Grannies with small suitcases

I was going to give it the benefit of the doubt. But I hear so many other people grumbling about it that I’m going to go public with my grumbles and bravely assume that my comments might resonate.

So what am I talking about? The new Belleville Via station, that’s what. For any of us with connections to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and beyond, the station is a place with which we have to become famliar, like it or not, take it or leave it. I guess we should be grateful for the persuasive powers of our local MP; for without federal funding there would have been no station at all. But what a missed opportunity it represents.

Let me count the ways. I enter the station in ill humour, having fallen again for the first two of the three available left turns, only the last of which takes you to the station door. Then I dutifully pay the machine that stridently cautions me that parking is not free; only to discover, once inside, that in fact parking is free for the first hour—which is usually enough to meet or board a train arriving from Toronto, although an even bet with a westbound train.

And speaking of meeting trains, gone is the old reliable ‘plastic letters in a glass’ timetable, which told you after a careful scan pretty well exactly all you needed to know about what trains were coming and going through Belleville, on what days of the week and at what times. There is now a flashing digital sign that somehow manages to tell you absolutely nothing about where trains are arriving from. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, because if my math is correct, about the same number of passengers will be getting off as are getting on. And a good number of them will be met by someone who wants to be sure they are meeting the right train. Knowing only that, for example, it is bound for Kingston, Brockville and points east isn’t exactly conclusive evidence that it is the train granny, travelling with a small suitcase, has taken from Woodstock.

Well, at least there is a spacious, almost cathedral-like waiting hall. Which is great if your ride home has been discourteous and shown up late, because a huge window looks out on the parking lot and you can just stroll out as you see your ride arrive; but not so great if you’re waiting for a train, because there are some small obstacles between the hall and the train itself. Obstacles like a 52-step climb up to the crosswalk, followed by a 52-step descent. Yes, I know there is an elevator, but the elevator feels like something out of a Hallowe’en horror movie, and the stairs are what we are expected to use.

And those stairs create two problems. First, you have to allow yourself about 15 minutes to navigate them, which makes the spacious waiting hall useless for the very period during which it would be most used. Second, climbing up and down the equivalent of a four-storey building is enough to tire out an ordinary being carrying an iPad and a lunch box, never mind your average granny with a small suitcase. Granny is pretty well forced to take (and decipher) the elevator, coming and going.

And what happens during that 15 minutes when you wait for your probably-not-quite-on-time train? You either stand in a waiting area at the foot of the stairs, which can comfortably hold about four people; or you wait outside on the heated platform, which may leave your feet a little warmer but will still expose all your upper extremities to the elements. And speaking of the platform, there is next to no room for two people, such as passengers getting on the train and passengers getting off the train—say two average grannies with small suitcases— to pass each other without knocking one of them onto the tracks. The problem becomes acute when train staff call for ‘all passengers for Ottawa’ to take car number five, and ‘all passengers for Montreal’ to take car number two; these of course are located at opposite ends of the track, which precipitates a mass hurried migration in both directions by the passengers getting on the train, even before anyone gets off; and another potential surge in grannies with small suitcases getting knocked onto the tracks.

All in all, the best thing I can say about this station is that perhaps we will eventually breed a population of grannies with small suitcases who have some ruthless survival skills, which I guess might be a good thing. But that’s not what we create public architecture for: we create it to be functional, and once in a while it performs that function beautifully. Every day that building stands will remind us how short we have collectively fallen. Would we settle for that standard for ourselves?

So my solution, which will create many new jobs and shower our local MP with even more glory, is simple: knock it down and start over. It seems to me that given the amount of money his government spent on redecorating the town of Huntsville for a short elite event, it can afford to reinvest in the continuing safety of grannies with small suitcases. I know a lot of people who have them. Grannies, that is.

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.