Monday, April 07, 2008

Stockholm's Public Transportation Survey. And a Big Ass Rat.

Today it happened. I had my chance to speak out about SL to the people that really matter. SL. Stockholm’s friendly, neighborhood public transportation. I was sitting on the train this morning when a woman came around with a survey for me to fill out about my opinions about SL. I jumped at the chance. She seemed friendly enough but I felt like she was hovering. And having administered my fair share of surveys back in my university years (the good old days as they will henceforth be known) hovering is not good. It can change the way people respond to questions. Make them feel guilty about being mean. I did not have that problem.

Those of you who read this already know I’m not a big fan of SL. I just don’t like having to wait for train delays. Or for cancellations. They aren’t fun. And what I’ve started to notice is that it seems that this usually only has an impact on the pendeltåg (literally commuter train) traffic and not so much the actual subway. So apparently, living in the middle of Stockholm, or at least closer to Stockholm, has its benefits in the public transportation.

Anyway, I finally had my chance to bitch and moan and rank SL. I get so tired of seeing these newspaper articles about how people love SL and record numbers are pleased with the service provided. So I took advantage. They received an overall grade of 3 from me. On a scale of 8. I’ll be honest; I was having a nice day too. Had my train been delayed it might have been 1’s and 2’s across the board.

And for some other SL news you can use: a big ass rat caused delays in the train traffic in Stockholm's Central Station on Saturday. I first got this article from BGC and Colorado’s local NBC news affiliate. Sweden is making international news for all the right reasons. I later got to read about it on The Local (just a heads-up – the two articles are exactly the same) as well as in the free newspaper this morning. The rat was so big that when it got electrocuted it caused three hours of delays. Good times indeed.

Welcome to Sweden, where rats are big enough to delay trains.

3 comments:

  1. That is a big rat!! When I was a kid in Taiwan, our dogs (medium sized) used to get in fights with rats--not kill them, fights!

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  2. Must be a Chernobyl Rat

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  3. @john - big rats blow my mind. don't you have some thing you can sell to Sweden to kill these things?

    @anonymous - it trekked all the way here to stockholm only to die by electrocution in the train station.

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