Mac Bauer and his wife were heading home from a friend in Toronto one day when they had a too familiar experience.
The tram in which they were advancing at a rhythm of a snail, and the 12 -kilometer trip took more than an hour.
“My wife and I are quite active people and we like to run,” Bauer told As happens Guest host Rebecca Zandbergen. “We both looked at each other and we were: ‘We could overcome this, no problem.'”
It turns out that they were right. Bauer has now run five trams of Toronto, on foot, and has defeated them all, usually by considerable margin.
Says his victories, that has documented on InstagramThey are emblematic of the fact that the Toronto Traffic Commission (TTC) is not maintained in the growth of the city, where public transport is often faced with car trafficking.
The TTC did not respond to the request for comments from CBC.
The first race in the seriesThat Bauer calls “Man versus Machine”, saw him face Harborfront 509, which extends from the exhibition circuit on the city coast, to Union Station Downtown, a trip of approximately 3.1 kilometers.
Bauer took off at the same time as the tram, and reached its destination in 14 minutes. The tram stopped 7 minutes and 32 seconds after that.
A week later, on a brutally hot July day, Bauer started running from the Bathursst station while his friend jumped on tram 511. A Sweaty Bauer reached the exhibition circuit, 4.7 kilometers away, in 18 minutes. His friend, who looks much drier and relaxed on the tram 22 minutes later.
From there, the streak continued.
He beat 510 Spadina for 10 minutes, even though the tram has a designated lane, so it does not have to compete with traffic.
He won his strenuous 13 -kilometer race from Broadview station to Dundas West station against King 504 for 18 minutes.
And, finally, he beat 505 Dundas for 13 minutes in a quiet Saturday morning, and even had time to stop at Tim Hortons.
So you don’t think that only an experienced corridor could face a Toronto tram so effectively, at the end of July, Bauer ran again 509 again, this time with a CityTV reporter in tow, and the duo beat him.
“It shows that not only trained athletes can overcome this tram, but it is your daily person,” he said.
Bauer admits that there are benefits when taking the tram, which can be a quieter experience than reserving it on foot as fast as possible.
The moment of the tram, he says, also varies according to the time of day, how much traffic there are and how many people are climbing and removed at each stop. Bauer, on the other hand, does not have to stop at all, store red lights and recover your breath.
Even so, he says that almost any person in Toronto could get where they are going faster on foot than to take a tram during the 5 pm
While the experiment has been fun, Bauer says that the results of his races are, ultimately, a kind of annoyance. He says that the city simply does not keep the rhythm of the growing population of the city center.
“When I was younger, the tram was great. I loved taking the tram. Very great to be in these trains that simply run through the city. But now the experience is simply horrible,” he said.
“If we are not going to update the infrastructure, people will continue to resort to the cars, which in turn will make the TTC an even worse experience.”
His next challenge, he says, is the 512 St. Clair, who has a designated traffic lane and, he says, a reputation of cutting at a decent speed.
“So we’ll see how close it really reduces,” he said. “I will say that I will be quite disappointed if to overcome that by any type of remarkable margin.”
