How fantastic it would be...
Interesting how a Carola Vyhnak the Urban Affairs Reporter manages to distort something this badly. And it is equally interesting how almost all readers fall for it without ever bothering to check facts. But of course, this is the intention. One cannot bore the reader!
The fact that out of the few dozen houses making up the Community affected by the proposed route change 75 residents signed the petition should mean something. For the journalist, this has no bearing because that would establish a truer point of reference. That Mrs. Cassidy does not stand alone, and the majority of the households supports her, is completely hidden in the article. The simple fact is that the majority of the households opposes the bus coming into the particular loop being disputed. Why is this not mentioned?
That this Route 222 business is an experiment (gone wrong but never admitted) by the Durham Transit Commission because there is no other municipality in the GTA where regular buses actually enter the residential subdivisions does not seem to get noticed here. The bus was actually NOT supposed to be routed into the narrow loop that it runs on now. It was supposed to avoid this loop exactly because of the narrow streets and the close proximity of the houses to the curb. Also, there is no mention of the fact that in this particular (shallow-lot) subdivision the houses are set back much less from the street than normal bringing, who cares? The proposed new route (which was the originally planned one) would make those few people who actually use the service to walk at most 400 metres. The inconvenience would be that the riders would not be able to sit on their porches or stand behind their front doors waiting for the bus to stop in front of their houses but they would have to walk to the bus stop and wait a little, just like millions of other commuters do even in the great Canadian winter. I am certain Mrs. Cassidy mentioned these to the reporter who carefully avoided mentioning them in the article. But there is plenty else.
Between 5:30 and 8:00 nobody gets on or off the bus in the morning but the buses keep roaring down the narrow back street of the subdivision generating a noise level way above the allowable noise level set by municipal bylaw (even acknowledged as an issue by Durham Transit). The average 34 riders per hour that Phil Meagher is quoted as saying are not from this subdivision. The bus actually stops on average 6 times a day loading and unloading the impressive amount of 1 passenger per stop (less in the Summer as the 2 students of the loop actually using the bus are not going to school) in the loop that the petition proposes to cut from the bus route. These again were completely missed by the careful journalist. Why bother about such trivial things as accuracy or reflection of truth?
That the bus has barely missed two residents and a number of cars over the past couple of weeks, again, must be ignored according to the standards set by Carola Vyhnak. Newspapers are not supposed to be about informing people any longer according to this standard. They are about advertisements and anything reporters are willing to write and publish to make people buy and read the paper so the corporations keep paying for the ads. Simple as that.
Public transit should serve as much of the community as possible. As there are only a handful using the extension of Route 222, and at most would have to walk 400 metres to the nearest stop, I strongly believe there is better use of taxpayer money. There are areas of Durham region where the buses do not come within a kilometre of houses. I find my tax dollars better spent on bringing public transit to those less fortunate areas. Or perhaps add frequency to service to more populated areas of the region. At least upgrade the buses to make them to run quietly. None of us wants to stop bus service. We would want to promote more sense in the routing of the service.
How fantastic it would be if journalists who have the responsibility to inform the public did what they are supposed to be doing: not bring half truths, manipulated half quotations, and misrepresentations to their readers. And how fantastic it would be if the reader were not so eager to condemn someone who is willing to stand up to represent her community opposite a transit authority that shattered the piece and quiet of a community without any consultation whatsoever. How fantastic it would be...
