Commuting WTF Thread
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Ah, the commute. The lovely thing that happens two times every day for most of us as we transport ourselves from home to work and vice versa. My choice of commute is by bus, because they stop close to home and close to work and depart every 30-60 minutes and is the cheapest option. Now, I have noticed that traveling by public transport is massive source of confusion for most people, who seem to lose all semblance of common sense once they end up close to anything related to mass transit.
Today there was the following exchange:
: I am going to [town to the north].
: This bus is going to [town to the south].
: Oh, I thought the bus arrived unusually early!Where this woman missed several things: Her bus always goes to bay B. This bus was in bay C. The unusually large amount of people (buses to the south has many commuters, buses to the north have few). And most of all: the fucking signs on the front of the bus and on the side of the bay saying what bus it was and where it was going.
Another common thing people miss is which bus stops at the hospital and which doesn't. 10 minutes after my usual morning bus there is another bus that makes a stop at the hospital. And there are people who get on my bus and then wonder why the bus didn't stop at the hospital.
And then there's the usual commuter
s:- Getting on the bus using the wrong ticket (regional bus with a ticket only valid in town).
- Cutting to the front of the queue when they need to recharge the card.
- Not bothering to sort that in the kiosk next to the bus stop before getting on.
- Putting such a low amount on the card they will have to make another recharge on the way home.
- Renewing a 30-day ticket on the bus. You can prepurchase the new one a few days in advance and it gets activated on first use after the old ticket has expired. Don't need to wait for old one to expire, especially as the card reader explicitly says so! (2 days left, please renew the ticket.)
- Not even going with the bus, just wanted to put money on the card.
- Playing music/videos without using headphones.
- Two people holding a conversation seating themselves several seats apart so they have to speak loudly instead of normal conversation tone.
- Eating strong-smelling foods/snacks.
- Smoking up until the last step before getting on the bus.
- Putting enough perfume on to smell like a chemical spill (and be as pleasant to be next to).
- Trying to carry oversized luggage onto the bus.
- Not automatically removing their bag from the seat next to them when bus is getting full.
- Asking the bus driver for information about other buses and connections.
- No, bus drivers are not a collective hive mind that knows everything about every other bus departing today. Especially not outside of anything related to their own route, due to different bus companies in most cases.
- For extra fun, holding the bus they're not even going with to ask questions about their connection. There's a phone number to call for traffic information asshole, as keeping on asking the driver when he says he doesn't know anything wont make him magically know what you want to know!
- Leaning the backrest back the maximum amount where there's someone sitting behind them.
Just a few things I've noticed in the wonderful world of commuting. Feel free to add your own commute-based
stories and observations. (Or devolve this topic into something unrelated to the OP!)
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About 10 years ago in Warsaw they switched from the doors all opening every stop to requiring people to press a button. This had already been the system in winter to keep the heat inside but now became normal for all buses and trams, most of which also got air-conditioning.
Despite this time, and multiple labels, arrows, flashing lights, etc. minutes of my commute are spent waiting at a stop for passengers to grasp the concept.
Also, it's normal here for teenagers to always stand in the door area, even on empty buses. I've seen them have to get out of the bus and then back on every stop for twenty stops.
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Public transport is a great thing, much better than everyone using their own car. Unfortunately, people are stupid (they can't even use elevators (see some other thread), so forget about transport) and/or disgusting, and I hate crowds.
Luckily, I don't have much to complain about daily commutes. Work starts at 9am, so I leave the house at 9:02 to walk to work and arrive perfectly on time at 9:07. 😝
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I live in the "conurbation" called MEL, Métropole Européenne de Lille, formerly LMCU, Lille Métropole Communauté Urbaine. (No, I'm not prepared to discuss this particular WTF right now.)
It's in the very northernmost part of France, next to [CENSORED] (1), and the metro system is fully automatic. There are no staff at all on the trains, and all the stations have those full-coverage barriers between the platforms and the trains. So the train arrives, lines up its doors with the doors in the barrier, and everything opens. Once in a while, they don't line up, and there are problems as a result, but that's not what I'm going to talk about here.
