10.12.2006

bus

Now that I'm a daily user of the bus system here, I've noticed a few things:
  • bus drivers here are exceptionally friendly
  • 90% (by my estimate) of people thank the bus driver when exiting
  • if a bus is full of people, it will drive right by you
  • there will always be teenagers on buses who deliberately speak much louder than is necessary to communicate with the friend sitting next to them
  • there will always be riders who have very personal conversations on their cell phones and it's rather hard not to eavesdrop (because it's interesting to hear about why she broke up with her boyfriend and how he keeps calling her)
  • the bus driver has to manually open the back door and sometime s/he forgets and you have to yell "back door please"
  • sitting in the seat where you ride sideways gives me motion sickness
  • I can only read for about 10 minutes before I start to feel motion sick
  • only the seat nearest the window has a rail to rest your feet on
  • there is a fare free zone downtown which means you tend to get several homeless people getting aboard just for the hell of it
  • bus drivers are not allowed to help people using wheel chairs to back into the space reserved for them (even if the rider is drunk and uncoordinated and it takes him damn near 10 minutes to figure it out)

3 comments:

Ben said...

Interesting. When people look at me and yell, "Back door, please!" I usually take that to mean something completely different.

egan said...

Are you sure about the not being able to help the wheelchaired riders? I've seen it a lot. Maybe your driver is lazy or they instructed drivers not to recently. I know they did it all the time when I was in college and when I took the bus home to West Seattle.

Fumbling said...

holy cow egan, you took a bus to west seattle. that is far!

about the drivers helping people using a wheel chair, I heard him say to the passenger, "I am not allowed to help you with that sir, you need to be able to back into the space yourself. All I can do is lift the seat for you to give you more space." The man was having problems mainly because he was completely wasted and getting pretty belligerent too.