Love! One time I was visiting relatives in Miami, on my way back from Cuba, and I asked my cousin (rich lawyer- yes we're Jewish, lol) where the bus stop was. They didn't think there were ANY buses in their neighborhood, so I asked the nanny. There was a bus stop ON THE CORNER. I was able to jump on and visit some Cubans in a different neighborhood. These people didn't even know how their own employees got to work!
beautifully written. i wish everyone could experience being packed in a morning/evening rush bus or subway car at least once in their life to understand each other better. i always enjoyed the quiet nod of approval from random strangers who would let me sit next to them when i asked.
Honestly. As a student with a high school tour, I was once crammed inside a packed trolley. My bag got stuck outside the door. This was a month before the USSR dissolved, in Leningrad. I cried.
I've been taking the bus a lot more lately, and almost never during the rush. More often during the empty hours in the middle of the day, and I find the experience unpleasant, eerie and sort of inhuman, like so much else. You start wondering if you're dead and in the bardo...
I don't know where you are that riding the bus feels inhuman, but I'm sorry it feels that way. Public transit is one of the most human ways to engage with others, where everyone is an equal and needing transit between point A and B wherever they are going to. I hope you get to experience those times as well, even if you are alone just watching the city between stops.
The sentiment behind this is one of the reasons why I subscribed.
I love the bus/train and being around lots of different people going different places for different reasons at once. When I rode the bus on a more regular basis, whenever I drew faces from memory the end of my day (favorite thing to do to decompress), without realizing it until I was done, the faces I drew often ended up being someone I saw on the bus that day.
I feel so connected to all kinds of people from riding the bus (even if I have a bad day and there's a creeper or something) and had a very emotional response to this.
As you know, I grew up in Mt. Vernon, and I still live there. Riding the bus as a kid involved a different experience from you. I didn't ride the 40 Bus to work; I rode it to White Plains to browse and shop. I had taken up the drums and so going to Sam Ash and the other music stores was like going to a candy store. Same with Harvey Sound for obscure records and bootlegs. (I also discovered there for the first time VHS tapes.)
White Plains back then was a poor man's or young kid's version of Manhattan, especially "Music Row" on 48th Street.
There was also a small local bookstore, a holdover from the '60s, that I loved going to but disappeared by the late '70s.
lol. Yes. My post on buses goes against your thesis and takes the topic in a consumerist direction, but I couldn't help it. You filled me with nostalgia. :-)
I worked those jobs so I could have some pocket money, or that famous suburban allowance I earned myself to pay for concert tickets and new clothes. So no worries there. Today, kids couldn't make that money with minimum wage jobs. Thanks Ticketmaster and LiveNation
So beautiful. Taking the bus in a car-centric city like San Diego is unique. I love it - I get to read books and listen to music. Seeing this cross-section of the city is amazing. But the reactions are get when I tell my colleagues/PMC types is often of horror. "Are you sure you don't need a ride?" Or I get a horror story of *gasp* some homeless guys getting in a fight. Of course, they didn't see the fight they just heard about it. The only awful things I've seen in 20+ years on the bus have been outside the bus, when some poor guy got run over by a car, or a car that was on fire. I did see a guy get punch in the face once, but he probably deserved it. Gimme the bus any day.
Such a beautiful essay— it’s also cool that you went to QC! I teach at the high school located on their campus, with two of my English classes in the science building.
Marvelous meditation on bus riding. I haven't seen many such meditations and I really really appreciate it. And it resonates because I've ridden a lot of buses in my life and probably more than most people, both as a young man and later in business, because of circumstances. Here are two interesting stories.
In late summer 1977 I had a Greyhound pass enabling me to ride from Los Angeles to Toronto. Somewhere in the middle of the country, before we reached St Louis, I happened to sit in the aisle seat beside a middle-aged woman who had a slight Slavic accent. It turned out to be Russian and that she was a Soviet journalist doing a profile on life in North America, maybe a little bit like Alexis de Tocqueville. We had a very long and interesting discussion and I always wondered if maybe she a published a series in Pravda, later that fall.