No, the problem is more simple. The automation allows a shockingly small amount of what transit systems call "headway", the gap between trains. In rush hour, there's a train every minute. (Compare that with the manually-driven parts of the London Underground, which don't manage better than about 4 minutes between trains.)
And of course, occasionally, even during rush hour, some moron gets there ahead of his buddy and sticks his foot in the door to hold the train while buddy-boy gets there. Or he misses the train except that he gets his foot in the platform door. So instead of waiting a minute himself for the next train, he holds up this one for, in some cases, as much as 20-30 seconds so the second moron can get on.
And of course that causes delays to all the following trains because although there's automation, the short headway means that almost any delay to this train will cause a delay to three or four behind it.
(1) A certain miniature country whose name became a watchword for bad language due to a joke in a science fiction comedy series.
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Not commuting by motorcycle during summer.
But other than that:
- Black trains with fixed windows and no airconditioning used during rush hours.
- Said trains having a breakdown in the middle of nowhere, resulting in a several hours standstill, without opening anything.
- Broken toilets on trains, with doors that can't be closed. Broken and full of shit. On previously mentioned black trains.
- People never yield a seat to a cripple, even if they are sitting in the handicap labelled seats, and conductors do not give a hand with getting them the fuck out of the seat. Not that I have any problem directing my general misanthopy at a specific individual to get them to move. Would be nice to at least once not having to tell people to gtfo.
- People in general.
- There actually not being a viable public transport option at all to one of my current gigs. 2 hours of public transport to go a distance I can travel i 50 minutes in my own vehicles? For a pricetag that is pretty much on par with goin with my own vehicles?
- Buses are built to accomodate dwarfs. I rarely fit into the seats, because my knees are invariably pressed into the seat in front. This is even worse than on airplanes. I can rarely stand upp straight in the aisle between seats either. This wouldn't be that strange, if it wasn't for me living in a country full of tall people.
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@topspin said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Public transport is a great thing, much better than everyone using their own car.
/me views the other posts in this thread
Uh huh.
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@lolwhat I thought "caveats apply" was obvious.
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@carnage said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Black trains with fixed windows and no airconditioning
[insert_racial_joke_here]
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It takes me two trains and a bit of a walk to get to work; usually around 2 hours. I could drive it in less… probably… but the only sane route is insane because of the horrible traffic levels (and a nasty tendency for freight vehicles to get blown over in a key bottleneck). The alternate routes are either very long indeed, or go through a truly stupid number of little towns (one at virtually every crossroad) that make getting anywhere an exercise in frustration. I've tried various alternatives, but the train mostly works and keeps my stress level down.
Except now they've changed all the train timetables. Massively. (Different routes, different times.) The changes should eventually make things better — the trains actually go closer to work — but right now they've made things worse. It's like it's pushed one train company into meltdown in the area near work, and that's blocking all the other trains going through the area (including mine) resulting in both horrible unpredictable delays and lots of short-notice cancellations. How the hell are you supposed to work anything out when you get the train you're walking to suddenly ceasing to run? Literally, it's (I'm at work) “on time”, (I'm leaving the office) “three minutes late”
, (I'm half way to the train station) “cancelled”. 
There was a train strike Thursday last week by the conductors on the most affected train company. Apparently it meant that all the other trains in the area were able to run their scheduled service. But it sure didn't make things work better on Friday. (Alas, I couldn't take advantage on the strike day; the other train I take — which hasn't been badly affected by the changes — was messed around with by the strike.)
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It might be a thing specifically for small countries right North of Lille but we last years we have had an explosion of commuter bikes be it normal human only powered, electric assisted and electric powered (the ones that go 45 km/h) bikes.
Many companies have either an bonus plan where bike commutes get a per km bonus or a renting/leasing scheme where you can rent/lease a bike for a discount. Both systems are tax deductibles for the company and low taxed for employees.
