On Saturday, I rode the 38 Geary bus line from the Financial District to Outer Richmond. The trip took longer than I anticipated (45 minutes), but it was heartening as a reminder of the diversity and sense of community that can exist in San Francisco.
In cities of high population density, public transportation is used by everybody. San Francisco and New York City come to mind. Contrast this to Los Angeles, where public transit is used pretty exclusively by people who cannot afford cars. The 38 Geary line is used by hipsters and yuppie douchebags alike, families, students, professionals, bums, the young and the elderly, locals and tourists, people of all colors and stripes. Within this panoply of difference, there is an implicit sense of community trust. If the bus has to stop longer than usual for a wheelchair-user to board, nobody bitches about the wait. When an elderly person gets on, someone sitting will almost always volunteer his or her seat. When a tourist looks lost, a local will typically offer a guiding hand. In these simple acts of decency are important lessons for us all.
Being on a bus requires patience. No amount of rage will move the bus along its route any faster. When you board a public bus, you surrender yourself to a service largely outside your control. You implicitly accept the limits of your ability to manipulate time and space. You will arrive at your destination when the bus arrives, and you have to be okay with that. A dose of such humility would do us all well.
The exposure to diversity demands courtesy. In order to ride comfortably, you will have to address others with such phrases of respect as "Excuse me, sir," and "Thank you." Pushing and prodding might get you to where you want to go, but it is very obviously not the path of least resistance. You may well have to give up your seat for someone in greater need of sitting, but when you do, you will see your act not as personal loss but as social gain. In the setting of a bus, courtesy makes eminent sense.
For me, forty-five minutes on the bus really lifted my spirits. Decency between strangers is really great to behold.
Does it come as a surprise that a public bus served quite literally as a vehicle for social change during the civil rights movement in the United States?
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2 comments:
Once on a late night bus ride, I watched an incredibly drunk bum slosh his open bottle of vodka across two empty seats. The guy sitting across from the drunkard started shouting at the bus driver to stop and throw the guy out. Three other people then immediately started yelling at the vodka hater to mind his own business and keep the bus moving. So we did, and the drunkard mumbled some sort of victory laugh. Hooray for Team Drunk-but-not-delayed!
is the bus company profitable? or subsidized by the public fund?
what you observed on the bus in San Francisco is not common in Taiwna, I would say.
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