Buses are not for people who hate close quarters. Strangers are going to touch you, maybe for prolonged periods, especially shoulder to shoulder. The etiquette is to pretend it’s not happening.
On Victoria's buses, I like to ride at the back, in the sideway seats, because there is more legroom. There is no seat back for your knees to crash into. You can slouch a bit, though not so much that you stick your legs into the aisle. But it is noisier because the engine is at the back.
During the ride, I split my time between eavesdropping if something interesting is going on, reading email and news on my iPhone, and watching the world go by.
A lot of people spend the ride looking at their smartphones — half the bus sometimes, maybe more.
I used to use the transit function on the Google Maps app on my iPhone to figure out bus times while on the move. I’ve since switched to the simpler Transit app, which detects where you are, and offers a list of routes that are near you, with estimated times until the next bus. The bulky printed schedule is also handy, but I usually don't have it with me.
I aim to be courteous. I get up when the seats are all taken and there’s a person who obviously needs a seat more than me. Most passengers behave the same way. We are a courteous bunch in Victoria.
You need to be a little tolerant about oddball behaviour. When I’ve mentally groused about what someone was doing — playing music, singing, doing their nails, shouting into a phone, swearing — I’ve usually felt a touch ashamed for being so intolerant. The exception is people putting their feet up on seats; I’m just plain annoyed about that, and can’t get over it.
A colleague tells me that riding the bus is for losers. I haven’t retorted with something witty yet; I am very slow with witty retorts.
Riding the bus is often more efficient than driving. You don’t have to do the driving. You can do something semi-useful while you’re on the move, like read emailed instructions from your boss. You don’t have to hunt for and pay for parking. When you arrive, you just step off, and forget about the bus. You don’t have to worry about where you parked, and whether some schmo will dent your door.
Of course, the bus is only efficient if you can catch it, and if it takes you where you want to go. I’m fortunate enough to live along Route 6, which is a high-frequency route, with a bus coming every 10 minutes or less during peak hours on weekdays. Because it’s that frequent, I don’t even bother to look at a schedule. It goes downtown, and that’s where I typically want to go.
It’s a different story at night and on weekends. Service time stretches to 15 minutes, then 30 minutes. Sometimes the bus is early, and I miss it. Or it’s late. When the service is every 10 minutes, it doesn’t really matter. When it’s every 30 minutes, missing a bus matters a lot. That’s when I question my decision to not drive.
Buses that I ride are usually busy, moreso at night and weekends when there are fewer buses. That’s contrary to comments I've seen on the letters page, with writers declaring they see empty buses go by all the time. But those buses are probably filling up as they go along their routes. That’s the pattern on Route 6; when I get on, there are plenty of seats; by the time we reach downtown, all seats are taken and the aisle is packed with standees.
I churlishly debate whether I should yell thank you — a Victoria convention — as I leave the bus. As I step off, the courtesy either pops out of my mouth, or it doesn’t.
Finally, it’s fun to ride on the top level of a double-decker, especially if you sit at the very front, where the windows are huge; as you look out it feels like you're being swallowed by the road.
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