I am very excited to introduce Adham Fisher, or should I say "Rocket Man"? Adham is a global transit celebrity of sorts; trying to break the Guinness record of visiting each station in London and New York. In this post, he shares his experience of rocketing through Toronto earlier this year. Phew, talk about a #TransitHubbing Adventure!
- Neil Jain
- Neil Jain
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| Adham Fisher near the #YongeDundas Hub (Credit: Geoffrey Crosse) |
As part of my subway tour of North America in
April 2012, I went to every Toronto subway and RT station as quickly as
possible (2 hours, 46 minutes and 1 second) using Guinness World Record rules
for London and New York. No other rapid transit
record exists with Guinness, but that is just one of those things ...
I had no expectations of the subway before I
arrived. On my previous two visits – pre-transit record days – I don’t believe
I even used it. Every transit system is different; I have no expectations
before riding one for the first time, no matter how much I research. Toronto
was full of surprises: the brevity of the Sheppard Line, for example. And the
fact that weekly tickets are valid from Monday to Sunday only. Due to the
amount I would be using the TTC, I thought one of those would be the most
economical. But I landed on a Tuesday and departed on Sunday. When I started to
research
on Wednesday it was too late to buy the ticket for that week – only the
next – so I had to obtain daily ones. Other networks with weekly tickets on
which I have travelled allow people to use them for any seven consecutive days.
TTC day tickets are surprisingly large and unwieldy, in comparison to London
ones (around credit card size). Paris squeezes the technology down even
further.
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| Ticket size comparison: Toronto, London, Paris |
These are merely observations, not negatives by
any means. In fact I cannot think of a single negative thing during my stay,
having been invited to a meeting with the TTC, asked to appear on The
Morning Show and been on the Bloor-Danforth Line in rush hour when several
commuters were reading the Metro newspaper with me on the front page.
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| On the cover of Toronto's Metro newspaper |
Unfortunately I did not have time to ride the length of the
famous 501 streetcar route, and I hope that will be done at some point.
Scarborough Town Centre was my local
TransitHub, and probably the most memorable one because I went there most
often. Having hardly alighted at any stations – researching a subway can be
very time consuming – I can’t say much about TransitHubs, except that Queen has
a lot of activity and stations at ends of lines tend to lead into large
interchanges with buses. I could explore the surrounding areas of TransitHubs.
I think that is the best way to learn more about what is in a city; go and walk
around places. I do like exiting stations for the first time as I wonder what
will greet me as I rise to street level.
What is my ultimate transit mission? I don’t
have one. Or perhaps it has not been disclosed to me yet. But I can tell you
that I am releasing a compilation album called the Métro EP on July 9.
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| Metro EP Cover |
Featuring the music of me and other individuals under
the name 1000 Stations, it is
about different transit systems of the world. And there is a piece written for
your very own Toronto Subway.
Adham
Adham Fisher, from Leicester, England, raises eyebrows by staying on public transit much longer than necessary to visit each station on subway systems in the quickest possible time. His most challenging venture has so far been staying on the New York Subway for 23 hours, 11 minutes and 24 seconds. In April 2012 he landed in Toronto to ride the Rocket, and became a "minor celebrity" in the process.
Editor:
- Links from Adham: cribbit.net/adham.asp and twitter.com/directiontravel.
- Press release for Adham's album can be found here.