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@lolwhat said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@topspin said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Public transport is a great thing, much better than everyone using their own car.
/me views the other posts in this thread
Uh huh.
There's a few reasons for me using bus rather than car. I calculated that the cost of a 30-day bus pass would get me a week at most of commuting by car. And that's with the second highest public transport prices in the country. The second is that the rush hour traffic in the town where I work is horrible and I'm happy to pay to not drive in it, especially as I work in the middle of the city. And the third is that I can use the time on the bus for other stuff, which adds up to about an hour of usable time compared to car. So to me the pros outweigh the cons.
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@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Leaning the backrest back the maximum amount where there's someone sitting behind them.
Your public transit busses have adjustable backrests? That sounds like a recipe for disaster...
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@akko said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Leaning the backrest back the maximum amount where there's someone sitting behind them.
Your public transit busses have adjustable backrests? That sounds like a recipe for disaster...
The buses that goes between towns are the same type as the ones used for long-distance travel, so they have the extra comfortable seats that comes with them. Even if my commute is the shortest they use that kind of bus for here.
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This post is deleted!
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@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@akko said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Leaning the backrest back the maximum amount where there's someone sitting behind them.
Your public transit busses have adjustable backrests? That sounds like a recipe for disaster...
The buses that goes between towns are the same type as the ones used for long-distance travel, so they have the extra comfortable seats that comes with them. Even if my commute is the shortest they use that kind of bus for here.
I see. Whenever I need to go between two different towns I usually take a train (if I need to use public transit that is), so it's possible it's similarly done here and I just haven't noticed it. Still sounds like it could lead to a lot of disagreements between passengers ^^"
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@akko I live in the north, where communications are as they are. There is trains, but because of government cheapness when building new railroad here they didn't fix the shitty railroad between my town and the one where I work so it's about 20km longer(!) than the road, as well as very curvy. Also, the train stations are further from my work than the bus station so there's that too.
There is a train departing at the same time as my bus. As I walk from the bus to my work I usually see the train crossing the road further up ahead. Considering the train only does one stop and don't take as many passengers (mainly people making a train connection) compared to the bus being packed and doing plenty stops as well as doing rounds in the towns rather than straight from station to station. Yeah...
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@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
- Not automatically removing their bag from the seat next to them when bus is getting full.
Back when I used public transport I was guilty of that one. If someone asked I’d remove it, but I wasn’t about to invite someone reeking of smoke to sit next to me.
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@luhmann said in Commuting WTF Thread:
It might be a thing specifically for small countries right North of Lille but we last years we have had an explosion of commuter bikes be it normal human only powered, electric assisted and electric powered (the ones that go 45 km/h) bikes.
Many companies have either an bonus plan where bike commutes get a per km bonus or a renting/leasing scheme where you can rent/lease a bike for a discount. Both systems are tax deductibles for the company and low taxed for employees.Wait! Does that mean I or the company is penalised if I stop riding my bike and walk instead?
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@steve_the_cynic said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Wait!
Hammer Time!
@steve_the_cynic said in Commuting WTF Thread:
if I stop riding my bike
The bonus stuff you get per commute so if you don't ride you don't get it. It's up to the company to perform any checks if they want to.
For the leasing type of stuff there is absolute no official check if the bike is actually used for commuting. Again companies can implement checks if they want too. Ours for example explicitly doesn't intend to.I heard of companies who have a badge at the cycling stall and who only award the bonus if you
at that specific point.
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My commute isn't that bad. One bus, one train; it's a pain if the bus runs late and I miss my train connection, but generally it works pretty well and I get in to work in a bit over an hour. Driving in to work wouldn't be much quicker and the parking would be horrendously expensive. (Driving to the train station would be a reasonable compromise, but would require us to own another car. And me to have a licence.)
