sense. If I have an eight thirty in the morning class, you can imagine how much of the pain that is to get to.”
“The bus times are unpredictable,” Soares said.
While the buses and the convenience of them is helpful to students, there are other people who also take advantage of having a public transit system and would like to see improvements. As seen in a petition by a Brantford resident on October 27th, 2024.
The petition has been seen by many and has 68 of its needed 100 signatures. Some people do not think twice about public transit but those who use it, are affected on a daily basis if something goes wrong.
Photo contributor: Sienna Bilancia
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