MyGlobalCity

Hometown Transit Employs GPS And Cameras June 24, 2006

After a spate of attacks against bus drivers in recent years, the one-time very quiet town I grew up in has decided to install cameras on board buses for the safety of both drivers and passengers. Local transit is also testing GPS technology to offer citizens the ability to find out when a bus will arrive at their stop - by phoning in or checking a website.

I’ve talked about my town’s sucky bus service. They once had a system to call in and find out when the next bus would arrive. But it was an approximation and ultimately became useless during the winter. (We’re in the snow belt.)

When I was in university here, the transit system used to be one of the few in the world that actually turned a profit. Officials from transit systems in Europe and Asia used to visit to find out how they made a profit here. But that was when there was no Sunday service, no service past 11:45 pm, and no bus passes for the university or college students.

Things have changed since then. Drastically. The city has grown - it’s reputed to be one of the fastest growing in the region, and neither the roads or the bus system are set up to handle the expected population for 2021. Other things have changed at the local university, which in fact has affected the transit system. I’ll try to summarize.

At one time, the ratio of male to female students at the university was 70:30. Now it’s 20-80 in favour of females. (This is relevant. I’ll get to it.) There used to be, at my last count, 11 places that legally served alcohol on campus. (Can you tell this is Canada and not the US? What American college or university has bars on campus? The legal age, at least in my province, is 19.)

Many of the bars closed down permanently, after a couple of sad incidents in residence. For a few years, there was no alcohol on campus, except for grad and faculty lounges, and one high-end restaurant. Undergrad students, however, could not drink. At least not on campus.

At some point in the past 12 years, the transit commission changed their name (dropped the “Commission” part) and allowed university student passes. They also added Sunday service, albeit only until 6 pm. In a city of 120,000 people!! And since that time, they have not made a profit, according to what I’ve been told.

What also happened is that students started going completely off campus to party. When I was there, we’d alternate. And in general, we’d keep the peace and not cause too much trouble, especially on campus. That attitude usually carried over when we went off-campus.

Due to the more recent high female-to-male student ratio, a lot of young men from surrounding towns and villages started coming into town, hoping to catch some of the downtown action. Sexual mores have changed a lot in the past decade, and a lot of female students have been intentionally starting fights just because they can. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve worked at bars in the past, and I’ve never seen things the way they are now.

The result has been a lot of frustrated males - more so than in the past. Out of town males fight with in-town males, and sometimes the latter have taken it out on bus drivers. Then again, one 16 year old girl spit on and repeatedly slapped one male driver. So it’s not just male students that are violent. Sometimes the fights are between passengers, and for the stupidest of reasons. I recently overheard one young man recounting how he got punched in the face because he tried to stop two male students on the bus from fisticuffs. Apparently they were arguing about whether a killer whale was a shark or a dolphin.

It’s incidents like these that have prompted the cameras on board local transit, and no doubt will continue to do so in other cities and towns. Big Brother is already here. Has been, in fact, for quite some time.