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| The amentity free bus stop |
The 150 Express is not just an ordinary bus, it is fast because it stops only at strategic points and it comes only three times in the morning and three times in the evening. It begins all the way in Columbia and ends somewhere near City Hall. It was introduced in 1991, just before I moved into the area. There are only four services like it out of 44 local bus lines, four local shuttles, two school supplemental routes, six local express routes, five inter-county, and 27 other commuter bus lines. Confused? Welcome to the world of bus transit in the US!
For those who appreciate simplicity, with a smart phone one can get transit via Google maps the same way one selects drive directions: state your location and destination and whatever bus or rail service is best will show up with scheduled departure times.
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| Google Map transit info for the 150 trip downtown to west of the city |
My 150 has sufficient local stops to help some folks like me who would have to walk a good bit further to reach the true local buses like the 10, or the 23. As noted, such a stop comes without frills; a leaning sign post in a patch of grass, that is it. No schedule, no destination, no map. A stop strictly for transit pioneers or Google map aficionados. My nightmare is to stand on the other side of route 40, separated by eight lanes of fast moving cars and trucks when the bus pulls up and I can't cross and the driver doesn't see me. But that hasn't happened. Standing on the manhole and no bus ever coming? That has happened, but only twice.
The MTA has about 800 buses. Lately, I punch in my four digit stop number into my smart phone texting app and I may get a "real" arrival time based on the actual bus location. Or maybe not. If not, I get the scheduled time only just like on the Google maps. It depends whether the control center can receive the signal emitted by the bus. The driver could also have forgotten to turn the signal on. But they always say they didn't forget. Real time bus arrival information has worked in many places for decades. We are told it will work soon here, too.
Lately the bus has shown up quite on time which is really nice because standing on the side of route 40, the Baltimore National Pike, is really unpleasant, even embarrassing, the mowed grass notwithstanding. At least I imagine how those drivers peering at me through the windshields of their air conditioned or heated SUVs, who sit in the dry at any event, feel sorry for the lone figure stranded at the edge of a road that isn't made for people at all.
Sometimes a second person waits for the bus. That makes me feel much better. Misery loves company as the saying goes. There have never been three yet at this stop. Standing there, even during the summer break, I see those empty yellow school buses pulling out of their storage lot. But they are, of course, for students only and are not really public transit. One of those American mysteries, to have two sets of buses fanning out every morning, not to mention all those college and university buses that seem to grow in number everywhere. If every group has their own bus, the original purpose of the bus gets lost somehow (bus is short for omnibus which is Latin and means "for all"). But I am digressing.
The bus pulls up. To prove the point that transit shouldn't all be about suburb to city travelling on radials with the city as the hub and the radials as the spokes, there is now almost always somebody "alighting" at my stop. That is what transit geeks call getting off the bus. This lone person represents a suburb to suburb rider which the new MTA administrator talks about a lot as a reason to revamp the bus lines. As I board, I have to carefully place my Charm Card near the sensor on the fare box so it can deduct the fare from the chip.
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| Chip Card holding various types of fare |
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| Fare Box |
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| Regulars on the 150 after work, yellow stanchions, blue seats and lights |
The seat is molded plastic with a thin layer of black cloth with colorful patterns on it. Blue and yellow are the signature colors and make the bus look modern, bright and friendly. The windows are no longer tinted and the MTA also mostly refrains from those wrap ads that cover the windows and make riders invisible from the outside and the world look perforated from the inside.
The bus is usually quite clean, even in the evening. Only occasionally is the floor sticky from some spilled soda. An orange light overhead and to the side lights up when a riders wants to get off. It says “Stop Requested.” The sign also spells out the stop names. Passengers request the bus to stop by pulling on a yellow chord that winds its way carefully along the sidewalls, a touch of nostalgia, exactly how it was in the old streetcars, except that those chords used to pull an actual bell. (Some latest model buses have a touch tape instead of the pull chords). There are seven cameras aboard, monitoring passengers and the traffic in front of the bus. The hybrid diesel-electric buses run much quieter than pure diesel buses, because they can accelerate with electric motor support which gets them going pretty fast, even when full and moving uphill.
When I board the bus it is already well occupied, but there are always some open seats in the front (regulars like to sit further back, there is less commotion). In the summer, the hotter it is outside, the colder the bus is. Maybe because the driver sits next to the frequently opening front door, maybe because riders demand it, regardless, this strains the engine with the result that on really hot days many buses sit stranded on the side of the road.
My bus is a pretty good representation of the idea of the melting pot, I mean of the many ingredients that go into the pot before the melting happens. A person in a turban, several Koreans, mostly men, several African-Americans, mostly women, and some Caucasians as well. Some are regulars who I recognize. Making inappropriate and uneducated stereotyping observations is part of riding the bus, I suppose; it is too tempting to develop little stories around the fellow riders who lean over their smart phones or simply stare into air, maybe preoccupied with the work that awaits them or the dreams they just left. Some are asleep, some listen to something over headphones. Rarely, there are co-workers who engage in small talk; any conversation at all is rare. Hardly anyone reads a newspaper, an activity that was very common back when I rode transit in Britain. A gentleman, straphanger in one hand, a rolled up paper just wide enough to read a column in the other, not even glancing up when the proper stop came, just simply gliding out the door Рthat had been the clich̩, as if from a movie scene. The gentleman of that time is not a frequent rider on a MTA bus. Instead, sometimes a bike is strapped to one of those nifty bike racks that all buses are equipped with now. The rider is always easy to find among the passengers thanks to reflective clothing.
