TTC Fare Hike...yet again

As a Torontonian, it is disturbing to see the continuous fare hikes at TTC. Year after year, the fare is increased to compensate for the large deficits they incur. As much as the TTC would like to blame this on the government and their lack of financial support, this certainly isn't the sole cause of the situation.

This year, the TTC proposed a new fare beginning in January, 2010. Hearing this news, many riders began to, what the TTC called, "hoarding" tokens. At one point, the TTC representative explained that by hoarding tokens, it would potentially cost them $5 million in revenue. Unforunately, he did not explain the reasons as to why. On other blog sites, people are speculating that he was referring to future revenues (after the fare increase).

The funny thing is, even though there is a potential shortfall of $5 million in future revenue, he did not consider the extra revenue that is going into the TTC EVERY SINGLE DAY since the hoarding began. If riders are purchasing as much as the TTC claims, there should be a sudden influx of revenue every day. This extra money can be used for investments, dump it into a short-term money market fund and make some extra interests off of it.

There are a few things I don't understand:

1. The TTC had to issue temporary tickets as a result of the severe token hoarding - yet they have a few control measures in place. Once they are sold out, there is usually a sign that says "Tokens sold out". Second, there is also a limit on how many you can buy each time. Lastly, there is a certain number of tokens going back into circulation every day.

The worst thing is, after like 3 days of issuing the tickets, they were all sold out! With tickets, it's not a matter of taking them out of the fare box and putting it back into circulation. Once they've been used, you can't recycle them for sale.

2. They claim the Metropass was giving riders "too good of a deal", so they have to adjust the price on that too. Firstly, there is no longer free parking offered on the Metropass. And second, in a normal 4-week month, you have to make at least 8 additional trips to break-even (A token fare will be $2.50, and the cost of the new pass will be $121. So to break-even, you at least have to make 48 trips on the pass). Think about it, 8 extra trips in a month? How is that a good deal?

One of their concerns is that the Metropass is now transferrable, and that is why they're losing a lot of money. To be honest, if I bought a Metropass to go to work, chances are I won't be able to let someone else use that pass for the 10 hours I'm at work.

They're putting an 11% increase on the cost of the pass, while most of the population will be stuck with a salary freeze or a very very minimal increase in salary. While their workers threatened to halt all operations if they did not receive their salary increase. How is that fair to the riders?

It's unfortunate because they basically know they are a monopoly in the city. There is not other public transportation system to compete with. The saddest thing is we call ourselves a "world-class city", and yet if anyone from any other world-class city was to come here, they would scoff at our dilapidated system, the mostly rude transit operators who aren't helpful with directions, and the little tokens we still use.

Come on TTC, grow up already.

*Visit ttcrider.ca to find out what you can do. It's a small glimmer of hope, but at least it's a start.

**Funny, when I was editing this post I just noticed a post from April 2008 where the TTC was threatening us with a strike. *sigh*

Beautiful SXM

I just recently came back from a week vacation in Sint Maarten/ St.Martin, and boy, what a beautiful country it is. We stayed on the Dutch side at a place called the Pelican Resort. It's conveniently located near Simpson Bay with a wide array of restaurants, cafes, and even casinos.
We flew on Air Transat, a flight that left bright and early at 6:20am in the morning. We left home around 3:45am, it sounds early I know, but the excitement kept me up most of the time anyway. I was surprised there breakfast was included in-flight, especially with all the cost cutting these days. Had I known, I also wouldn't have spent the $3.75 on a cream cheese bagel.

In any event, we got on the flight and I fell asleep shortly after. By the time I woke up we were close to Sint Maarten and the flight was preparing to land. Of course I was all perky by then waiting to see our plane fly over the heads of the swimmers on Maho beach.

We arrived at SXM around 12pm. My wonderful man got us a rental car (a little white Daihatsu) and we were on our merry way to the resort. After checking in and dropping off our bags, we drove over to Philipsburgh and checked our some jewelery stores. By that time it was late in the afternoon so we stopped at Get Wet Beach Bar and grabbed a poutine and some beers. Beer prices were awesome in SXM...see below:

We returned to the resort shortly after and grabbed a Reine pizza from the on-site bakery as dinner. All the eating and beer drinking turned me into bed pretty quickly thereafter.

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at the same bakery, called Au Pain de Sucre. This place is a bakery/ cafe in the morning and in the evening a young French guy turns it into a pizzeria. We walked down at the marina to enjoy the scene and just spent the day lulling around the beach side. Later on, we went down to the Bucaneer beach bar by Kim Sha beach (another beach near the resort, within walking distance) and had a couple of shooters and ribs. It was a relaxing kind of day, and we picked up some groceries from Le Grand Marche to cook dinner.

Monday morning we picked up some baguette and croissants from the bakery for breakfast. We tried out this peach jam from France and it was amazing! I've never had a jam that contained more than 50% fruit in it. :)

Later in the day we drove over to the capital on the French side - Marigot. The architecture was distinctly different from the Dutch side and full of vibrant colours. We stopped at the docks to take some pictures of Fort Louis and ventured around town on foot. During our adventure, we came across a little herb/ gardening store called Au Comptoir du Jardin. I loved the little boutiquey feel of the store, and the store owners were extremely generous. They clearly explained each and every item to us with interesting stories. Look at all the goodies I scored!

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary that night at a restaurant called The Boat House, which served wonderful grilled seafood at reasonable prices.

On the following day we headed over to the beach early in the morning and enjoyed the beautiful sea. After a couple of hours at the beach (and about 10 mosquito bites later), we drove over to the buttefly farm and were surrounded by butterflies from around the world. I was really freaked out at first but the guide gave a wonderful explanation and calmed my fears. We drove around town for the day and visited our favourite place (okay, MY favourite place) Le Grand Marche again to prep for another delicious spaghetti dinner.

On Wednesday morning we had our giant papaya for breakfast. We lazied around the suite for a bit and finally got around to go out. My boyfriend took me to Grand Case for lolos (something I had been desiring before we even left for the trip), and we had so much fun! It was one of the best places to eat (in terms of food AND price) and they let us bum around long after we were done eating.

We walked around the beach some more and collected sand, and we drove over to Orient beach. It was one of the busiest beaches in SXM but it was such a looooooooooong stretch of beach the amount of people didn't bother me at all. We also spent a good part of the day being lost around the island (I got so confused with the turnabouts...), but we eventually found our way home.

On Thursday, we had more baguette and cheese for breakfast, and made some omlettes with more cheese. My boyfriend then took me to Philipsburgh and bought me some "shinies" (I love you hunny!), and we got a couple of freebies from the tourism brochures. We ate some more at Get Wet beach bar (and yes, I was drunk once again) and hit the beach again when we returned to the resort. For dinner we cooked some Korean vermicelli and instant noodles, and finished off the papaya for dessert.

On the last day we just chilled again. We had some more omlettes and cheese for breakfast, and then we went back to Margiot and bought more French goodies from the gardening store. Because it was Good Friday pretty much everything was closed, so we just hit the resort beach some more and gathered our thoughts before heading home on the following day.

I love this island, I really do. The people are nice, there's a lot of beaches, the weather wasn't overly humid either. I really look forward to going back one day!