Article content continued

At 4 p.m., she caught the 106 York University bus south to Finch, where she disembarked and crossed Sentinel Road to begin the worst part of her commute — waiting for the 36 Finch West during rush hour.

[np-related]

After 15 minutes, the bus arrived, already packed with riders. Mohamed, along with about a dozen others, squeezed on board. If there hadn’t been room — which happens sometimes — she would have had no choice but to wait for the next one.

Being on the 36 Finch West in such conditions is like being in the thick of a dense crowd at a tiny bar where there isn’t anything to drink. In other words, awful. (The TTC tries to keep it so that loads at peak times never exceed 51 riders per bus, on average.) At Jane Street the crowd thinned out. Mohamed took a seat and began reading a book. She’s aware of the transit cutbacks her community has faced of late, and has even participated in a widely publicized effort to challenge politicians to ride the TTC for a week. “I feel like we’re being targeted specifically,” she says. She’d buy a car if she could afford the gas and insurance.

We know, more or less, why the buses on Finch West are so crowded. Runaway development in the aftermath of the Second World War caused the area’s population to surge from about 29,000 to about 337,000 in 25 years, and the Metro Toronto government lacked the foresight to build infrastructure to serve the low-income communities that would eventually take up residence in the apartment towers there. But what nobody knows is what the future holds for transit on Finch West.