However, I do travel after peak hour normally (instead of working 8:30 - 17:00 I work about 9:40 - 18:10). If I have to go in during morning peak hour it costs me at least an extra half hour due to traffic congestion getting out of my suburb. Fortunately, that's pretty rare, but the last time I even tried to go half an hour earlier (so still after peak) I only got to work five minutes earlier than usual.
The one problem with this schedule is that I catch the bus one stop before the local high school, and the usual time I get it is shortly before the start of the school day, so it's usually packed with high school kids who always hog the space around the rear door and make it difficult for people to get on (there's always plenty of space behind the rear door, but from the rear door to the front is packed; you must enter at the front). But I only have to put up with them for a few minutes.
The main disadvantage of using public transport for me is that if I have to work unexpectedly late, the bus connections home start getting rare. Also, you do get some unsavoury characters from time to time on the later evening runs.
Both the bus and train components have improved significantly since I started doing this commute. I would have had several more complaints 10 years ago.
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@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Two people holding a conversation seating themselves several seats apart so they have to speak loudly instead of normal conversation tone.
Worse: two people holding a conversation, sitting next to each other but still speaking loud as fuck for some reason.
Fuck loud people. And slow people. Some people take like 45 seconds to find their goddamn seat on the train for some reason, making everyone else wait because the corridor is just 1 person wide.
My favorite commuting WTF (thankfully not as annoying as the rest) is constantly seeing people asking for directions in the subway tunnels. There's a sign on every intersection to everything else! Just follow the arrows!
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@topspin said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Public transport is a great thing, much better than everyone using their own car.
There are other possibilities by the way. Like smaller vehicles, or car sharing.
Car sharing+GPS+real-time routing algorithms means, in any major city, you should be able to enter your destination in your smartphone and immediately have a car going your way stop in front of you to pick you up.
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@anonymous234 said in Commuting WTF Thread:
There are other possibilities by the way. Like smaller vehicles, or car sharing.
Apart from providing a strange person that you can sit there with and not talk to in an embarrassed fashion, how would car sharing help with the traffic jams?
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@dkf said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@anonymous234 said in Commuting WTF Thread:
There are other possibilities by the way. Like smaller vehicles, or car sharing.
Apart from providing a strange person that you can sit there with and not talk to in an embarrassed fashion, how would car sharing help with the traffic jams?
Cutting traffic my 3/4, if everyone that goes by car does it would help at least a bit with congestion.
But, a lot of people need the car during work hours, so it's not really a viable number.
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And I remembered another WTF that happens from time to time. People who wait until they are standing right in front of the bus driver to go digging through their purse after their bus pass. You had like 10 people ahead of you in the queue and not even started getting your bus pass out?
For bonus points, refuse to move until the bus pass is also securely back in the purse. God forbid moving even slightly into the bus before doing that.
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@anonymous234 said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Two people holding a conversation seating themselves several seats apart so they have to speak loudly instead of normal conversation tone.
Worse: two people holding a conversation, sitting next to each other but still speaking loud as fuck for some reason.
Fuck loud people.
In our dormitory we once had someone from Nigeria. We always knew when he was calling home. We also always joked that he didn't really need the mobile to speak to his relatives.
I also once seriously considered calling the police for what I was quite certain to be a bloody murder in the appartment above me. Turned out that those guys were just really enthusiastic about a soccer game.
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@coldandtired Prague has a similar system with the opposite problem: everybody has to press the button, every single time. I had assholes practically shove me out of the way just so they could press a button I had already pressed.
Yes, the fact that the metro and the buses/trams use a different door opening system is a bit confusing and dumb, but if you take the same public transport every single day then you should probably pick up on how the goddamned door works regardless. For reference:
- Metro:
- If the light is not lit, all doors will open automatically.
- If the light is flashing, somebody had already pressed the button and the door will open when the train arrives at the station. You do not need to physically assault people to press the button yourself.
- If the light is lit, you may proceed with pressing the button.
- Buses/trams:
- If the light is not lit, you should press the button.
- If the light is lit, somebody had already pressed the button so just sit tight and wait for the door to open you moron.
