Today I want to share with you my morning trip to town. I decided to take the train and the urban bike as I had a short meeting in town. All in all a disastrous decision.
Train infrastructure has not properly been maintained around town for decades. Facilities are old and as a result, there are too many incidents suffered for those using this transport on a daily basis.
I had a meeting at 11am and it takes 30' from the closest station to my destination so I left the house at 10. Five minutes later I arrived at the statuon, apparently the train had just left, but there are trains every 10 minutes so I just relaxed and waited for the following one. You see, there are screen panels telling you when the next train is arriving and I just realized the following one was 10 minutes late. OK, slight delay, I though, and just waited.
After 10 minutes, the screen started adding more time instead of reducing it, no explanation at all, just some more minutes. The minutes where going down on the screen and after a while they were suddenly increasing. You just have to be patient, information panels may have been programmed 30 years ago and they have slow reaction or some disfunctions. In any case, after some 25 minutes of waiting, the train landed on the quay. Finally!!! I thought.
I had completely forgotten what happens when there is such a big delay, the train was full! I pushed the door button to fet in and there was plenty of people standing up. I was about to just wait for the next train, but considering my previous experience, I decided to just grab the bike and step into the train. The doors closed and I was in!!!
I have to mention, at least the air conditioning was working, and although it was a nice sunny hot day and the train was pack of ppl, the temperature was fine. Then, the next station stop, I had forgotten other people would be willing to get in as I did and more ppl would squeeze in and this is exactly what happened for the next 7 stations, until we reached the first stops in town and more of us started getting out.
Finally, after reaching my destination which was one of the main train stations in town, when getting out, some of the exit doors where not opening and it took a while for the guards to just open a big emergency gate to let people get out quickly not having to stay in line for another 2 or 3 minutes.
I got out to the street, started padeling the bike, and finally reached my destination 30 minutes late. Whil on the bike I thought the amount of lost money through the issues running often and the stress daily users have to suffer. One day after another, this is the life some have to face for years and public administrators just blame one another instead of facing the reality of citizens.
This is one of the reasons I feel so happy when I am in the farm and not in the city, but my scape, does not solve the problem for thousands of daily passengers.