Wednesday, February 14, 2007

“Did you see that?”

The exercise-gym at the Canandaigua YMCA faces the main drag, so that as you blast away on the treadmills/recumbents/ellipticals you watch Main St.
Canandaigua has bus-service, although it’s not a serious bus-service like Regional Transit in Rochester, where I once worked. This is partly because Ontario County refused to join the area-wide Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority, the gumint entity than ran bus-service in the region.
Regional Transit was the major part of RGRTA. RGRTA ran other small bus-services in neighboring counties, although they could usually get by with only one or two small Ford window-vans.
They were more than stock Econolines, more like airport-parking buses, or rental-car buses.
But they might have a capacity of only 12-15; they weren’t 40-foot transit buses with 50-or-more seats.
Canandaigua has Canandaigua-Area-Transit-Services, CATS, with 20 or more Ford bus-bodies driving dedicated bus-routes throughout the area.
Capacity per bus is 12-15, and some of their mindless-management-minions were laid off from Transit.
So here we are, blasting away in the Y-gym.
A CATS-bus proceeds about 45° into a left-turn (Main St. is four lanes, and he’s in the left lane), and lets out a passenger.
“Whoa!” I said.
“Did you see that?” I said to Linda. “I would have never done such a thing.”
I can imagine the following scenario:
The CATS bus-driver is halfway through his left turn, and Granny charges up, bops him over the head with her umbrella, and angrily demands to know where he’s going.
I used to get this at St. John Fisher College.
I’d pull in, pick up a bunch of students, then proceed across East Ave. toward Pittsford.
“Hey! Where ya goin’?” they’d bellow.
“Pittsford,” I’d say; “just like the sign says.”
“We thought ya were goin’ downtown,” they’d say.
“Anybody at that college read?” I’d ask.
I’d let them off into the snowy cold toward Pittsford with transfers for the next bus downtown, which came in 10-15 minutes.
They’d get out, glance at my sign, and sure enough it said “Pittsford.”
Granny would have bellowed “If you’re turning, I need to get out! I thought ya were going down Main St.” (If a bus is coming, it will take me home.)
The driver thereafter discharged Granny into the middle of the street.
If I had been the driver I would have said “No way! Discharge a passenger into the middle of the street, have you get hit, I get fired, and you drag me to court?”
Absolutely not! I’ll let you out as soon as I complete the turn. It’s not a legal stop, but I ain’t lettin’ you off in the street.”

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