Day 8: Ban strollers on public transportation

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 8: Ban strollers on public transportation

Occasionally you will read a rant on this blog, and today is such a day. One of my pet peeves is strollers on buses. If it were up to me, I would ban them.

While I understand that parents and their children need to get around, during peak hours strollers should not be allowed on a train, bus or streetcar. 

I was on a bus the other day, on my way to the doctor's office, when a woman pushed her stroller onto the bus. The thing was so big it blocked two seating spaces. She didn’t say anything, but she indicated that I and the woman next to me should get up and move. Neither of us gave any indication to do so. Why should we, we had paid for our seats while she had only paid for herself, not for her stroller.

Everyone who came onto the bus after her had to squeeze past her enormous stroller. I secretly hoped that someone would trip and fall over her stroller and sue the TTC. That would teach them a lesson.

Bikes are not allowed on the bus or streetcar, they have to be secured on a contraption in front of the bus.

Why can’t the TTC implement the same rule for strollers?

People who haven’t seen a stroller in a few decades might be surprised in the difference in models between now and then. So, take a look at a stroller 1979 and a stroller of 2019 …

 

People who travel by car and have never taken a bus or streetcar have no idea what a nuisance those things are.

Then there are the kids. Some are way too old to still be in a stroller, others are quite young but have a voice that would stop a train. There was this boy, he couldn’t have been more than a year old with a cellphone, looking at a video. When the mother took it away from him to make a call, he started screaming like he was being murdered. A baby with a cellphone I thought … what is this world coming to?

And believe it or not, it got even worse. In the waiting room of the doctor’s office, I saw a toddler with a tablet. Whatever next … a baby with a laptop!

But back to the annoying strollers. When will the TTC do something about these things? My guess is, we paying passengers, can complain until the cows come home and the TTC will turn a deaf ear. Something will have to happen, to someone who matters, before these damn strollers will be banned on public transportation.