Buses Are Nasty, Unpleasant
I’ve been trying to make the case that people don’t ride the bus unless they absolutely have to — it’s that terrible an experience. Most people who grow to tolerate and even ‘love’ it, do so because they’ve learned to accept the circumstances of their lives. Like a bad lover, a bad job, a bad family - whatever it is, we learn to deal with, accept it, and move on to try to change the things we can. (More here.)
Still, the question remains, if we want to generally improve the transit experience such that we we attract new riders to transit away from their personal automobiles, should we a) build real transit which at least has the potential to be a pleasurable experience, more pleasant than the driving experience, or b) build faux transit that will never, even under the best circumstances, ever be able to compete favorably with the driving experience?
I’m no transportation engineer or social scientist or economist or urbanist, but I do possess a modicum of common sense, so I’m going to propose we go with a).
BRT proponents don’t want to seem to own up to the fact that buses are, in fact, buses - and they will never be trains, no matter how hard BRT proponents try to convince people that this is the case. Buses will never offer the ride experience of trains. Buses will never be as enjoyable as trains. Buses will never be able to offer dignified transit like trains can. In short, buses are not trains, and never will be.
So, just why are buses so nasty? There are myriad reasons - the ride is anti-human, buses are just outright ugly, etc. - but one thing we should all be honest about is that nastiness breeds nastiness. There is growing, if still controversial, evidence that nastiness breeds nastiness - graffiti breeds other crime, etc. I haven’t read all the research, but I’ve seen enough to convince me that there’s something to all of this.
Which leads us to the latest bus nastiness from Muni Diaries:
As I moved close to the seat, keeping the conversation going with my friend, I suddenly felt a hand on my butt. I looked to the right and saw that an elderly Hispanic woman had placed her hand on my ass of steel to prevent me from sitting down. Confused, I looked around and saw a group of people giggling. One guy then says “you don’t want to sit there.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Because a guy was sitting in that seat earlier, picking the scab on his leg and rubbing the blood in circles.”
I immediately look down at the seat and, what I once thought was probably dirt or a soda stain, is in fact dried blood in a swirly twirly pattern. The guy then proceeds to tell me I’m the fourth person he’s stopped from sitting in the seat. I told him he should be proud of his good-deed-doing.
In this case, it just happened to be a probably-homeless, probably-schizophrenic dude who wanted a little warmth on a chilly San Francisco day, but there seems to be pattern on buses that is not quite as evident on trains. The reports of the urine and other body excrements all over transit - more times than not, they seem to be ending up on buses, not trains. Maybe it’s just because in places without real transit, more people are forced to ride the crappy bus. I’m not sure. But anyone who’s been in a public mens restroom knows that ill appearance easily breeds ill behavior - we didn’t need the formal research to tell us what we already knew - but now that we have it, maybe we should start taking it to heart.
In an odd way, this picking-of-scabs and urination syndrome that seems to afflict buses disproportionately might actually be an argument for bus rapid transit. That is, if you make buses slightly less detestable in their appearance and/or ride experience, maybe people will start treating them more like trains? If you don’t insult people by telling them that they don’t deserve real transit, maybe they won’t take offense - maybe they won’t pee on the bus. That would at least be an argument that I could take seriously. It would, at least, be a sane argument, which is more than I can say for any pro-BRT arguments I’ve heard to date:
‘Hey Peter - we cannot afford real transit, but we should try to do something about people spreading their bodily secretions all over the bus system, so what do you say to a few hundred million to make buses look more like trains?’
I can’t tell you that it would be a winning argument, but it’d be something I’d at least be able to take seriously.
Leave comment (3)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
December 17th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
So we should be against buses because of the type of people that ride on the bus? If we got rid of buses what would these “undesirable” types use for public transport? Putting train tracks everywhere is not feasible - buses are here to stay and I think BRT makes a lot of sense. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than trains.
Buses work well in many parts of the world. We just need to fix our bus system. It needs a lot more money and fresh ideas. If there’s something nasty — how about a standby crew to come and clean the damn thing. Maybe we have bus stewards for a time that ride buses and encourage acceptable behavior. This example is not making the case for not using buses.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
So we should be against buses because of the type of people that ride on the bus?
i said exactly nothing like this.
i’m starting to think that many liberal san franciscans see themselves as the rays of hope in the fight against racism, and yet, san francisco, like Boston and lots of other liberal northern towns - is as racist as any town i’ve ever lived in.
maybe one day a BRT proponent will talk about the merits of bus travel instead of try to turn the BRT vs. LRT question into a referendum on which white people can act more offended and victimized by racism.
at the end of the day, though, we should keep in mind that it is BRT proponents who feel that trains are too good for poor people - black or white.
December 18th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
And I said nothing about racism, liberalism, or white people being offended. And certainly not anything trains being too good for poor people.
I took your point in this post to be that buses are bad because some people behave in an offensive manner while riding on the bus. That has nothing to do with buses as a mode of transportation. The problem is the person’s behavior and that’s what should be addressed.