If you've ever been to Chateauguay, you'll almost certainly know about the transit service here. Most buses are usually filled to capacity during off peak times, and people are left to wait for hours at bus shelters while their bus passes by them by skipping their stops during busy periods.

And everyone by now is used to Murphy's law, if you arrive late to the stop, the bus had already passed early, and if you arrive early to the stop, then your bus will be 20 minutes late.

Most of the time it's the Mercier Bridge to blame, because it just takes one broken down vehicle in either direction to compeltely halt all transit service out here. CITSO isn't able to control that unfortunately, but they have done one thing right. (continue...)

There are now increased departures that are sandwiched inbetween the departures that are generally over crowded. Unfortunately, CITSO had decided not to use full sized vehicles for these extra departures, and has gone in favour of mini-buses. While this may work in theory, they should have thought through this a little more, and realized that many of the regular departures run late, and somtimes not at all. And this is exactly what happened to me a few weeks back.

Our regular 5:30pm departure never came to our stop, but the new departure that runs 15 mintue later did arrive, albeit late, and it was a minibus. Now, picture this in your mind, a standard sized bus didn't show up, and the new departure arrived 15 minutes late, which means that people had already been waiting half an hour for a bus, and they are presented with a bus that will carry 20 passengers seated, and 25 passengers in total. The bus arrived at our stop, and we were preparing to board, however, the problem here was that there were already 12 people standing, and in the stairway as well. We had already waited 30 minutes for a bus, and we asked the driver and he said another one would come in about 15 minutes, and we were not going to wait another 30 minutes (15 minutes = 30 minutes), so we climbed onboard. Cramped, but we got there fast enough.

One thing did happen however, a traffic light near Dollard wasn't functioning, and the red lights were flashing, we stopped and then started up again, but someone wasn't paying any attention and drove right through the intersection without looking. Our driver slammed on his brakes, and since there were no standee windows, or window above the driver, I was not able to see what was coming ahead, so when our driver slammed on the brakes to avoid the collision I went flying into the dashboard near the windshield. Thankfully the windshield was small enough that I would not have fit through. But I have plenty of bruises to show for that incident.

I dented the farebox with my thigh, and then my head slid right near the ceiling just missing a possible concussion and then my arm and stomache landed slumped over the dashboard. I wasn't really hurt or anything, but all I remembered then was the gasping of the people and the driver asking me if I was alright, and then I remember getting back up, and saying everything was fine, and he continued on through the intersection, and right at that moment, someone on a bike drove right infront of us, but this time I was holding on tight to whatever I could grasp (Since these buses were never meant for standees to begin with!).

We arrived at Angrignon, and everything else was fine after that; with the exception of the angry mob of about 100 people waiting for their bus that never showed up 30 minutes prior, and all they see is our bus pulling up to pick up all those people! He was able to pick up about 35 or so people, and then left, but not before some people insisted on getting onboard, which delayed things even further.

We waited and watched, and 10 minutes later, two buses arrived, an LFS and a Coach to pick up the remaining people.

And that was my mini-bus adventure.