Today is the day that the Olympic Public Transit system was rolled out in Whistler, and what a failure!
The system, which will be in place for February, adds many buses, routes, and stops to the existing public transit network, in the hope of efficiently moving Olympic guests around our fair mountain town.
It would be doing the word 'mild' a disservice if used to describe the kinks in the system today. The whole system was one huge cluster of chaos, a knot of failure and confusion.
BC Transit brought in many extra drivers for the Olympics, and unleashed them on their new routes today. All these new-to-town drivers had were timetables and little, hard to read maps that looked like they were printed on a low-on-ink dot matrix printer from 1992.
They couldn't figure out where to go, where to stop, or where they were supposed to be. They relied on Whistler's seasoned bus-riding locals to guide them through town, telling them where to go, stop, and wait.
Routes were forgotten, people were stranded, and everyone was frustrated, especially the new crop of drivers who were being fed to the wolves as a result of inadequate training.
I guess the whole system is being tested from now until the 11th, and the hope is that by the time the world comes, everyone will have figured out what is going on. They have only a small amount of time to make the whole system run like the engine on my 98 Cavalier!
We'll see if we can pull this off. By the way today went, it doesn't look like it!
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