A few years later I made another lefty literary connection on a bus, this time riding from north of Toronto down to Toronto. I ended up sitting beside one Carolyn Walker. She was publisher of NC Press and co-author of the book "On Leaving Baidicheng Yangzi: The Culture of China's Yangzi Gorges". Among the things we talked about was sales, and she asked me if I was "a go-getter". How was his closest I got to a career in publishing.
The world of bus riding used to be a whole almost hidden domain where members of the working class and the middle class together would enjoy regularly scheduled routes and well-maintained buses. And often people to talk to. But buses were always to the powers that be a little bit second class. In Toronto 40 years ago the location of the downtown bus terminal, not on any subway line, was always to my mind a scandal. Any bus traveler who wanted to go elsewhere in Toronto had to walk with all their luggage blocks to and from the subway. Of course bus riders don't enjoy the same level of intercity travel anymore and the decline and bankruptcy of the big bus companies due to competition is quite sad.
Nowadays we see how buses maintain their place though in city travel. And the most notable development in bus travel has been the near universal adoption of low floor buses. In part because of my sometimes frequent bus travel, the topic of low floor buses is an interest of mine. I even have a domain on the topic in case I get around to blogging about it.
I note in the replies the original post that a lot of people here are quite enthusiastic about bus travel. However it's difficult for me to imagine that anyone who travels regularly on low floor city buses can possibly enjoy the experience. And this is why I have developed my interest in the topic.
Low floor buses provide terrible ride characteristics. And the thing that is most upsetting is that the those with the least choice are forced to ride these badges of PMC hubris everyday.
Specifically and because of inescapable engineering design limitations, it is impossible for a low floor bus to deliver a comfortable ride. Traditional high floor buses where high for a reason. Because that's the only way you can deliver a humanely comfortable ride. The tires are bigger and lower pressure. And the suspension travel is much longer. The opposite being true on the low floor bus, the shocks from driving over any kind of pavement, not only bumpy pavement, are constant and significant. I would say the bumpiness is so pronounced as putting spines at risk especially if one has to ride twice a day 5 days a week.
Even worse low floor buses, because of best geometry and weight distribution, also deliver sharper starts and stops and additional bus sway. I've taken measurements with my phone which has a built-in accelerometer and it seems to me that old people sitting on the seats in a bus must actually be at health risk for their spine due to the repetitive shocks transmitted by high pressure tires and short suspension travel.
The excuse for low-floor buses is "inclusion". I would say this idealist fantasy is always held by people who travel by car or who have a chauffeur. We never seem to consider that funding a separate and appropriately designed fleet of smaller vehicles to accommodate those with mobility issues would be quite viable. And as for say a mother with a stroller and a child, one used to see people being helpful all the time.
These are not only my opinions and observations. I have documents from professionals in the industry including the head of Toronto's vaunted TTC who put it in writing to me that bus travel would never again be comfortable the way it used to be. And then there are bus industry executives presenting to city council that the desired low floor buses are both maintenance nightmares and again provide a terrible ride experience. I think there's better ways to do inclusion.
Now low floor buses have basically taken over the world. Usually presented as a progressive program. But the detachment by PMC elites and progressive transit champions never engage with real engineering. And it's magical thinking that you can dictate low floor buses and not have any compromises.
I blame the world of journalism too for also detached from physical reality. One never sees articles about this scandal. A scandal where millions and millions of people without choice, typically working class people, have to ride rough buses everyday and when they get home they're tired out from their bumpy bus journey and having to brace themselves through the whole journey against the roughness.
This made my day.
Thank you. I started crying when I wrote it
I felt something in my eye *reading* it.
Same when I read it
Mine too! Thank you Catherine.
