On The Bus

Impressions From A Few Weeks Of Riding Around Town

originally published December 6, 2006

Armed with a tape recorder, notebook and bus pass, I rode off to look for Athens by bus. I talked with a lot of people and found that most value the bus system and its new central station. What follows is a series of random impressions from several weeks of riding the bus around Athens.

The Station

Entering the area of the Multi-Modal Transportation Center, I was struck with the grandeur of its metallic, vaulted roofs, reaching many feet above the heads of the huddled masses. Was this structure designed to convey administrative power, or was the hope that its imposing features would flatter the humble rider? The fact is, just about everybody I talked to at “the spot” likes it fine - during operating hours, that is. The MMTC can also be an isolating place when its interior is closed. Yet the previous bus center, directly in front of City Hall, was a booth staffed by one person. There were no bathrooms. There was no heating. There was no shelter. This new station is attached to a large climate-controlled building with bathrooms. The dozen or so diagonal bays remind one of the better sort of Greyhound station. The day I set out, a newly planted row of young oaks, their leaves a lovely fall crimson, stretched the entire length of the station on one of its sides; the other side is overshadowed by a rising condominium.

I myself was wary of a program that prided itself on something called “The Multi-Modal Transportation Center” - a grand pavilion by Athens’ standards - while most bus stops remain unsheltered poles in the ground, cheek by jowl with oncoming traffic. Talking to bus riders, I got the impression the new center is plenty popular. The central station is grand, its dimensions accentuated by openness on all sides. Graceful as architecture, it suffers one functional defect: it will not stop the wind. This station is valued by bus passengers, though, along with the services provided by its adjacent building. But it is only one stop. One woman observed, “They need shelters at every stop. There are mothers standing out there with two or three little kids, while the wind is blowing or it’s raining. That’s not right. I think every bus stop should have a shelter.”

Why Ride?

This is not like New York or Chicago, where the impossibility of traffic draws people to using commuter trains and buses. Those cities have planned to furnish transportation for millions, and do. In Athens, the prime mover of public transportation is lack of an alternative. The majority of those I interviewed are car-less. Several of those same people are using the bus to look for work; most used it to commute to and from work. And it may come as no surprise that most are African American. Athens has the unique identity of hosting one of the state’s wealthiest institutions, the University of Georgia, while being home to a burgeoning population (28 percent) of poor people, disproportionately Black and Latino. Yet the bus, partly paid for by taxpayers, differentially favors the privileged: UGA students and faculty can ride for free. True, UGA contributes 16 percent to the Athens Transit budget, but that replaces whatever fares students and faculty would pay. Non UGA-rider fares constitute 16 percent of revenue. Athens-Clarke County funds 44 percent of costs. The federal government contributes approximately 20 percent to the budget (a declining figure), while the state has stayed the course with a solid 0 percent for years.

Adult fares are $1.25. An adult pass is $48.75 for 44 rides. A youth pass is $36.75. A car-less family of four (with no one five or under), would end up paying $171.50, if they could afford the passes. If they could not, they are looking at $9 per roundtrip, or about $300 a month, roughly equivalent to a gas guzzler with insurance. A worker with two jobs could burn through a pass in two weeks.

Chance Encounters

The #25 is a cross-cultural bus: the Athens working class use it; UGA students also use it. The bus is one of the few crossroads where these populations, mainly existing in parallel, have a chance to meet in a sustained way. Riding on the #25, I listen in on the driver talking to a grad student who had boarded in the vicinity of the UGA library. The student stood, clutching the vertical rail, close enough to the driver to converse. The subject of Halloween came up. The driver mentioned that his bus was pelted with eggs. He told the student he wouldn’t have minded it so much but that the eggs hit the windshield, affecting visibility. He recalled his youth in Chicago when the kids used to throw snowballs at the buses, but they posed less of a problem. The conversation shifted, and the student said, while stepping off the bus, “Have a good day. I guess being on the bus so much must be kinda therapeutic.”

“”Maybe for you,” the driver responded.

Another young woman expressed dismay at an interaction that also occurred on the #25, which runs out to Wal-Mart and also covers a significant swath of student housing.

“I was sitting on the bus and an older black woman was sitting across form a young college student. The woman, watching the student sink into her chair said, ’You must be tired.’ The student seemed shocked to be addressed by the woman, and answered, ’Are you talking to me? Are you tired?’”

The exchange worried the passenger, causing her to think it would reinforce the impression that UGA students are spoiled, rich kids. Yet they probably would not have spoken at all, if not for this common route. The opportunity for conversation between unalike citizens is a side benefit of public transport.

A teen watching me interview the woman quoted above asked me, “What do you have to do to become a ghost-writer?” He went on to tell me about stories he’d been working on in which his life in Douglas, GA, is contrasted with his experiences here, where he feels himself to be “an alien, clear over from the other side of the state.”

Reasons for using the bus are varied. Three people I spoke with ride the bus purely for medical reasons: two have had disabling strokes and one woman takes the bus daily to get to Athens Regional Medical Center for dialysis.

An elderly man in a wheelchair was admitted on board, the driver activating the electronic ramp to bring him on. Immediately he was handed an open bag of corn chips by a passenger sitting up front who knew him. Painstakingly, the driver maneuvered the wheelchair into position where the bench seat had been raised. He applied the straps, then learned that the man was on the wrong bus, and quietly reversed the procedure, advising the man of his proper route.

In the course of my interviews, I met up with Michael Davenport, a local artist well known to Athens. He paints with his mouth. Speaking to journalists is nothing new for Michael. I first noticed him by spotting the prominent hook in a place of a hand. “I do artwork with my mouth; I put the paintbrush or an ink pen in my mouth, and that’s how I paint. The bus works real well for me; that’s how I get to my jobs. I do a lot of night drawing.”

Davenport is just one of the many interesting people I would have never met had I remained in my car. Not only was my world enlarged by such encounters, but my sense of Athens as a place of beauty was clearly enhanced.

Some Reflections

To sit on a bus and appreciate the slow pageantry of scenery on all sides recalls bygone days, when the ethic of time management had not yet infused the populace like some infernal contagion. Boarding the bus for the first time brought back memories. It also evoked something rather hard to come by these days: calm. The bus’ slow acceleration out of the depot, its sharp, careful rounding of corners as it began its route, cast me in a role I had long forgotten, that of the privileged observer. With driving, unless it happens along sparsely traveled, scenic highways, the feeling is one of constant vigilance, an orgy of multi-tasking. The ability to accelerate, to maneuver and course about through traffic, encourages an adrenaline response, perhaps also a sense of power and control. On buses it is also possible to get worked up into a flurry of doing, but the more natural choices are either to sit quietly, watching the world go by, chat it up with a neighbor or read. As I looked through the windows, I saw incredible optical illusions in motion: cars entering tree trunks, people walking into the air as if by invisible escalator.

Seeking a meaning to my experiences, I found myself posing these questions: if the bus can fill such a broad spectrum of needs, why does it remain a last resort, rather than a first choice for so many? The passengers I spoke with often praised the expanded schedules. But what of the people still unable to get to work or find a job with no service on Sundays? What of the job seekers who can’t schedule four or five interviews a day because they rely on a system that still runs buses once an hour? And what is it about Athens that reflects such a quietly, deeply divided society, in which a majority of public transportation commuters are black people, while downtown remains flooded with bumper-to bumper SUVs, driven by mainly by white people?

E.J. Smith