Flight of the Commuter

CANADA | Wednesday, 3 July 2013 | Views [410] | View Smaller Image

At Union Station, a herd of at least a thousand of us wait for a train home and the word GO seems ironic. We commuters are often stuck in a cycle of running and waiting - going to and coming from the same destinations. While adhering to schedules and rules as rigid as rails, we're always on the move but never really free.

In the Greater Toronto Area, GO Transit provided rail and bus service to 239,000 commuters on a combined 3,200 kilometres of routes each weekday (GO Transit Annual Report 2011-2012). Most need transit to promptly get to places of work in downtown Toronto. This lone male commuter sprints for a morning train from Cooksville Station to Union Station in Toronto, while signs instructing where to go and what to do, surround and dwarf him. I am a commuter too, and we run.

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Sometimes I dream of somehow separating myself from the commute, the city, the office, work-life as I know it and putting myself on a different plane. This view from my arrival platform of window washers juxtaposed on a reflection of the sky, with the offices and station below help to visualize this thought.

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Flight of the Commuter

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