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Unfortunately, we’ve heard far too many stories of pregnant women having to stand on crowded buses when not a single person offered them a seat. We never want to assume that chivalry is dead, but with so many pregnant women left standing on subways and other forms of public transportation, it’s easy to lose faith.
Now, another story about a pregnant woman and her frustrations with the public transportation systems has become public knowledge, and what happened has left people feeling angrier than ever.
A New Jersey woman named Maria is 7 months pregnant and was trying to get on her usual bus during high traffic hours. Maria frequently uses an app called MyTix, which allows passengers to pay for their bus fare via the application, instead of having to carry cash around.
For whatever reason, the MyTix app was down that day for about two hours. Maria -who only had $3 on her instead of the $4.50 needed to ride the bus- explained the situation to the driver. What happened next left everyone fuming.
Maria was not allowed on the bus because she was unable to access the app (even though it was down) and didn’t have enough money for fare. The 7 month pregnant woman was forced to walk home, without any assistance from the city’s transit system.
The furious mom-to-be got on her Twitter page to explain what had just happened to her.
“I am 7 months pregnant and the bus driver took me off the bus bc the app didn't work and I only had $3 on me instead of the 4.50” she wrote, tagging the New Jersey Transit system in her post.
Representatives for NJ Transit immediately hopped on Maria’s Twitter thread in attempts to assist the pregnant woman, asking her to direct message them and let them know the bus or route number she had been trying to use. However, the damage had been done, and many commenters were furious that something like this could even happen.
“Our customer's experience was unacceptable," NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder said. "The bus operator is being re-trained."
Maria wasn’t the only person affected by the app being down, as it was reported that multiple other riders were denied access because the transit drivers weren’t aware that the app wasn’t working.
It is clear that NJ Transit has a big mess to clean up, but it appears that they are already issuing refunds to customers who were forced to buy tickets when the app was down.
Hopefully no other incident like this will happen again!
