Ants

I recently started working I downtown Houston which caused a niggling worry on how I would handle the traffic. I had decided after the first couple of days of driving into work, that I would try the bus. So started my bus route 265 experience. I have not seen a more orderly and obsequiously polite set of people as those that travel on my bus.  I would hazard a guess that people on all the park-and-ride buses behave this way too.  Commuting by bus brings out something different and very pleasant in Houstonians.

If an aerial view would be taken of people as they park at the West Bellfort park-and-ride during the peak bus travel time, we would all probably look like ants marching up to, and disappearing into a huge bus.  A conveyer belt of multiple lanes converging into a single box that is then moved along so that the next big box can take its place to be filled up, and so on.

Where you see a lot of aggressiveness and rage-inducing behavior on the Houston roads, you see quite the opposite on the buses.  There is no pushing or shoving, and no need to jockey for position, or strategic placement in order to gain footing.  Travelers simply walk to the end of the line, and patiently wait their turn to board.  People that don't want a bus that is too crowded simply step back and wait for the next bus.  It does help that during peak timings buses run every 3 minutes rivaling some of the subway system timings and travel experience in other cities.  Very rarely are people irritated on the bus.  It takes roughly 50 minutes of commute for me to drop my kids at their school, drive to the park-and-ride, park, walk to the bus (which takes as long as 10 minutes as the parking lot is quite vast), and finally board the bus to get off at my stop which is one of the last stops.  The commute time cannot be helped as we are bound by where we live and work.

Once on the bus, there is an air of purpose as people quietly go about their business - be it catching up on news, listening on their electronic device du jour, or quietly murmuring on the phone.  There isn't even a loud chatter or untoward noise.  On the way back people are a little more relaxed, especially ahead of an impending weekend, and you may hear stray conversations.

Since I embark on my journey at the beginning of the route (both ways) I don't have a problem finding room to sit.  On the way back, there is a quiet desperation on the faces of people waiting for this bus as we approach midtown as the bus does get quite full.  There are stops where the driver announces "standing room only" to passengers waiting, and you can hear the sighs as they step back from the bus to wait for the next one.  There are some brave enough to stand on the journey back to the park-and-ride.  However, those are few and far between.

What is it that enables people to behave solicitously on a park-and-ride bus, but is thrown out the window the minute the same people get into their cars?  Could it be that route-265 is a well traversed, simple route that has frequent buses which in turn induces a quite confidence in taking the bus?  If so,  why isn't there more aggression on the way back?  I can see it in myself, as I get quite anxious to go home in the evenings once I am in the car.  As we exit the parking lot, the feeling is as if the poisonous fumes of the road get into our brain, and disengage our polite behavior engines while driving on Houston roads.  We feel free to cut off people to the extent of eliciting road rage.  We don't like waiting at a traffic light even though we could go through it in just another couple of minutes.  If all it takes is public transportation or some type of car pooling program that brings out the better humans in us, then driving more than 10 miles to reach a daily work destination should be discouraged.  We can all then be ants.


Thank you for reading.