A stroll down verdant cliffs above the English Channel, a ten-minute drive around a headland topped with a twelfth-century castle, a misty amble through the medieval alleyways of a sleepy Auvergne town – I’ve enjoyed some decent commutes.
My current daily trek pretty much props up the pile: A 40-minute drive through suburban blight along 18 kilometres of eyelid-drooping roads. Head north, lurch west, and jolt north again, trapped in the aural hell of Radio WNKR.
I could take the bus, of course. Even Mississauga has a bus service. Door to door, including the walk to the bus stop, I’d be looking at 90 minutes each way. That’s right, 180 minutes a day to travel a total of 36 kilometres.
Average speed: 12 km/h or, in olde English, 7.5 miles an hour. Which is more or less my running pace.
So, forget the bus.
Since this is merely the sixth largest city in Canada, with a smattering of just three quarters of a million people, naturally there is no mainline railway station in Mississauga.
Granted, there is a suburban train to Toronto (the optimistically titled GO train – is “non-eponymous” a word?).
There’s one train an hour. Plus a couple of one-offs at “peak times.”
I’d love to be able to cycle, but there are several reasons why I won’t consider this: winter roads, the survival instinct, and a healthy appreciation for the driving “inconsistencies” of many fellow residents.
Blissful memory flashback: I fondly recall my daily cycling commute in Tilburg, Holland. Here a network of cycle paths, largely independent of the road system, snakes in silence throughout the city.
Southern Ontario is flat like the majority of Holland. So why not here? Real winter only lasts a couple of months these days.
The Greater Toronto Area is finally waking up to how woefully inadequate its transit systems are.
As Steve Munro, Toronto transit activist, notes, “population growth vastly exceeds our plans for providing more and better transportation services, and the public is getting fed up with excuses for what we cannot do. ”
At the Mississauga Summit 2007, transit was at the heart of residents’ concerns. This report from The Toronto Star pointed out that:
“a majority of the Mississauga Summit 2007 focused on how to make transit a viable option for car-dependent Peel Region residents.”
There are even talks about talks about a feasibility study for a light-rail transit link running north-south through Mississauga.
Sadly, should this project along with the rest ever reach completion, I suspect the pull of verdant headlands, downtown cycling networks, and pedestrianized medieval town centres, will have proved all too strong.
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Technorati: misty amble, Radio WNKR, transit sit and rant, Mississauga, Mississauga Summit 2007, Issoire,
Wapentake dude,
After years in London, and having commuted in many big cities, including Leeds (Leeds to Manchester is a killer), Olso offers some respite (though Mrs BB’s intial reports on commuting were 20 years out of date, apparently it was better when she was a child!).
All TO commutes are shite, unless you live is a swish flat downtown and tunnel to work, or thereabouts!
One of the things I have discovered about moving to no man’s land is just how much I have not missed the reduction in the quality of life by having to spend hours on the daily commute! I know this is in the “no shit Sherlock” category but sometimes it takes a change to understand the impact!
Good luck, and think of moving to King City.
Beaverboosh
Toronto isn’t even as bad as Ottawa… I live in a close suburb. Driving time to work downtown? 15 min. top. Taking the bus everyday? One way is about 90 min… I usually live at 7:30 am to be in my classroom at 9:00.
I love Canada but public transportation sucks. Not to mention the waiting time in -20C temperatures…
Try driving in NYC during the holidays. One big parking lot. You can feel the pollution. LOL
Beaverboosh: Yeah, Barnsley-Manchester over Woodhead is no daily picnic either.
No man’s land sounds idyllic. We have one of those town mouse/country mouse marriages. I’m currently “owed” almost 15 years of rural subsistence. Probably have to write most of this off as bad debt though!
Zhu: I thought you all skated to work on that rapid transit ice canal thing. I leave at 7:30 as well most days. Will spare you a thought on chillier days 🙂
Kathy: No thanks – NYC is one of the great walking cities – that way, you can really “take in” the atmosphere 😉