Love! One time I was visiting relatives in Miami, on my way back from Cuba, and I asked my cousin (rich lawyer- yes we're Jewish, lol) where the bus stop was. They didn't think there were ANY buses in their neighborhood, so I asked the nanny. There was a bus stop ON THE CORNER. I was able to jump on and visit some Cubans in a different neighborhood. These people didn't even know how their own employees got to work!
beautifully written. i wish everyone could experience being packed in a morning/evening rush bus or subway car at least once in their life to understand each other better. i always enjoyed the quiet nod of approval from random strangers who would let me sit next to them when i asked.
Honestly. As a student with a high school tour, I was once crammed inside a packed trolley. My bag got stuck outside the door. This was a month before the USSR dissolved, in Leningrad. I cried.
I've been taking the bus a lot more lately, and almost never during the rush. More often during the empty hours in the middle of the day, and I find the experience unpleasant, eerie and sort of inhuman, like so much else. You start wondering if you're dead and in the bardo...
I don't know where you are that riding the bus feels inhuman, but I'm sorry it feels that way. Public transit is one of the most human ways to engage with others, where everyone is an equal and needing transit between point A and B wherever they are going to. I hope you get to experience those times as well, even if you are alone just watching the city between stops.
The sentiment behind this is one of the reasons why I subscribed.
I love the bus/train and being around lots of different people going different places for different reasons at once. When I rode the bus on a more regular basis, whenever I drew faces from memory the end of my day (favorite thing to do to decompress), without realizing it until I was done, the faces I drew often ended up being someone I saw on the bus that day.
I feel so connected to all kinds of people from riding the bus (even if I have a bad day and there's a creeper or something) and had a very emotional response to this.
As you know, I grew up in Mt. Vernon, and I still live there. Riding the bus as a kid involved a different experience from you. I didn't ride the 40 Bus to work; I rode it to White Plains to browse and shop. I had taken up the drums and so going to Sam Ash and the other music stores was like going to a candy store. Same with Harvey Sound for obscure records and bootlegs. (I also discovered there for the first time VHS tapes.)
White Plains back then was a poor man's or young kid's version of Manhattan, especially "Music Row" on 48th Street.
There was also a small local bookstore, a holdover from the '60s, that I loved going to but disappeared by the late '70s.
Omg Sam Ash
lol. Yes. My post on buses goes against your thesis and takes the topic in a consumerist direction, but I couldn't help it. You filled me with nostalgia. :-)
I worked those jobs so I could have some pocket money, or that famous suburban allowance I earned myself to pay for concert tickets and new clothes. So no worries there. Today, kids couldn't make that money with minimum wage jobs. Thanks Ticketmaster and LiveNation
Beautiful piece.
Also underappreciated: bus tourism. Take any line to the end and then back. No better/cheaper way to see a city.
In London especially. You can see so much of the city
Yes!!!
Thank you. I note how tirelessly you pull your readers toward humble compassion.
That’s beautiful Catherine
beautifully written anecdote and reflection catherine!
Beautiful, Catherine. Just beautiful.
So beautiful. Taking the bus in a car-centric city like San Diego is unique. I love it - I get to read books and listen to music. Seeing this cross-section of the city is amazing. But the reactions are get when I tell my colleagues/PMC types is often of horror. "Are you sure you don't need a ride?" Or I get a horror story of *gasp* some homeless guys getting in a fight. Of course, they didn't see the fight they just heard about it. The only awful things I've seen in 20+ years on the bus have been outside the bus, when some poor guy got run over by a car, or a car that was on fire. I did see a guy get punch in the face once, but he probably deserved it. Gimme the bus any day.
Such a beautiful essay— it’s also cool that you went to QC! I teach at the high school located on their campus, with two of my English classes in the science building.
Marvelous meditation on bus riding. I haven't seen many such meditations and I really really appreciate it. And it resonates because I've ridden a lot of buses in my life and probably more than most people, both as a young man and later in business, because of circumstances. Here are two interesting stories.
