Riders are trapped in a rolling billboard

I ride the streetcar often and don’t always pay attention to where it is, lost in thoughts, a podcast or reading. Suddenly I’ll hear a chime and wonder if I’m at my stop. I’ll quickly look out the window to see where I am and get frustrated, even feel a bit of panic, because I can’t see out of the window. Where am I?

- SHAWN MICALLEF

Despite being commuting heroes, riders on TTC streetcars are treated more like rolling commodities, their vision hampered by advertising wrapped around the vehicle, Shawn Micallef writes.

I’m on a streetcar “wrapped” in an ad and the view is obscured.

I don’t know what is being advertised because I, and every other TTC passenger, is treated merely as a billboard despite being paying passengers. Little concern is given to the experience of riding the streetcar. Public transit vehicles have long had ads on them — think of those old adverts on the rear of buses — but the entirely wrapped vehicles, including the windows, have been more common in the past decade or two.

It’s bad enough in daylight, but at night it practically makes the world outside disappear, obscuring all but the brightest signs. We might as well be in a tunnel.

It’s a strange way to treat people who are commuting heroes. Don’t like traffic? Congestion? Gridlock? Thank every person who decides not to get in a car and takes transit. If each one of those people drove a car — go ahead, visualize it — it would be the worst traffic day in Toronto’s history.

Despite being heroes, doing their bit to reduce the number of cars on the street, public transit passengers in Toronto and other cities, including on GO Transit, are treated like rolling commodities rather than people deserving respect.