@ottaross@Dianora@AwattoAnalog For a model of this, Australia has phased out payphones but our primary network operator is still required to keep some number of them for universal access.
They're free for standard calls (eg home VOIP, mobiles, and any residual landlines) within Australia, you only pay for international and toll calls. They also apparently do a free Wi-Fi service if you're near one, but I don't know how that works.
My #Ottawa#OCtranspo commute this morning:
Climb over the mountain of dumped snow from road plows to get to bus stop. (Downside of plowing sidewalks first).
Then waited 40 minutes for the 2 shuttle bus that is "temporarily" replacing the Trillium line train that used to run every 5 minutes.
Overall took well over an hour to travel 5km by #PublicTransit within the urban core. Before the snow came it took 20 minutes to commute by bike or 1 hour to walk. But the route isn't winter maintained.
Luckily I planned to get to campus an hour before class. So I wasn't late. Unfortunately the delays meant I didn't have time for lunch before my 3-hour class or time to review my lesson plan.
#ottawa folks: is the bus buddy app useful? this afternoon it seems to be generating random times for the next arrival at my stop. even buses marked 'gps' don't appear.
Omg omg the construction fences have been removed!
Combine that with the test trains, this means the train will be done soon? I'm so excited, I love the train 🚂😍
I’m still made about a #ottbike trip I made the other day.
I went out of my way to take protected infra. As soon as I left it, I turned left onto Gladestone in a protected bike box, but in front on a #OCTranspo bus.
Light turns green, and I go. The bus starts to pass me (this is fine!) but my thought was “wow, that’s close”.
Immediately the bus pulls to the right as he’s not even half way past me.
The stop he was going for was less than 2 bus lengths away so I had to brake hard as he quickly trapped me against the curb and the last 1/3 of the bus.
I backed up, went up to the front of the bus which was now stopped at the right light, shook my head at the jerk driver for asshole behavior, pulled in front of him and escaped as soon as the light turned green.
Why did he do this? I was in front of him for like 30 seconds before the light turned green. If he stayed behind me he would have made it to his stop with ~6 people like 4 seconds later. Which he couldn’t even leave because the light turned red because he had to stop anyways.
Endangering my life for shits and giggles.
If I had been in a car he never would have passed me. If he HAD passed a car and immediately forced them to jam on their brakes as he cut them off there would have been horns. 🤬
“If the system works, people will use it,” [Raaymakers] said.
Yeah, and that's the rub, bub. It's not. I won't, not unless I have zero choice and no time limit on where I'm trying to get my butt to. I can't drive, so I've been Mr. Bus my entire life in this city. Now I take Uber to appointments because I can't risk OC.
Can you believe it, the O-Train used to make it all the way from Tunney's Pasture to Blair in less than 24 minutes..?! I had to re-watch the video to make sure there were no long missing parts because the video is so short and I was doubting my memory. The skip at 17:17 is about 2-3 seconds long at the most and is from my phone camera splitting the video file into 2 pieces.
The horrific metal squealing noise at 7:35 and 8:58 apparently is not supposed to happen and was an indicator of excessive wearing on the rails that was causing damage. Currently they go much slower at this section. This was also before they started running shorter trains during so called 'low' periods..
This is an old video from June 2022.. Back when the train was fast..
Shot in 4k60p with the Pixel 7 pro (A horrible phone do not buy pixel phones)
The ticking noise is my Radiacode 101 pocket gamma spectrometer & radiation dosimeter.
@grivettcarnac well considering the amount of time I save by not needing to work extra to pay for a car and associated insurance and depreciation costs.. I'd say oc-transpo as a whole is a significant reduction in total time loss, even with the issues