Traffic Report

Have been commuting for almost a week now. Tried several things.

Mon going to work: Subway -> YRT
Mon going home: YRT -> TTC bus
Tue going to work: TTC Bus -> YRT
Tue going home: Viva -> Subway
Wed going to work: TTC Bus -> Bike
Wed going home: Bike -> TTC Bus
Thur going to work: Car
Thur going home: N/A (not going home right after work)

By far, the longest route (time -wise) is definitely Mon going home. Mostly bcos of stupid YRT. If you miss one, you have to wait for a long time and are quite screwed. That's another reason to cycle the YRT part instead of TTC part so that I don't have to watch the clock and be anxious about getting off work at a certain time. But at the same time, the TTC part of the bus ride is a lot slower due to the numerous stops and the amount of ppl using the service. Sigh.

Other than driving, most of the commuting method takes about just under 2 hours. That means almost 4 hours per day. That is quite a lot. Needless to say, I fish on the bus/subway all the time. Less so when my bike is on the bus (those bike rack things in front of TTC) bcos I am always worried that my bike is going to fall off, especially with the super bumpy and potty road.

On the other hand, it took me <30min to drive to work this morning. Now I understand y ppl drives all the time. Definitely a big time-saver. Yes, you can't sleep when u are driving but I can sleep an extra hour before getting up and still get to work earlier. But then, the drive home is probably going to take a lot longer since the DVP near York Mill is always always jammed for no reason. Well... i'm not going to try that today cos I'm not going home after work (that's y I drove in the first place).

I think I'll stick with my TTC + Bike method for the most part. I'll see how long I can last before I have a breakdown and start driving all the time.

Another thing to note is that I realized that Metropass is actually more expensive than YRT pass. Weird, considering the fact that TTC single fare is lower than YRT single fare. Makes no sense to me at all.

Metropass: $109
TTC single fare: $2.75
TTC 10 Tokens: $22.5

So, if I get 10 tokens at a time all the time, then one single fare would be $2.25. To be able to break even with Metropass, I would need to take TTC $109/$2.25 = 48.444444 times a month, which is over 24 days a month. Assuming that there's no public holiday that month and with 4 months a week and I'm not taking any day off. I only have about 20 work days. Even with 5 weeks a month, I'll have 25 work days which means that I can _barely_ break even. So, if I don't take ttc other than work, it's hardly worthwhile to buy the pass.

Of course, with the pass, you can jump off the bus and buy a coffee and then hop back on the next bus. More flexible. And you can take ttc on the weekends, too. But still, the incentive to get a pass isn't that high.

But then I found out that JJ can get Metropass from his workplace for $96. Must be one of those batch buying discount thing. Then I only need just over 21 work days to break even. + the tax credit. That's enough motivation for me. Of course, my workplace does not have such offer since NO ONE in my office takes transit (the earth poisoning bastards!). You also have the option to get Metropass at $100 if you subscribe for a year. But then, I don't want to commit myself to one whole year of metropass in case I change jobs and I don't need to take transit no more (yea... as if it's going to happen...I've been talking about job changes for over a year now...). In any case, I really don't want to be bounded for a year, not with stupid TTC.

I think I'll take the $96 metropass. One gd reason to get the pass is that once I have it, I feel like I need to use it as much as possible to make it worthwhile. That in turn means that the chance of my breaking down and drive all the time is minimized.

But seriously, who would buy the $109 metropass???

I know, I'm 計埋d婆 la 數，but with the need to pay mortgage, (which is more than double of what I used to pay for rent), I have to be more careful with my money...