There is no cool factor on the bus.
I live in the city. I work in the city. This means that I have three choices for getting to and fro work each day: drive, train, or bus.
I could drive. I don’t live all that terribly far from work, it’s almost a straight shot by car. When there is no traffic, in fact, it’s about a 10 minute drive. In the morning, however, that stretches to about 35 minutes. And I can’t exactly park at a meter downtown all day, which means that for the privilege of driving my own car to work, I would have to eat $18.50 each day in order to park. Needless to say, I don’t drive to work.
I could take the train. There is an “el” stop very close to my home.
Unfortunately, the stop downtown isn’t so close to my office. The train has the distinct advantage of being fast. There are limited stops, and between stops you aren’t subject to the whims of traffic, making it a most expedient form of transit. The train also has the added bonus of “cool pretend play grown-up” factor. It’s much easier to pretend you’re a hip young urban dweller in a movie on the train. You can pretend there is a camera focused on you as you gaze wistfully out the window, or shyly smile at the cute girl sitting across. So sometimes, almost always after work (because I’m a lazy slug in the morning) I do take the train.
But usually, I’m another slob on the bus. See, the bus stops about half a block from my front door, and I’ve timed it so that if I walk out the door at 8:15, I can catch the bus, and walk into work sometime between 8:50 and 9:10. Yes, there is that much variation. You see, the bus is really no better than your car, in fact it’s far worse.
The bus stops every other damn block to let a bunch of other slobs cram their asses down the isle and into the seats.
The bus gets blocked in traffic by the asshole double parked outside Starbucks who ran in to get his double tall mocha-chino latte skinny fat fuck asshole drink.
The bus can’t run red lights.
The bus is smelly, and gross, and doesn’t even have a stereo like your car.
There is no cool on the bus. When it’s cold and raining (as it was this fine morn) the windows of the bus fog over. So you can’t look wistfully out the windows. Not that it matters, you know there is no film crew filming you looking wistfully out the window of a bus.
It only goes downhill from there. At least with the train, you have your time in the station to adjust to the weather. If it’s cold and rainy or snowy, you get a bit of respite from the elements, and time to acclimate to the new indoor climate. Then, the transition to the warm train isn’t so bad. But when everyone gets on the warm bus, crowded together, they sweat steamy sweat. It condenses on everything, and it makes you feel like you’re in a sauna, which makes you hot, and then you sweat. So there you sit, hot, sweaty, stinky, and you can’t even look out the damn window.
Then the bus lumbers down the road. It stops every 150 feet or so, to let even more people on, so it just gets hotter. And if I don’t give up my seat for the older ladies who invariably get on my bus with a shitload of shopping bags, well, then I feel like a right bastard. So I always seem to find myself standing, swaying to the rhythm of the bus (and it has all the rhythm of an epileptic disco), sweaty and miserable.
And why? All so I can go into work, the last place I really want to be at 9am.
There is no cool factor on the bus.
Addendum – December 20, 2001
I used to live in the Bay Area (San Francisco) and people there are always complaining about the state of the city bus system, MUNI. To hear them tell it, you would think SF was the only major city with a crappy mass transit system.
Well, at least they don’t have to wait for the damn bus in Chicago weather. This morning I went to my local stop at my normal time. There I waited. And waited. And waited. Then, I spotted the dreaded number 56 lurching it’s way down Milwaukee. And what should I spy with my keen eye right behind it? Yes, another #56 bus. And another. There were no fewer than four buses, leapfrogging their way down the street.
sigh