- A subway train is made up of six cars. Of these six, five are half empty, with loads of available seating. One is jam-packed, and you're going to have to stand. No matter where you are on the subway station platform, the car that stops in front of you is the full one.
- Little old ladies like to sit on the aisle, blocking the window seat and insuring that they don't have to sit next to anyone. Nobody wants to crawl over an old lady. Little old Chinese ladies on the King streetcar are masters of this.
- The smelly drunk will sit behind you.
- The loud teenagers will sit in front of you.
- Every parent in Toronto brings their SUV stroller onto the streetcar and parks it three rows from the front. Not halfway back, where there's a break in the seats and where the stroller could be moved out of the aisle. No. Right in the bottleneck, up front.
- As the subway travels from the outskirts to downtown, most platforms are on the right side of the train. A lot of people end up standing in the left-side doorway, across from this. They are mystified when you come and stand in front of them, face to face. It's very awkward. Apparently they don't know that at the next station, St. George, the platform is on the left-hand side.
- Streetcars are like bison, or teenage girls; they travel in herds. This means that if you miss one, you've missed three. This bunching up creates vast gaps between groups of streetcars, and you end up waiting twenty minutes instead of five or ten. This phenomenon is most often observed in Very Cold Weather.
- Subway operators are compelled to announce the next station. I use the word "compelled" pointedly...they clearly do not want to tell you what station is next. They want tourists to miss their stop and have to backtrack. So they mumble. The level of the mumble is precisely calculated to be audible, thus fulfilling their contract commitment, yet entirely incomprehensible, thus serving their diabolical ends.
- Both subway and streetcar operators delight in throwing passengers off balance. They accomplish this by alternating brakes and throttle as they enter the station or approach a stop. The result is a bunch of passengers weaving drunkenly toward the exit, banging into fellow commuters. This amuses the operators.
- The stain on the seat is probably dry. Probably.
- Nobody comes to mop the entrance to the subway station until the subway closes down at 2am. This is true even in the winter, when the slush build-up sends elderly patrons careening down the entry stairs. This also is for the amusement of the staff.
- A surprising number of people think that a $2.25 transit token and a dime sound the same when they land in the streetcar's fare box. These people are wrong.
- These same people consider it an affront when this auditory discrepancy is pointed out and the remaining $2.15 is demanded. The operators says, "That was a dime," and they protest, "NO! It was a token!"
- These people then pretend, after arguing for a few minutes, not to speak English...or French. Logic will not penetrate their now-deaf ears.
- These people are highly entertaining, until the operator stops and refuses to move the streetcar unless they pay. This always happens when you have to Be Somewhere in ten minutes. Eventually they surrender the transit token clutched in their other hand, kept there in case of ultimate defeat.
- If you manage to secure a spot in the front car of the subway train, looking out the front window, you can watch a labyrinth of secret paths and long-abandoned routes unfold out of the subterranean darkness. It's a city below the city. Riding shotgun on the subway brings out the little boy in me.
- Streetcars are beautiful. Their lines are sleek and elegant. There's a romantic utility, a functional aesthetic, that suggests adventure within the limits of the rails. Their metal wheels sound a hollow, ghostly call as they glide over the miles of tracks that criss-cross Toronto. They move like swans on water, smooth and powerful. I could sit all day at the intersection of Queen and Roncesvalles, watching streetcars come and go, turn and surge ahead.
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