Why it’s great to ride the bus. #1. you can see where you’re going and where you want to get off. #2. it’s like a tourist ride for the price of the fare. #3. the plethora of persons that the bus gathers as it rolls along the streets. Every strata of life from the boisterous school children in the back at 3:15 just out of classes, and running on sugar sweets purchased at the deli behind the bus stop; the street-living man with his black plastic cupboard [we’d call it a garbage bag], sleeping until he is awakened. No longer may one stay on the bus and ride it around. At the end you have to exit. Since I never ride it north or south to the end, I don’t know where vagrants get out. Perhaps the park. And moi.
I am awed each and every time I see how the bus accommodates the mobile restricted. If it is a bus with a 2 step entrance, the driver can activate a ramp that slides out from under the bottom step. Attached to the ramp are large hand rails on either side. The person in need, steps onto the now sidewalk level ramp and it hoists them up to equal to the top step and pulls them into the bus. They then pay and amble off either by foot or motorized convenience toward a seat. If it is a flat entry bus, the entire bus can lower so the flat entry is sidewalk level or again, the flat entry can be opened up like you open a powder compact, it swings up and back, away from itself, 180 degrees creating a ramp that is now over the curb gap leading from the sidewalk to the bus’ interior. Said person can now drive up the ramp, or walker up. And all of this delays the schedule in only small amounts. What a service.