New City Buses Suck

There it was. Finally, the bus.

I’m sure few people in other places feel the same sense of relief at the sight of a city bus that the citizens of Ottawa do. This is the world’s coldest nation’s capital – we huddle in our little glass shelters until we see our ride groaning around the corner, and complain bitterly if we miss it.

But there was mine - I could see my route number glowing on the roof, trundling towards me where I waited obediently at the yellow line. With some surprise, I noticed that it was one of the brand-new buses; my route is one of the lesser used ones that are assigned the smaller and older buses in the city’s fleet. If a new bus is now being used for my route, that probably means the few remaining older buses have been taken out of commission.

“When that happens, when they get too old, they take them behind the shed, and they shoot them in the engine,” my buddy Ed said.

How old are they, then? Some of them look just like the models that were rolling down highways in the 60’s.

“The year they bought it is painted in the code at the back, beside the exhaust stack. That bus there, it says, ‘7840’, so that means it was purchased in 1978. Didn’t you know that? Did your mother have any kids that lived?” Ed said.

1978, that’s pretty good, actually. Most people think their cars are “old” if they were made 7-10 years ago. If anybody owns a 27 year-old car, it’s probably only taken out on Sundays in the summertime to go get ice cream with the wife. For a bus to have driven literally millions of kilometers since I was in diapers – well, it’s pretty amazing, now that I think about it. Why don’t cars last that long?

Anyway, I got on my new bus and flashed my pass at the driver, who made every effort to ignore me. This is a big pet peeve of mine: bus drivers who feel it is beneath them to look at bus passes. I pay all this fucking money each month for a silly piece of paper that entitles me to ride on the bus – the least the guy can do is look at the damn thing. I made an issue of it once – my “regular” driver at the time would always look out the window when I hauled out my pass, so one day, I just got on and started walking towards my seat.

“Sir! Come back here, sir!” he barked.

“Yeah? What is it?” I said. I’m all innocent. What, me? What did I do?

“Do you have your pass, sir?” he sneered.

I smiled brightly. For future reference, one of the best ways to cheese off total assholes is to act like they are your best friend. That makes them even angrier, which of course is what you want. Unless they are huge, psychopathic, total assholes – in that case, this doesn’t apply.

“I sure do!” I exclaimed. I pulled my pass out of my pocket and shoved it within an inch of his face, which caused him to recoil instinctively. “Can you see it okay? I wasn’t sure if you guys need to see it or not – I was going to call the transit office to clarify with your manager that I have to show it, because you’re always looking out the window when I get on. Maybe it’s just an ‘on demand’ kind of thing?” I said cheerfully.

“Take your seat, sir.” he grunted. The door hissed as it closed.

“I can sit down now? Is everything okay?”

“Take your seat! You can’t be blocking my sight out the door when I’m driving.”

“Just making sure! Thanks a lot, sir!” I say. The driver gave me a look that would wither a flower garden.

After this episode, he would grudgingly look at my pass each time I came on, which I would produce with cheerful compliance. I hope he gave himself an ulcer stewing about me. Unfortunately, almost all these guys do the "I'm not looking at you" routine, so I’ve given up trying to train them.

Anyway, back to the bus. These new ones – and others have told me the same thing – they just aren’t as good as the old ones.

For one thing, the seats on new buses are terrible. Where to begin with the seats? The new ones have these thick, absurdly soft cushions that offer no support on your ass whatsoever. You see them, and you think, “wow, so plush.” You sit down, and they feel good for about 90 seconds - until your backside begins to go numb from the hard plastic mold the cushion is mounted on. The old buses, they had these vinyl seats, bench-style (these are wider, too – the new seats are intended for one ass only, while on the old ones, you can really spread out and relax on that big pink bench), that were a lot more firm and don’t feel like a torture device after a 20 minute bus ride. Those big pink seats are actually a pleasure to ride on. The new seats have a backrest mounted at a more extreme, upright angle, whereas the old ones had a more relaxing incline to rest your back against. Why are they made this way? It’s like they don’t want you to sit there for long. They must have used fast-food restaurant seat designs when they dreamed them up; seats that are designed to make you want to leave as quickly as possible, which can't really be done when you have to sit there for your commute home from work.

Then there is the new bus layout. The seats are literally mounted all over the place, because they usually have two levels. It’s like drunken assembly-line workers went apeshit with their air guns on a Friday afternoon, and they put the seats anyplace they damn well wanted because the boss was out drinking. You get these ridiculous single seats mounted sideways on top of the wheel wells, benches mounted face-to-face (forcing you to violate one of the major Public Transit Ridership Codes: you never look at fellow passengers in the eyes), seats without a window, a rear row with no legroom at all, and amazingly, much less seating overall compared to the old buses. The reason for that is, there is a huge open area at the front of the bus to accommodate handicapped passengers. In five years of riding public transit, I have yet to see a single handicapped person on the bus. And besides, they have their own bus service, “ParaTranspo.” So why make all the new buses this way? Why must we suffer from retarded bus design features? As usual, minority interests dictate majority decisions.

The old buses? Pleasing rows of evenly-spaced and uniformly-sized pink seats, bolted on a single utilitarian level. Benches at the front for the pregnant or elderly, and a double-wide bench mounted side-to-side at the very back of the bus, which is my very favourite place to sit. There in the corner of this bench, I can put my foot up on a support strut in front of me, and read my book until it’s time to get off, or enjoy the scenery through the nifty retro-style sliding window. No complaints whatsoever about old bus seating, not one, not ever.


Check out the obvious joy on the face of the driver.
4 out of 5 bus drivers recommend old buses.

The final major problem with the new buses is, how the hell do you get off them? The old buses had one design. You got off them by manually pushing on a metal handle on the door, and you were out – everybody understands this concept. It’s the same one in use in your home or workplace. This also makes sense from a manufacturing perspective, because manual doors lacking motors or tiny air compressors don’t need any maintenance.

But the new bus doors...shit. Some of them, you have to wave your hand in front of a sensor for it to open. Others open automatically. Another kind, you press on a little yellow bar at the side of the door. Still others, you press on the door itself once the green light comes on. It’s mass hysteria. Anytime I’m on one of the confusing new buses, there’s always somebody who can’t open the door:

The bus stops, the green light at the door lights up. A woman waiting to get off presses on the door. Nothing happens. She presses again, with more authority. Nothing happens. People start to crane their necks to see what’s going on.

“Press the yellow bar at the side,” a little kid says. Little kids always have the answers for this kind of stuff.

“Pardon me?” the lady says.

“The yellow bar – push it!” another guy yells. But she can’t find the bar. What bar? She begins to scrabble desperately at the window, the doorframe…anything that might offer release from the bus. What if she can’t get off? What if the driver leaves before she can escape?

Finally, the kid jumps up, and pushes the obscure little yellow bar beside the door, and it hisses open. With obvious relief, the woman is on her way.

Incidents like that have traumatized me with a kind of bus-door phobia. I don’t want to have to worry about that kind of shit. So before I get off the newer buses, I always watch a kid getting off at an earlier stop so that I don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of being trapped on the bus like an old lady. Sad, but true. And it didn't have to be this way.

Look, there’s just no debating it. It’s not a fear of modern technology, a retro fetish, or anything else shallow or silly like that. The old buses are better in every way. I want them back.

“Fuck it, man. At least the new buses have air conditioning. I hate to sweat,” Ed said.

It’s -20 today.

“You think too much.”