A view on public transportation

I was almost stuffed with smoke yesterday morning on the metro to go to school. It was quite interesting to see how panic people got in situation like that. The smoke came into our compartment, and even we pulled the emergency alarm, the conductor did not stop, I guess he needed to arrive to the next station anyway.

When we arrived at the next station, the conductor came to have a look, and then just turned away and said "C'est rien" ;-), but the vehicle just stopped there, and at the end I had to walk to school from there.

Everyone who uses public transportation understands how frustrated it is, I don't think the frustration level is lower than the one that those of you who face traffic jams in the morning. The other day, there was one girl who got on the bus by the second door instead of the first one where she had to show her ticket to the bus conductor, and he shouted at her, ordered her to get on by the first door. Of course, she had to buy the ticket, and was looking in all her pockets to find 1,50Eur to buy it. He just stopped the bus and didn't move until she found enough money to buy a ticket. The girl cried at the end, she probably felt a bit of humiliation...It was not his fault, and I think the organization was just inefficient. The driver should not be the one who checks the ticket, I guess he should take care only the driving, and who pays or not should not be his problems. Morever, when you give them a certain authority, they start behaving as if they are important and can do whatever they want. They forget that their job is to bring people to work or else.

It just makes me feel a little disgusting to see sometimes several strong, muscled guys in the morning entering the bus or any transport vehicles to check tickets whereas they could do a better job somewhere with the well- built figures. Let's just do a simple math. Take a taxi driver, and ask him to drive you from Midi station to Place Flagey, I think it costs just a bit more than 10 Eur. Now take a tram from Midi to Flagey, a tram could bring about 175 people (figures are put on the tram itself), and each of user has to pay at least 1Eur (the ticket for one single journey is now 1,50Eur unless you have a subscription of some sort), so the transport company makes about 200 Eur for one way only, more than a taxi. And you wonder why that does not make them enough profit to organise better instead of going on strike all the time?

The thing is when they are on strike, there should be a law that makes them pay damages to the public who already paid their monthly pass or yearly subscription and could not use the vehicles, therefore they also lose their own productivity that day for not being able to perform (considering we don't get paid if we don't come to work for reaon of public transportation strike).
Isn't that fair when you swallow your money at the begining of the month, not working, and while some people are not able to pay a ticket, you made a great deal out of it??