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Riding on Bus Route 3
By Eduardo Barraza
BARRIOZONA
March 29, 2007
Phoenix, Arizona.− The bus approaches a bus stop on Van Buren Street, near downtown Phoenix, where an older woman
instinctively reacts to the scheduled arrival. She waits during the last few seconds on the sidewalk, staring at the
pavement where the public transportation vehicle is about to pull in. A burgundy, heavy backpack hangs from her back and
a beige purse from her right shoulder. The pair of tennis shoes she wears reveals she’s geared up to face a daily, routine
journey of boarding, alighting and transferring from one bus to another, as well as walking she only knows how many
streets.
Just seconds before the bus arrival, a soft wind waves her long skirt at the same rhythm an American flag undulates
across the street from above. The screeching noise of the brakes interrupts the monotony with the colorful, imposing
arrival of the bus. The bus operator promptly welcomes the lady in with a synchronized movement that opens the bus
doors. A computerized voice is heard announcing to bus passengers about to alight what routes they can transfer to from
that intersection. Once in the bus, the woman and two other passengers that hopped in the bus along with her, join about
a dozen other individuals who quietly seat dispersed on the bus seats.
Thousands of bus riders commute every day on this Valley Metro System’s route —Route 3— alone. According to the
System’s Ridership Report* an average of 8 thousand boardings in a single weekday are reported solely for this route,
that stretches from 67th Avenue to the Phoenix Zoo, via Van Buren Street. Statistics show that almost 60 million of system-
wise boardings were recorded during the fiscal year 2005-2006. Evidently, the figures reveal the great amount of
individuals who use this type of public transportation to get around in most of the fourth largest county of the nation,
Maricopa County.
But navigating through the system and throughout the Phoenix Metro area is not an easy feat. Walking distances,
sometimes long waits, as well as crowded buses during peak hours —where the greatest movement of passengers
occurs— are among other factors that can make a trip using this type of public transportation quite a challenge. Leave
aside the soon-to-arrive hottest summer temperatures, which turn even the most straightforward trip into a sweaty and
breathtaking affair. For these reasons, riding a Valley Metro bus talks about the struggle and toil thousands of men and
women face everyday in order to move from one place to another.
But make no mistake. Riding a bus isn’t as bad of an experience as some people may think. Public transportation by bus
offers numerous benefits to people as well as cities themselves. In fact, thanks to the Valley Metro bus system, it is
possible for many individuals that wouldn’t be able get around otherwise, go from one place to another. Take for instance
two persons with a disability, a man and a woman, who are sitting on their own wheelchairs in this bus ride. Occupying
the space next to the back door of the bus, they sure seem to enjoy the accessibility of the vehicle, which is equipped with
a “wheelchair lift device” that raises and lowers a platform that makes possible for wheelchair users to board and alight
the bus. So public transportation plays a vital role in many people’s lives despite the inherent hardships being a bus rider
brings.
Thus, every day, and in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix’, before the sunrise and after the sunset, the incessant traffic
of people who lack their own transportation or that use the bus for their own convenience, creates a peculiar culture of
human movement. Upon the asphalt strip as an artery, the heartbeat of a crowd infuses a sentiment of search in cities
who attempt to awake to a daily challenge of staying vibrant and productive. Their workforce, industrious and booming,
searches within itself to be able to be transported rapidly and effectively through streets and avenues, which regardless of
their width or narrowness, get tight when confronted with the piling up of traffic of vehicles that increases with the
continuous advent of new inhabitants.
Let us imagine a city, not of private automobiles, but of a predominant public transportation, under a sky without pollution
and where the air is air and carpooling isn’t indispensable. More buses, and less cars; extinct traffic congestions and an
abundance of pedestrians walking upon sidewalks packed with people who exchanged opaque and bald car tires, for
shoes of shinny and attractive appearance. Less obesity, perhaps, better blood circulation, and bodies in shape that
encouraged themselves even to despise claustrophobic elevators and to prefer the concrete or metal of the staircase that
is tiring, but drop the extra pounds all the way to the first floor. And in a harmonious motion, the gross of the population
traveling, sitting or standing, in buses where road rage is history and new friendships germinate by sharing the bus book.
However, at least for now, public transportation slips away through routes where the private car is boss and the bus is just
an assistant. The Phoenix metropolitan area, in this way, becomes suffocated in the contamination of the vehicular
selfishness, where hundreds of thousands of cars with as many other hundreds of thousands of lonely drivers inside of
them, narrow the shared option of the democratic experience of traveling in a bus, surrounded by strangers, who are
people, after all. A bus; we could ponder it as a means of humble and unpretentious transportation that is there only to
take us to our destination, and at the rhythm of the “music” of a programmed voice that guides through routes and buses
so we do not err our direction.
On the way to work, school bound, coming back home; going to the market, the daycare facility or to the site of reunion;
Valley Metro buses carry people almost incessantly. Individuals engrossed in their own thoughts, men and women with
work uniforms and I.D. badges, entire families with children who enjoy the simplicity of happiness. People with disabilities
who, lacking help, rely on themselves at the pace of the wheels of their chairs that limit them, but traveling in buses
empower them. Homeless people who carry heavy backpacks and refuge from cold or hot weather on a trip they long
could be interminable. Strangers who act like childhood friends under the bus shelters installed on the sidewalks, that
provide seats and protection from the elements. There, friendships emerge and dissipate within the “dwell time,” that is,
the scheduled time a bus discharges and takes on passengers at a bus stop, sometimes a few seconds. And lastly, the
people who ride bikes where buses don’t run, and whose bikes ride on the bike rack located on the front of the bus. All,
equally —passengers of a temporary stay— by means of a bus pass, coins or a transfer slip, travel inside a bus that is
comparable to life, in which we all board at one point and alight at another, at the end of our destination.
While the majority of the bus riders remain quiet, the ride is noisy. The sound of the bus engine, the air brakes, as well as
the incessant programmed voice that announces stops and routes as an automatic service for passengers, compose
almost the entirety of sounds heard through the trip. The occasional, lively conversation, the sporadic children’s excite, or
the perfect stranger who tells us to "have a nice day," breaks once in a while the almost generalized silence of
passengers. Some board; others alight. The bus stops; advances. The route begins; ends. Garage bound, on the way
home, bus and passenger move further away from each other. The half-light of the night closes the eyelids and turns off
the headlights. Tomorrow, another journey.
Copyright © 2007 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
www.barriozona.com
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A routine ride in a few buses of the Transit System in Phoenix opens up a whole dimension where human
toil and struggle unfolds.