cheeky Metrolinx

My train didn't show up this morning.

I've never experienced a rail system like the one operating in Toronto. How do trains just fail to show up? When I got to the station, there was a train standing at the platform. I figured that it had to be my train, and hustled through the underground walkway to get to there before it left. But it was gone by the time I alighted the stairs and everyone was still standing 'round.

Baffled, I asked what was happening. Apparently that train had been one that comes online at the next station, and had been parked ready to enter service. But then the announcement came that our train was still in a distant city and would be so late that the next scheduled train would actually get in before ours. For thirty minutes we waited in the blowing snow.

Then the cheeky buggers had the nerve to sweep the train checking for proof of payment. The fellow next to me, it turned out, didn't have proof with him. He and the conductor and I discussed the situation and it seems that there have been constant problems with cards in the past few weeks. When I mentioned that I'd been double (and in one case triple billed) and told the conductor that I wasn't prepared to connect the card to my credit card, she told me that she wouldn't recommend it.

When I asked how long they had been ironing out the bugs this shaky system, she told me that it had been live for thirteen months already.

This evening on the way home I overheard a woman saying that her credit card, which she'd set up for automatic top-ups of her prestocard's balance, had been charged three times in one day. Clearly the system's not close to prime time.