It was my first time taking public transit in the city, so I arrived 10 minutes early to catch the bus with my friend, Mario.

I was on my way to a meeting with Parsons Brinkerhoff, the consulting company leading the Bus Rapid Transit project on Woodward. Just as we were walking up to the stop, a SMART bus came and went. I didn’t think much of it since I was early, but it turns out–that was my bus.

Usually, I would panic, but I was well aware of the stigma of Detroit buses (especially DDOT) as being unreliable, so I allowed myself an hour to travel 3 miles down Woodward Ave to get to my meeting. Good thing I did, too.

A few minutes later, a DDOT bus pulled up at the station.

There were five or six people at our station, including a woman in a wheel chair. As the bus pulled up, the driver yelled at us to make room for him to assist her. He pulled a lever, the bus lowered itself and a platform unfolded for her to ride up. She rode up the platform and he frantically situated her on the side of the bus, obviously concerned with the amount of time it was taking. That’s why we need platform level boarding, I thought to myself.

Meanwhile, the remaining boarding passengers waited at the fare collection box to deposit our money. We only waited a few seconds, when the bus driver yelled at us to get to the back of the bus—despite the fact that we hadn’t paid. That’s why need off-board fare collection, I thought to myself.

Cash in hand, we pushed our way to the back and sat down.

I nervously asked the woman next to me if the bus would take me where I needed to go. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t really know. Then proceeded to tell me about how her car broke down and how she doesn’t have the money to fix it. A man my age, sitting to the left of me took his headphones out and confirmed I was going the right way.

The bus continued to stop at stop after stop after stop. People grumbled about the time it was taking. The woman next to me continued to tell me about her life. Lost in her conversation, I failed to realize that the bus had been lingering for some time. I looked up to see the bus driver in the aisle giving us a lecture on the importance of moving when someone says, “excuse me.”

The passengers sitting next to me all rolled their eyes. The young man on my left complained, “This man has been trying to ruin my morning since I got on this bus an hour ago. F**k it, I’m just going to get off here.” He left.

The woman next to me commented, “Yeah, you’ll probably be able to walk faster to where you need to go then by sitting here.”

An overweight woman sitting across from us, said, “All we can do is pray for that man” (referring to the bus-driver) everyone shakes their head and a says, “Amen.”

20 minutes later, we get off the bus. Mario gets his bike off the bus rack and the chain breaks.

The woman telling me about her broken car stays behind and fixes the chain for us.

15 minutes to spare until my meeting.

Reflection:

Three things in particular stick out to me about my experience. One, that this experience is long over-due. I’m a transit advocate, who should have ridden the bus weeks earlier to witness the system for myself. Having the experiences first-hand, makes my work tangible and motivates me to continue my research on Bus Rapid Transit.  I plan on taking more trips throughout my time here.

Two—people are kind. My trip to PB was a community effort made up by the teenagers who helped me figure out my next bus, the man who confirmed my route, the woman who asked us to pray for the bus driver, and the woman who helped us fix the bike chain.

Three, that even as a transit advocate, I have a stigma against buses. Not against the people who ride it, but of the service. That being said, in order to make our Bus Rapid Transit system a success, we need to build the support of choice riders to pass the Transit Millage in 2016.