- Metro:
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@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
People who wait until they are standing right in front of the bus driver to go digging through their purse after their bus pass.
You get those idiots all over. They find the concept that you have to pay for coffee at a coffee shop really challenging (hint: it happens every time you go there!) and have problems at newsstands and lots of other places that it's really obvious that you ought to be prepared for handing over money. Bunch of mouth-breathing morons.
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@deadfast said in Commuting WTF Thread:
For reference:
I like how the metro and the buses work in almost opposite ways, almost like consistency was something to be actively resisted…
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@unperverted-vixen said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@atazhaia said in Commuting WTF Thread:
- Not automatically removing their bag from the seat next to them when bus is getting full.
Back when I used public transport I was guilty of that one. If someone asked I’d remove it, but I wasn’t about to invite someone reeking of smoke to sit next to me.
Same, though for me it was partly because of me being tall. The seat placement isn't as bad as it apparently is for @carnage , but still I'd rather avoid moving over unnecessarily.
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@carnage said in Commuting WTF Thread:
For a pricetag that is pretty much on par with goin with my own vehicles?
Actually, here in Burgerstan, it's usually about an eighth to a tenth of what you'd pay in gas.
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Status: The commute worked OK this morning!
Let's see if those shit-kickers fuck it up in the evening or if we'll manage two-for-two…
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@coldandtired said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Despite this time, and multiple labels, arrows, flashing lights, etc. minutes of my commute are spent waiting at a stop for passengers to grasp the concept.
we've got this system in my town for about 10 years now, and it can still be confusing, because our transit company buys assorted collection of buses discounted from other companies, so there's like 6 types, which gradually get "upgraded", and in each type, the buttons look different and are in different places and in some of them it's not "open door" buttons, but "signal stop" buttons, but in others which do have "open door" buttons, drivers sometimes get annoyed when you try and use the "signal stop" button, so not only does that make you unsure which specific one to use (despite the arrows and descriptions, because, well... a "open door button" arrow pointing to a red "stop" button above which there is a yellow "something" button which looks like official "open door" buttons in different bus models), but it also makes you a bit worried to make a mistake.
yes, I'm a programmer and sometimes I have trouble with this.
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I am living the commuter's nightmare: I have to commute across a border. This already complicates a bunch of things:
- My commute takes three hours. 40 minutes of that are a completely unnecessary stop at the border, where the whole train crew changes to a local one just for the final 45 minutes of the ride. I assume this is necessary because the different regulations wouldn't allow a train driver from one country to drive in the other. Or maybe the train companies just want to avoid making their employment contracts more complicated? In any case, it sucks.
- Although there are regularly scheduled trains across this border, every country has its own rebate system and you have to get two different annual train passes to get a discount on every ticket. It doesn't matter which train company the train belongs to, you won't get any discount for the part on the other side of the border. Bonus points: One of the websites will not allow you to specify more than one train pass per person, so it's literally impossible to get a dicount on the full distance if you book through them even if you own both passes.
- As soon as the train crosses the border, the accepted currency in the train restaurant/bar changes. Always make sure to bring the right wallet or you won't be served.
- Long-distance train tickets usually include local transportation here. Of course, that's not the case if you cross a border, so I always have to get in line at the ticket machines at the stations. Yes, even in the city you depart from you cannot travel to the station with your ticket, even though it makes absolutely no sense to treat cross-border tickets differently before you've even crossed the border.
(Bonus points for the people who correctly guess the border from the above description.)
Not to mention that stuff like tax returns, health insurance and the mandatory state pension funds are a nightmare in this scenario. I won't go into details since this is not the topic of this thread, but believe me, it sucks.
