Mysteries Of The Toronto Bus Terminal: WTF?

As we've had occasion to discuss in this space before, I take the bus. Since I live in Toronto, this means I spend a certain amount of time in the Toronto bus terminal, downtown at Bay and Dundas. Since I often take an early morning bus, much of that time is spent in the predawn light and corresponding predawn mood one tends to get into on dark mornings, when you look around and wonder: what is this grim world, and how did it get to be this way?

I moved to Toronto in 2005, and the bus terminal seemed to me a fairly typical urban bus station -- except for the absurdity that you have to line up for the bus outside, while even a crowded city like New York manages a heated indoor line-up system. You could see how the building used to be cool, and even elegant: right in the middle, a now-blocked off double staircase leads to a second floor with stained glass decoration and so on. And you could see how over time, cheap additions and fixes had made it crappy-looking.

Still, it was a completely serviceable bus terminal. A set of kindly and knowledgable middle-aged people worked the ticket counters, and I always appreciated that they all sold tickets for both Greyhound and Coach Canada, reducing overall line-up times. There was a weird, dark bar in the bottom floor -- not a place I'd ever considered going, given nearby attractive alternatives, but you know -- it was always nice to know that if you got stranded by a snowstorm, at least you'd have TV and drinks. The station is attached by underground pathway -- with shops and coffee -- to the subway, and there were up escalators from coffee to bus in the morning and down escalators from bus to subway at night.

Bizarrely, the first step in the decline of the bus station was Greyhound's introduction of a "facility fee" that you had to pay whenever you bought a ticket at the counter instead of online. At first it was a dollar, and I thought to myself, "Good, this place could use some improvement." One set of doors was blocked off, and the other two were made automatic and more accessible, which seemed like a step forward.

But from then on it's been a descent into utter dysfunction. The automatic doors stopped working soon after, and never really got fixed. The reasonable waiting area was divided into a normal waiting area (now small and cramped) and a special waiting area (for certain special buses). You'd think the bus station would be the last place you'd have to deal with the insane drive toward the "first-classification" of society -- but you'd be wrong!

The "facility fee" was increased -- to two dollars. And then the set of kindly and knowledgable middle-aged people disappeared overnight, replaced with young, untrained people who don't know the rules for using flex-packs, and, of course, now the Greyhound and Coach Canada lines are separate. Since Coach Canada attracts like one-tenth the customers, this means the Greyhound lines are twice as long while the Coach Canada ticket sellers are just sitting there.

Years and years ago -- I can't even tell you how many, it's been such a long time -- the up escalator broke. For years, I thought, "Why don't they at least flip the down escalator to up, so people can get their bags up to the bus?" And for years, I thought, "how is it even possible that an escalator can just stay broken for such a long time"? Then, about a year ago, the down escalator broke as well. They're both still broken. And, of course, the bar in the bottom floor is now gone and boarded up.

This is the biggest city in a rich modern country. And we can't keep the bus terminal functioning? WTF? What are the forces in question? Is it public-private squabbling over who should pay? Is it Greyhound dysfunction? Is it the city that doesn't want to pay? Toronto just built this super glam terminus for the Union Pearson express, they whole of Union Station is getting a make over -- and we can't keep the bus terminal functioning?

I've heard it darkly suggested that the city doesn't want a bus terminal at Bay and Dundas -- preferring instead a transit hub somewhere way out of the way. If you take the bus like I do, you'll know why that is a sinister, offensive, and elitist idea. It's one thing to hop on a bus downtown. It's a whole other thing entirely to take public transit out to some insane "transit hub," wait on some freezing platform in the middle of nowhere, just to get on another bus to get to where you're going. The fact that it's prime real estate is what makes it a good location for a bus terminal.

If there are these kinds of forces in play, it's hard not to suspect that they have something to do with the fact that poor people tend to take the bus, and with the way that homeless people tend to gather around the station to ask for money from people. It's another step on the steady march of disenfranchising poor people by getting them out of the way so the elite, professional, and managerial classes don't have to deal with them. Horrible.

The city is constantly wringing its hands about how to get people to drive less and take public transit more. Just today a major plan was announced in response to the massive increase in drive times expected to happen in the next decade or so, because of all the traffic.

And in the face of all this, we can't fix a couple of escalators? It's insane.