Bus v. Subway

I've decided that every weekend I'm going to write a "face-off" style blog where I compare two aspects of the city I've observed. In contrasting, I hope we all learn a bit more about our topic, and each other. Just kidding about the last part. Kind of.

As aforementioned in my previous post, I've been riding the bus all week. I learned a new set of mostly unwritten rules. In my opinion it's a bit easier to move through what you do as a new rider on the subway than as a new rider on the bus. On the subway, you have clearly marked stations and announcers tell you where you've stopped (sometimes they yell your location incoherently through the loudspeaker and you're scrambling to figure out where you are). On the bus, the only way you can figure out where you are is if you keep up with what streets you're passing, and that tends to take a lot of work. Of course, to more seasoned riders of both systems, you get to a point where there is a rhythm to where you're going--you know how long to wait and when to get up, like an timer going off when an egg is done boiling.

On the bus the riders are much more in contact with and at the mercy of the driver, even if they never speak to each other. One friend told me recently he was riding the bus and there was an annoying guy on the bus who kept yelling and generally making a ruckus. Eventually people on the bus started complaining, and chanting "Kick him off the bus, kick him off the bus," even the driver! And then when the driver had had enough fun with that, he did, in fact, kick him off. The subway by comparison almost seems like this underground organism that drives itself. You see people in little windows at the front that are supposedly operating the thing, but it mostly runs the same all the time, and lot of the announcements are pre-recorded. The subway operator can't see what's going on inside each car (that's why the people watching is so good!) The bus driver can also decide if he wants to reopen the doors for someone who has just missed the stop, or keep driving. From what I saw, drivers tended to do that more for women, children, and the elderly/handicapped. Another funny thing that bus drivers don't seem to mind is when people can't find their bus tickets. On the subway, if you don't have it, you can't swipe your way through, but on the bus there's more of a "ride now, pay later" sort of attitude. I watched one girl look for her card for about five minutes before she finally swiped it and sat down, and this whole time the bus driver is continuing along his route.

Similarly, passengers on the bus are supposed to "request a stop" by pushing a long piece of tape-covered wire located at various seats (it took me several days to figure out what people were pushing). Then in theory the driver can skip a stop if there is no one waiting and no one has requested to get off. It's very flexible. The subways routes are not flexible, except when they are doing repair work and choose to reroute one line to another. There are express trains in Manhattan that will skip several stops at a time to take you very quickly from one part of town to another, but you have to know which trains they are and where they stop ahead of time.

The bus runs on a schedule. You can see if you've missed one recently and when or if the next one is coming anytime soon. The subway comes whenever it wants. There are a couple of lines that have this nice announcer lady recording that tells you how much longer 'til the train arrives. But mostly you just sit and wait with no idea. Sometimes you feel like you've been waiting for a lifetime. The minutes tick by like hours. You learn to use context clues like how many people are waiting around you, how "regular" the line is and what time of day it is.

The preconceived notions I have about the bus and the subway are very different. Both are an adequate source of public transportation, but while everyone from wall street-ers to artists, blue collar workers and school children ride the subway, there is a narrower class of people riding the bus. I wonder why this is? There was a time in Nashville when I lived pretty close to work and thought about taking the bus. But when I suggested it to people the majority thought it was crazy, downright unsafe, and, I got the feeling, "below me." How did the bus get this sort of reputation but not the subway?

Finally, being underground, the subway is a world all its own. People are momentarily cut off from being able to use cell phones or internet. The temperature is often the opposite of what it is like outside. On the bus people still talk on phones and watch the world go on around them, interacting with pedestrians, cars, and traffic lights. There's nothing like that on the lines of the subway, and they say there are miles of unused tunnels here. You can almost picture this "subway organism" going off and exploring on it's own when all the passengers are home sleeping in their beds at night.