When young in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I walked everywhere, or took public transportation. Few of my friends had access to cars, even in high school. I remember the outsized admiration we had for my cousin’s boyfriend’s 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire, a car with a great shining chrome plate from headlights to tail. But we were bus people, or — as the time called for — streetcar riders. I rode the streetcar back to Homewood to see my friends when I moved from there to the Hill District, and took the streetcar to art school when I graduated from Schenley High. But I took the bus when my brother and I went to Philadelphia to stay with my aunt in the summer, and I bused to Ambridge to see a friend get married. When I came to Indianapolis from Southern Indiana to work for L.S. Ayres, I left my car parked at my apartment at 16th and Meridian Street and took the bus downtown to Washington and Meridian. (It was on that bus that I first saw the woman who subsequently agreed to become my second bride.)
Riding the bus is a normal activity for me. When I suffer the occasional “car outage,” I get on the bus. I took the “Hound” (Greyhound) to care for my brother in July of 2019, and have taken that dog to New Jersey, to see my grandpuppies. (And my daughter. And my son-in-love.) One of my nieces in Pennsylvania was a bus rider, too, but her social media posts indicate that she was less than pleased with the experience. She posted complaints about body odor, food odors and loud conversations. When I was visiting with my brother in Pittsburgh, I would climb onto the bus to go to the market, or downtown to see the August Wilson Museum, or to make a Target run. But in all of my trips on buses, whether in Pittsburgh, New Jersey or New York City, I have not observed the behavior exhibited by bus riders in Indianapolis.
There have been few instances during my car-less stints on IndyGo where I have not observed what I call “The Miracle of Thanks.” Nowhere else, in the cities where I have climbed onto and exited from public transportation (read: bus) have the riders uniformly said to the driver of the bus, “Thank you.” In Indianapolis, when riders exit from any door of the bus, including the “back door,” they call out to the driver, “Thank you” or “Thank you, bus driver.” I’ve not heard this in Pittsburgh, Newark, New Jersey, nor New York City. And with few exceptions, the bus drivers have been equally as courteous. One driver made an announcement once the bus reached the Julia M. Carson Transit center at 201 E. Washington Street, saying that the company appreciated our ridership and wished everyone a good holiday. (I do not remember the holiday.) The passengers who exited the bus each thanked that driver, as did I.
There have been moments when the city bus drivers have been less than joyful; I recently heard a driver bark, “TURN IT DOWN!” One of the rules on IndyGo buses is that boom-boxes are prohibited. (That is the icon on the bus! A boom-box with a line through it.) The driver was directing a passenger to quiet his phone call. Another time, a driver demanded that no rider be moving in the aisles while the bus was in motion. But mostly, my bus business has been about quiet transportation, with a soupçon of caring.
As a driver might say, “That’s my business, and business is good.”
cjon3acd@att.net