My personal public transport gripe

For work, I have been researching transport, and in particular the motorways. The other student who works with me is researching public transport. Accordingly, many discussions have been had over the relative merits of different public transport systems. The views espoused are generally positive.

However, last week, when I took the bus home, something happened. It was something which both brought back memories and left me rattled.

What I am about to say next will sound like a digression but it actually isn't:

School field trips were great. You used to be able to skip classes without having to get a parent to ring up and say that you were sick, and go to some place that was sort-of related to what you were studying, (usually) with a group of friends. However, there was one aspect of field trips which was always somewhat problematic. This was the bus travel, but not for the reason you think. Most people would probably think that I don't like bus travel because of the perception that I'm a neo-liberal who doesn't believe in public goods. This is not completely true, though public goods do make an economic mess when you're trying to draw them on a graph.

The real issue was the whole two-person-to-a-seat rule on buses. For most of my high school life, I didn't have a best friend at school. Accordingly, this meant that I didn't automatically have the 'right' to sit next to anyone. And after you're about 12, it's a bit weird to ask someone who is your friend but not your best friend "can I sit with you?" without sounding a tad creepy. That's just my opinion. As it happened though, I was fortunate enough to have a group of friends, and I can only once remember having to sit next to a random. Happy times.

So, I guess you could say that my approach to getting a seat on the bus (and a partner) was a bit like the aircraft gas mask approach: help yourself before you help others. Survival of the fittest, to put it less originally.

But, as it happened, finding a partner was never the biggest issue. There were two potential problems that could arise prior to the completion of a successful bus ride. The first is when you're walking down the aisle to get to your seat, and you see someone that you know, who is alone and is looking for a partner. The best way to get around this was to avoid eye contact, which was actually easier said than done, because usually the desperate person would be trying everything to lock in some unsuspecting classmate. Sometimes, in desperation, they would call out your name, and you'd have to say, as quietly as possible "uhh sorry X, I've already promised to sit with Y...." ...meanwhile all the people sitting around are a) witnessing the person's public rejection; and, b) probably thinking that I'm a horrible person. The second situation that could arise was when the teachers realised too late that they had not ordered enough buses, and so would shout out "THREE TO A SEAT!". Anarchy invariably ensued, and if you didn't move quickly enough, you would either have some random assigned to your seat, and be burdened with having to include them in your conversation for the entire journey, or, even worse, some teacher would pull you out and assign you to another seat, and so you would be the burden on some other people's conversation.

And now to get back to what I was talking about. I got onto the 746 at Britomart. I was one of the first people on, so I had my choice of seats. I took the seat behind the second lot of doors at the back of the bus. Before departing, the bus waited for more people to arrive, and by the time we departed, the bus was full. It was so full that everyone had to stand. All the seats were taken. All except one, and that one happened to be the seat next to me. I began to wonder why no one getting on was sitting next to me. Subconsciously, I was probably even staring longingly at each passenger who walked past, trying to make eye contact. But alas, the seat next to me stayed empty for the entire trip.

Don't get me wrong.. there were certainly people on that bus next to whom I would rather not have sat, for example, the lady who looked like she had just done Christmas shopping for a family of twenty, judging by the number of bags she had. Despite this, I was plagued by self doubt. Why did someone choose to sit next to the bag lady and not me? Did I seem unfriendly? Did I look like a criminal?

Or maybe everyone else had organised their partners before they got on the bus.