Sorry, it's another taxi rant.

My piece of work for this evening consisted of approximately four hours of actual driving time. Anyone care to take a guess as to how many taxi's I honked at that were parked in bus stops during that time? Did you guess seven? Because that's how many there were. I realise it's Friday night and it's really busy for them but it's also really busy for us. Our service is significantly slower when we have to wait for a taxi to get out of our spot. If you're a taxi driver and you're reading this, I have a message for you. STOP PARKING/LOADING/UNLOADING IN BUS STOPS!!!!! And I'm not the only bus driver pissed off at you guys, every other driver I know also hates you. Sometimes I wish that I had rocket launchers mounted on the front of the bus....


On my last run of the evening I lost my poles (I was driving a trolley. The poles run on the overhead wires from which we get our power source). There are a variety of reasons for why the poles occasionally come off (I'll write more about the mechanics of trolleys in another rant). In my case, I went through a finicky switch where trolley's lose their poles as often as they stay on. Now this switch is located on a major six lane road and it happened at about 1:30am so needless to say it was quite dark out. I donned my hi vis safety vest and went outside the bus to reattach my poles. There was a fair bit of traffic at this point but most cars saw me and the bus with the hazard lights on and switched into the far lane. That is except for one car...a taxi. I was looking up trying to line the poles up with the wire (of course it was pouring rain at the time, so it made it rather difficult to see clearly) when I hear a car approaching. I look back just in time to see/feel a taxi speed by me. He must have been doing about seventy kmh. He came so close to me that the side of his car actually brushed my pant leg. This honestly was one of the scariest moments of my life. I'd never been that close to being hit by a car before. Luckily I survived unscathed. And I'm still alive to tell anyone who will listen how terrible taxi drivers are.