Commute News

Have been quite consistently going to work by public transit + cycling about 3-4 days a week. Have to drive sometimes bcos I have other things to do after work or I have to travel between the old and the new office. I'm glad that I didn't buy any transit passes yet cos then it would be complete waste of money.

Also, on my cycling days, I have been very consistently cycling all the way home and that save me another token right there. Pretty please about that. Together with the time and frustration that are saves from cycling, it's totally worth it.

Unfortunately, with winter fast approaching and that it's raining quite often, I have to start thinking about what I should do during winter. Last week, I tried to do transit all the way both ways (it was a yucky rainy day) and oh my goodness, took me over 2 hours each way.

There're quite a few ways to do the transit. I was trying to be cheap and lazy last time. Cheap in the sense that I found this TTC bus that would go up all the way to where my office is. Even though I have to pay another token as I travelled into York Region but token is cheaper than YRT ticket. So that's the cheap part. The lazy part is that the bus has a stop pretty much right in front of the office. Minimal walking involved, especially on a rainy day. I hate it when my shoes and socks get wet.

But in order to be cheap and lazy, I have to pay heavily on time. As I said, 2+ hours per way, a total of 4+ hours. I have to say, it exceeds of my limit. I can't really justify spending so much time commuting everyday. TTC has failed me.

And it's not like I could sleep on the train/bus to compensate for my lack of sleep due to commuting. In order to do that route, I have to either walk->subway->subway->subway->bus or walk->subway->bus->bus. Regardless which one I do, the slowest bottleneck is the last bus leg, it has to wee through all the local traffic and loop all over the place and eventually brings me to my office. I can only see it getting worse when it starts to snow. Anyway, this many change of transit pretty much prevent me to have any kind of quality sleeping.

There's another way to do the transit thing. It's the opposite of cheap and lazy. Basically, I have to go all the way up to Finch and then go Viva and then walk half a city block to go to my office. Great. Not that keen on walking in the winter, especially not half a city block. I'm not exaggerating when I say half a city block. The stupid office is actually right in the middle between Hwy 7 and 16. Retarded. I suppose I can take the north-south bus along the street from Hwy 7 but with the YRT quality service, unless u time it right, you might as well just walk.

I supposed it's easier to time the north-south bus on the way home cos I can get out of the office at a relatively predictable time but it's the walk up north that's the killer cos it's uphill walking.

If it's anything more than or even close to 2 hours per way, it's pretty much out of the question. It only takes me less 1.5hours to do the cycle->bus->cycle route. And it acutally only took me 1hr25min cycling all the way home today, even with the wind blowly against me. Anyhow, I'm going to try that route tmr (raining again tmr) and see what happens.

I might end up saying, "Screw this. I am going to drive everyday."