In late summer 1977 I had a Greyhound pass enabling me to ride from Los Angeles to Toronto. Somewhere in the middle of the country, before we reached St Louis, I happened to sit in the aisle seat beside a middle-aged woman who had a slight Slavic accent. It turned out to be Russian and that she was a Soviet journalist doing a profile on life in North America, maybe a little bit like Alexis de Tocqueville. We had a very long and interesting discussion and I always wondered if maybe she a published a series in Pravda, later that fall.
A few years later I made another lefty literary connection on a bus, this time riding from north of Toronto down to Toronto. I ended up sitting beside one Carolyn Walker. She was publisher of NC Press and co-author of the book "On Leaving Baidicheng Yangzi: The Culture of China's Yangzi Gorges". Among the things we talked about was sales, and she asked me if I was "a go-getter". How was his closest I got to a career in publishing.
The world of bus riding used to be a whole almost hidden domain where members of the working class and the middle class together would enjoy regularly scheduled routes and well-maintained buses. And often people to talk to. But buses were always to the powers that be a little bit second class. In Toronto 40 years ago the location of the downtown bus terminal, not on any subway line, was always to my mind a scandal. Any bus traveler who wanted to go elsewhere in Toronto had to walk with all their luggage blocks to and from the subway. Of course bus riders don't enjoy the same level of intercity travel anymore and the decline and bankruptcy of the big bus companies due to competition is quite sad.
Nowadays we see how buses maintain their place though in city travel. And the most notable development in bus travel has been the near universal adoption of low floor buses. In part because of my sometimes frequent bus travel, the topic of low floor buses is an interest of mine. I even have a domain on the topic in case I get around to blogging about it.
I note in the replies the original post that a lot of people here are quite enthusiastic about bus travel. However it's difficult for me to imagine that anyone who travels regularly on low floor city buses can possibly enjoy the experience. And this is why I have developed my interest in the topic.
Low floor buses provide terrible ride characteristics. And the thing that is most upsetting is that the those with the least choice are forced to ride these badges of PMC hubris everyday.
Specifically and because of inescapable engineering design limitations, it is impossible for a low floor bus to deliver a comfortable ride. Traditional high floor buses where high for a reason. Because that's the only way you can deliver a humanely comfortable ride. The tires are bigger and lower pressure. And the suspension travel is much longer. The opposite being true on the low floor bus, the shocks from driving over any kind of pavement, not only bumpy pavement, are constant and significant. I would say the bumpiness is so pronounced as putting spines at risk especially if one has to ride twice a day 5 days a week.
Even worse low floor buses, because of best geometry and weight distribution, also deliver sharper starts and stops and additional bus sway. I've taken measurements with my phone which has a built-in accelerometer and it seems to me that old people sitting on the seats in a bus must actually be at health risk for their spine due to the repetitive shocks transmitted by high pressure tires and short suspension travel.
The excuse for low-floor buses is "inclusion". I would say this idealist fantasy is always held by people who travel by car or who have a chauffeur. We never seem to consider that funding a separate and appropriately designed fleet of smaller vehicles to accommodate those with mobility issues would be quite viable. And as for say a mother with a stroller and a child, one used to see people being helpful all the time.
These are not only my opinions and observations. I have documents from professionals in the industry including the head of Toronto's vaunted TTC who put it in writing to me that bus travel would never again be comfortable the way it used to be. And then there are bus industry executives presenting to city council that the desired low floor buses are both maintenance nightmares and again provide a terrible ride experience. I think there's better ways to do inclusion.
Now low floor buses have basically taken over the world. Usually presented as a progressive program. But the detachment by PMC elites and progressive transit champions never engage with real engineering. And it's magical thinking that you can dictate low floor buses and not have any compromises.
I blame the world of journalism too for also detached from physical reality. One never sees articles about this scandal. A scandal where millions and millions of people without choice, typically working class people, have to ride rough buses everyday and when they get home they're tired out from their bumpy bus journey and having to brace themselves through the whole journey against the roughness.
That is a beautiful essay. Personal writing at its best.
Relatable in so many touching ways to most people I believe!