My Personal Experiences with Public Transit
Michaelle provides her personal feelings on public transit, both in Calgary and generally. Ben is an outlier in terms of typical human emotions, so he has chosen to just edit this post.
I strongly believe it is vital for routes on a public transit system to have frequencies of at least 15 minutes for various reasons, one being the obvious: long wait times can cause people to be late for work, potentially resulting in lost wages and termination of employment. This problem can also result when a person needs to make a connection during their commute, either because one bus/train is running late on its way to the connection, or because the schedules require a long wait-time for the connection.
While it might be possible for that person to leave for work earlier in anticipation of such contingencies, it still means the commuter is wasting a lot of time which could be spent more productively, such as getting proper sleep, eating well, and spending time with family. Long commutes and the stress that can arise when connections are required can also reduce their productivity at work, because they become more easily tired and unfocussed.
Furthermore, extreme weather conditions can damage one’s health, such as in the summer when heat waves can lead to exhaustion and heat strokes, and in the winter when a person can suffer from severe frost-bite. Personally, even dressing for cold weather does not help because I have not been able to find gloves and footwear to sufficiently protect me from extreme cold temperatures, due to poor blood circulation. Other people would face similar problems due to other medical conditions, such as Raynaud’s Syndrome.
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