Bus strike
The local transit service has been talking about going on strike since March. They promised to give ten day's notice before striking. This morning, the city locked them out 'indefinitely', but were promising to pick up the cab fare of anyone 'stranded at a bus stop'. Of course, you had to read either their Twitter or the news entry on CBC (possibly canadaeast.com as well - everything's behind a paywall now) to find that out before you left the house. It may have been on the cancellation notices that were put up in the bus shelters - I don't think they were at just the plain stops, only the shelters, or at least I didn't see any on signposts on my cab ride in - but I didn't get as far as the bus-stop-with-shelter I usually use to read it. Steve called me to tell me about it before I left the house, and I just called a cab on my own.
I checked their Twitter and there is an entry there mentioning that they're setting up a taxi chit system to subsidize travel costs. Their site just suggests things like walking or biking (well, if you can do either of those things...), carpooling with coworkers (can be hard on people who work shifts), or using ride sharing websites (I - would not want to give my info to a stranger online like that). They're also encouraging employers to consider letting employees work from home, have flexible hours, etc. Yeah, well...I don't have a whole lot of faith in that, honestly. I can't help feeling that the people hit hardest by this will be the ones whose employers pretty much say "yeah, you're replaceable". Happened during the Halifax bus strike. I'm fortunate in that I can either ride in with Steve in the morning or walk.
I'm not sure who to be more annoyed with here, the transit union or the city. I think I'll settle on being evenly annoyed with both.
I checked their Twitter and there is an entry there mentioning that they're setting up a taxi chit system to subsidize travel costs. Their site just suggests things like walking or biking (well, if you can do either of those things...), carpooling with coworkers (can be hard on people who work shifts), or using ride sharing websites (I - would not want to give my info to a stranger online like that). They're also encouraging employers to consider letting employees work from home, have flexible hours, etc. Yeah, well...I don't have a whole lot of faith in that, honestly. I can't help feeling that the people hit hardest by this will be the ones whose employers pretty much say "yeah, you're replaceable". Happened during the Halifax bus strike. I'm fortunate in that I can either ride in with Steve in the morning or walk.
I'm not sure who to be more annoyed with here, the transit union or the city. I think I'll settle on being evenly annoyed with both.