The snowy morning of January 29 was not kind to transit riders.

It was especially unkind to those, like this reporter, who chose to take the Über-busy 99 B-Line bus to work rather than risk a bicycle accident.

What transpired at the intersection of Clark Drive and East Broadway was ugly. Time for a quick bus riders rewind…

Around 8:30 a.m., rolling into the exposed bus shelter at Broadway and Clark, on the northwest corner of that intersection, it was strange to see people lined up behind the shelter, out of the view of the road. That is because the slush and muck of the slowly-melting ice and sludge was being sprayed all over us by every passing vehicle in the slow lane. People were covered in muck, and the 99s creaking to a halt were all packed full of people who got on at Commercial Drive.

The first bus pulled up, but dropped people off before driving away, as the second pulled in behind it some five minutes later.

I made for the rear doors, even though I had not validated my pass. No luck, as the sardines could not breathe in any more and make room.

At this point, not counting the full no. 9 Alma service and buses not in service, we were at two to three 99 passups, depending on whether you count the total 99 vehicular passups or actual passups due to the fact there was no room.

After four 99s went by, it was time for some deft crowd surfing. I landed right in front of the driver’s door and in the way of his mirror.

Amazingly, the driver did not kick me off, but asked politely that I move away from his mirror. He did not even pay me the usual courtesy of pointing out the red line where passengers are asked by law to stand. He and I both knew that was futile, as two or three people were already over the line and had no means of moving back in the bus.

And so it went all the way to Granville and the office, where I soon learned that TransLink media relations spokesperson Drew Snider had started filing half-hourly service update reports starting at “0400 hrs” (for West Coast Express updates) and 0545 for the system on the whole. Snider pumped out 10 e-mails in a 24-hour span, smashing all known records of spam-dressed-up-as-information.

I think one can safely refer to it as “Snider snowspam”. His e-mail tally on the 29th almost outstripped the number of 99 buses passing me by in 30 long minutes that morning. The passups are not just happening in the snow either, despite what the TransLink media relations team would have us believe.