In any case, as if the above wasn't already annoying enough, here are a list of completely unnecessary additional annoyances:
- Long-distance trains here have two types of cars: "Quiet" cars in which you're not allowed to talk or use your phone and regular cars. When reserving a seat, you can choose which type of car you want to be in. Guess how often people actually respect the signs. Guess what the train crew does about it. The worst thing I've experienced was a large group of old people who decided to get onto one of the early commuter trains and annoy literally everyone else by talking loudly across the whole car. There was not a single other person there who didn't either have work to do or catch some additional sleep before work (the Monday morning train leaves my place of residence before 6am) and they didn't care at all.
- The two train companies cannot even agree on a common system for checking train passes. I get that they want to check the tickets again after the border and personnel change, but I once almost got fined for travelling without a ticket because I only had the in-app train pass available (scannable QR code), but not the physical card. One company's ticket scanner can scan those QR codes as well while the other's only accepts QR code tickets. Why the hell did they cooperate to make sure the tickets scan on both sides of the border, but completely ignore the train passes that you have to show together with the ticket? Not to mention that this train pass - as mentioned above - didn't even give me any discount on their side of the border.
- The part of the route behind the border frequently gets cancelled (both ways) to make up for a delay. This seems to happen every time the train is more than 20 minutes delayed (which can absolutely happen, considering the complete route of most trains between my residence and my workplace is more than 800km long). What if that train happens to be the last one of the day? Sucks to be you! And guess when your app will inform you that the last train has been cancelled? 1 hour earlier, at the exact time the previous train is already leaving the station.
(Bonus points for everyone who can guess the exact route now.)
Luckily, I'm only a weekend commuter. If I had to deal with this every day, I'd probably have a stroke within the next 3 months.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Commuting WTF Thread:
However, I do travel after peak hour normally (instead of working 8:30 - 17:00 I work about 9:40 - 18:10)
After peak: 9:40
Anyone in Silly Valley understands my "amusement". (Our commute hours are realistically 5-10:30 and 2p-7:30. Friday afternoon commutes can start earlier. Note, that's without any accidents happening)
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@topspin said in Commuting WTF Thread:
Public transport is a great thing, much better than everyone using their own car.
Having done both, I agree, we're both better off if you stay off the roads for the rest of us.
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@boomzilla Since you don't know me, I'm not sure if you're saying my driving sucks or alluding to a general tragedy of the commons situation.
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@dfdub said in Commuting WTF Thread:
(Bonus points for the people who correctly guess the border from the above description.)
North to South Korea.
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@dkf said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@anonymous234 said in Commuting WTF Thread:
There are other possibilities by the way. Like smaller vehicles, or car sharing.
Apart from providing a strange person that you can sit there with and not talk to in an embarrassed fashion, how would car sharing help with the traffic jams?
It's actually very popular around here. They call those people "slugs." One advantage is that the drivers can also use the HOV lanes, which tend to move better than the normal lanes.
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@topspin Maybe he's just saying that if everyone else took public transport, he wouldn't hit any traffic jams
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@timebandit That would be the second option I wrote.
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@blakeyrat said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@dfdub said in Commuting WTF Thread:
(Bonus points for the people who correctly guess the border from the above description.)
North to South Korea.
Your reply actually made me feel a bit better about my commute. No cavity searches on this border, fortunately. There's only a bored customs agent who walks through the train once. I've never seen them actually look at any luggage or do anything else than trying to look menacing.
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All your commuter problems look like fucking cakewalks compared to what we have here in India. Oh boy oh boy. I'll type it out all in a long-ass post tomorrow.
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@topspin said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@boomzilla Since you don't know me, I'm not sure if you're saying my driving sucks or alluding to a general tragedy of the commons situation.
I'm just happy when more people get off the roads so I can more easily drive my car on them.
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@timebandit I knew some variant of this picture was coming. I was expecting the version with people on top too.
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@stillwater With all the nationalist trolling in this forum, I was expecting to see a donkey cart, TBH. When the picture finally finished loading, I was a bit disappointed.
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@stillwater said in Commuting WTF Thread:
@timebandit I knew some variant of this picture was coming. I was expecting the version with people on top too.
Well at least you (correctly) didn't expect people to be creative and come up with something that's not a huge cliche.
