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Reflections and observations from a veteran rider
By Bob Regan
Pittsburgh has a good bus transportation system. It turns into a great one when your bus arrives on time. Here are some observations from a 30-year rider of the bus.
You always want to be on time or a little early at the bus stop. Then you wait. It is a lot like visiting a doctor’s office. If you are even one minute late, that is the day the bus arrives early or exactly on time, and you will miss it.
While waiting for a bus to go in any direction you will see several buses on the other side of the street going in the opposite direction. This happens no matter which direction you are going.
When the bus arrives, the person boarding ahead of you, who has been waiting many minutes for the bus to arrive, will only then start to look through many bags, pockets, wallets and purses for their bus card. Or, if they are paying cash, will do so with a slow trickle of many coins. This will often happen as you are waiting in heavy rain or extreme cold. By the way, the person who has delayed your boarding will usually get off at the next stop or the one after.
If you are a senior citizen and plan to sit on the reserved seats at the front of the bus, you can forget about it. Students usually occupy these seats.
When you board, despite a sign saying that baby carriages, shopping carts, and walkers should be folded, they rarely are, so you are faced with an obstacle course on your way to your seat. You also may discover people occupying more than one seat. Several times I have witnessed riders gobbling up four seats. They spread out their bags and legs to protect their little domain.
Many times while riding on the bus you pass people waiting at a bus stop concentrating intently on their cell phones only to be rewarded by the bus passing them by. Cell phones on the bus are a different story as many of the users speak so loudly that it seems they do not need a phone connection.
If you live in the East End, as I do, there are two distinct periods when bus travel is different. One is when the universities in Oakland are in session and the other is when they are not. When in session, the buses are completely overcrowded. It reminds me of my visits to Cairo, Egypt where overcrowded buses had people hanging on the sides and sitting on the roofs. Any other time, the worst is when the buses are only comfortably crowded.
When universities are in session, there will always be one or two large students with backpacks who choose to stand at the front of the bus, effectively hindering anyone getting on or off the bus.
I would rate the PRT drivers in the grade A range. I once witnessed an A+ (or perhaps A++) grade PRT driver in action. The bus stopped to pick up a passenger who used a wheelchair, but the wheelchair ramp would not work. The driver tried to deploy it manually several times but to no avail. Finally, he found a tool he could use to lift the ramp and manually deploy it. When the passenger boarded the bus, the driver got out to manually put the ramp back in place. It was an amazing display of “Above and Beyond” effort.
While riding a crowded bus I witnessed another PRT A+ driver in action. The bus stopped to pick up a blind passenger who walked with a cane and had a service dog. The driver asked a young man who was sitting in the first seat of the reserved section to move. He refused. The driver stood and demanded that he surrender his seat. Once again, he refused. The driver then shut off the bus and announced that it would not move until the lady had a seat. Reluctantly, under great peer pressure, the young man relinquished his prized seat.
There are several things I observed riding buses in other towns. In one area the bus will not stop unless the person at the bus stop signals the operator by raising his hand. I think this would help PRT operators who deal with stops serving many routes. Usually, the driver stops if people are at a bus stop. But, often the people just stare, zombie-like, if that is not their bus. By far, my favorite bus routes are in Cape Ann, Massachusetts where there are no bus stops. Passengers simply signal the bus driver wherever they are along the route and get off at any point they want along the route.
Another thing I have observed elsewhere is that buses will not move until everyone is seated, and people do not get up from their seats until a bus has stopped. Undoubtedly this would be impractical in Pittsburgh, but I wish it were so for senior citizen riders.
All in all, you can have a very good adventure riding a PRT bus. I will not mention the Light Rail as that is a different kind of adventure.
Bob Regan, a Greenfield resident, has written several books on Pittsburgh including two on Pittsburgh’s City Steps and one on the City’s bridges. Although retired from the University of Pittsburgh, he still teaches one course a year.
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