(02 Mar 2014, 9:42 am)Dan wrote My friends and I certainly don't like Metro Inspectors because their attitude stinks and the stories you hear from regular commuters are just awful. Good manners cost nothing, and most of the Inspectors don't have good manners. I certainly don't 'dodge the system' as every day I travel by bus too, so always buy a Nexus CAT. My friends always purchase a Metro ticket too. The only time I have had to get on a Metro without purchasing a ticket was when my pass was not scanning at the station, Customer Services were useless, and I got off the Metro at the first opportunity to get on a bus instead.
The money going into modernising the system is pointless though. New rolling stock should have been purchased instead of re-refurbishing half of the Metrocars again - an attempt at making the job cheaper but in the long run, it's going to be more expansive. The system is unreliable because of the ancient Metrocars, and although it's very respectable in the sense that the frequency remains high until the last train, it's not the form of public transport I prefer. When it's a case of a 10-20 minute difference in journey time, I'll often take the bus just because I prefer it. In my opinion, it's safer (bus drivers would assert authority and ask someone to leave the vehicle if they were causing a nuisance - I've never seen a Metro driver do this?) In a large number of cases, there is an option of free Wi-Fi and power sockets on-board buses too.
As a kid I always used to think of the Metro as an appealing form of public transport because of the different coloured Metrocars (which is now being phased out) and because it was so fast (and now by the time you wait for the train, the comparable journey time by bus isn't so different). I've grown up to think quite the opposite.
I hate the Metro to be fair, a lot of the stations (especially the lifts) stink, and the staff are generally rude.