The MTA seems to hate the idea of sending the same buses and drivers on the same route every day, though that would have some efficiency and be comfortable for regulars. With the eight hour shifts and all, it would probably never work out, anyway. So there are many different drivers and that is why on occasion the passengers have to call out particular counter-intuitive turns from the back to remind the operator. Such as the one right after my stop which involves a complete loop around a block to serve a stop that is there because there once was a park and ride lot. That lot is long gone, though. Nearby there are some other bus stops, so people go here occasionally for a transfer. (That particular stop adds a full five minutes to the evening trip which requires a much larger detour to get to it). Recently we reminded the driver too late of this loop and he had to do an actual U turn with the big bus and backtrack the route, do a left turn where normally no bus ever turns, only to find that nobody waited at that omitted stop. He took it in stride. Better safe than sorry, he said stoically, and eventually caught up with the point he had already reached several minutes earlier.
A frequent Uber user may ask why the operators don't just use a smart phone preloaded with a route map that gives them turn by turn instructions and would make them instant experts. The bus is loaded with electronics and even a speaking voice that intones at every turn: "Pedestrians, bus is turning". But operators carry a print out of their route, somewhere, probably folded with their lunch. I have never seen such a map in plain sight. The annoying announcements that state every time the door opens: "Welcome aboard the MTA" have been turned off, thankfully. Instead there are announcements every ten minutes or so to warn riders to be extra "vigilant" about their smart phone and iPad. Not sure how the PR people concluded that this would enhance the image of transit.
Anyway, gaining time by skipping stops is not an option and being ahead of the schedule is not desirable. A bus zipping through a stop minutes ahead of schedule is really annoying for those who are not yet on the bus, and is frowned upon by the Ops people who occasionally check where the buses actually are. By MTA standards, a bus is on time if it is between one minute early and five minutes late. Depending on what statistic one consults, MTA meets that goal between 75 and 85% of the time which sounds way better than it is because in the 15-25% remainder lurk all kinds of mishaps, some much graver than 6 minutes of delay. Buses not coming at all, for example because a coach broke down and there was no replacement or a driver didn't show up and there was no replacement for them, either.
As already noted, I got my "transit legs" riding a bus early in life, in England, when I had to take one of those English double deckers every day to get to my summer school. It wasn't for more than a month at a time, but it "broke me in." There was a schedule, the shelter sat hard against the curb and people lined up in a neat single file for boarding. There was a conductor and boarding was in the back. The bus always came and I always sat on the upper deck. Later, in Stuttgart I used commuter trains to get to college and after that, in London, I met the gentleman riders on the District Line to get from Fulham to my work in the London planning department.
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| The newspaper reading gentleman rider of the London Underground |
At Edmondson Village usually a batch of riders waits for the 150 which always makes me wonder why, since the Express costs extra and this stop is also served by the almost equally fast QB 40. Some people get on by accident and back out again when they hear about the extra fare. Most have day-passes or monthly passes, read via magnetic strip or chip scanner. The chip scanner on the same box but it doesn't always respond correctly and the machine emits a buzzing sound like when you give the wrong answer on a quiz. The drivers know that well charged cards can provoke that sound and usually wave those Charm Card holders through regardless. Then there are the cash-payers and those who have to fumble for the up-charge when they have only a regular ticket or transfer. This is why boarding is slow even if riders reach over each other to scan a card while somebody slowly sinks his dimes into the slot. The operator isn't supposed to get moving until people are safely seated or near a yellow stanchion to hold on, but sometimes that just takes too long and the bus pulls off, leaving extra slow payers desperately try to stay on their feet in the front door area that is supposed to be free of passengers.
Even staying in a proper seat isn't always easy on Baltimore's roadways. The bus rattles and bucks and sometimes it appears to be lifting off. Some drivers seem to enjoy giving "rough rides" as if they owned shares in spare part companies. The same route with a different driver can be much smoother and not only because of a newer, less worn bus. How nicely even older buses can glide along is obvious in the County where the roads are always smooth as a baby's butt, a fact that has to do with how the State distributes highway money for arteries (but that’s a topic for another time).
Once at the edge of downtown people are getting off the bus in droves. I disembark at the corner of Saratoga and Eutaw Streets where riders instantly melt into the large groups of folks hanging out at these corners with their many bus stops and stores. Some riders wish the driver a good day, say “thank you,” or even “bless you.” In return, some drivers respond, some others remain mum. Maybe they are biting their tongue because alighting is supposed to happen at the back of the bus. In Baltimore nobody cares about such fine-print. In Europe, buses have a little gate near the driver that opens only inward, forcing folks to follow the door order, probably allowing a better flow through the bus. Outside the bus, the relationship with transit is not quite over yet. Beware of crossing in front of a bus, even if the crosswalk light shows "go". The operator may attempt a "right on red," or, worse, a car may try it by going around the bus. Of course, right on red should not be allowed in downtown, another topic deserving of its own treatment.
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| Congestion around the front door of downtown bus stops |
The bus ride in the Express bus does not take that much longer than the one in the car on the same route if I don't count walking, waiting at the stop or any specific extracurricular events such as u-turns. But door-to-door the transit trip takes a bit less than an hour versus maximally a half hour in the car.
For days when I don't need the car for distant meetings and don't have to work longer hours or don't have evening meetings, for those rare days it is a good option because I can read on the bus. Or write an article like this.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
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