Italy gave us slow food. Then came California with slow growth. Now it’s Toronto’s turn: welcome to slow transit.

Forget about the TTC as a way to get around the city quickly and efficiently. That’s so 20th century. Banish from your mind all thought of arriving on time. Punctuality is for school kids. Rushing everywhere is not part of the examined life, which we all know is the only one worth living.

Thanks to the TTC, transit is a reminder that even though life is short, it can feel long, very long. On the TTC, time stands as still as a streetcar stuck in traffic or a subway halted by a mechanical breakdown.

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How better to get in touch with our innermost selves than by being crammed into an overcrowded TTC vehicle with countless other passengers, sitting or standing, all communing with their deepest thoughts and travelling far, far away in mind if not body? Sharing that special bond of intimacy with an army of total strangers is so much more meaningful and, ultimately, rewarding and life-enhancing than the daily banality of getting to work and back. Anyone can do that; that’s what congestion’s all about. Today’s enlightened TTC passenger has more elevated concerns, concerns that force them to slow down, take a deep breath and listen to the silence within.

For the first time since the 1970s, the TTC is once again the Better Way.

Certainly, TTC staff has embraced the commission’s new spirit. They drive through the downtown core at a pace so leisurely that passengers can happily lose track of the hustle and bustle that confront them at every turn. Streetcar operators seem to have a special affinity for slow transit; they crawl along city streets blissfully ignoring pushy pedestrians, crazed cyclists, demonic drivers and doughnut-eating paid-duty cops standing in their way.

Without doubt, the new Bombardier LRTs are their preferred vehicle. Big and cumbersome, they bring a new level of slowness to the system. Just opening and closing the doors — all six of them — whether or not passengers are getting on or off takes so long it is impossible to be in a rush. Before long, destination becomes irrelevant. Arriving hardly matters anymore; it’s all about what happens on the way. As riding the TTC makes clear, life is a journey, even if it’s one that goes nowhere.

That’s why the most satisfying streetcar routes are those that have their own rights-of-way, quiet corridors where congestion has been banished along with the rest of the city. Sitting or standing, inching along or not, our minds are free to wander where they will, regardless of where the TTC isn’t taking them.

And let’s not overlook the huge contribution made by the stops that dot Toronto streets, some of which come with glass-enclosed shelters. Waiting for the streetcar or bus to arrive, we have a chance to spend quality time with neighbours and make new friends. It can be so pleasant we sometimes find ourselves wishing the streetcar, the bus, would never come. And sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

Mostly, though, the TTC is experienced as an absence, a black hole of sorts; it is up to each one of us to use our imagination and creativity to fill the void. Those who rely on fast and convenient transit are condemned to lives of anger and frustration. Then again, these days fewer of them are using the TTC. They take their outrage behind the wheel of a car.

The TTC will always be a presence on the urban landscape, if one that’s elusive, hard to catch and occasionally invisible. Until we learn its lesson and slow down, we will continue to live in a state of incompleteness, wanting more and getting less, forever trying to remain patient until our ride arrives or departs.

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But as the poet reminded us long before the advent of the TTC, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Christopher Hume’s column appears weekly. He can be reached at jcwhume4@gmail.com