Today, Santiago is changing before my eyes. It's a change even more immediate and at least as visible as that effected by the cookie-cutter skyscraping apartment buildings rising up all over the city: the buses are going away. The city is implementing a new transportation plan that promises more efficiency, better safety, a better payment system, and so on, but which for now is causing commuter pandemonium. In its first day, newspapers reported transit times up to three times the usual for some bus riders, and something is so wrong with the new high-tech payment system that all the buses are free, at some better-unknown cost to the city. When the dust clears and the kinks are ironed out, perhaps the system really will be safer and better. But I think I'll miss the wild but surprisingly efficient chaos of the old system of dirty, polluting yellow buses.
Sometime around the time I arrived in this country, there were approximately 7,500 individual buses running in Santiago -- loud, fast, and dirty. Far from being government-run, these were owned by hundreds of operators, some of whom supposedly so small they owned just a single bus. They'd speed up and down the streets, passing each other to get to the crowded bus stops first and pick up more passengers. Many decorated the insides of their buses with fabric, stickers, fake flowers, action figures glued to the roof; many blasted music; some boasted colored black lights. Whether this was to attract customers or just for their own fun I never knew.
The way to catch one of these roaring, smoke-belching monsters was to try to read its window sign (usually hand-painted) as it sped past at insane speeds, which listed main streets along its route, and flag the bus down if it listed the desired destination. The successful bus-riding visitor learned quickly to pick our major streets from the long lists. But that was only one challenge met: next was getting on. This could be hazardous, as buses often pulled out into traffic as people were still hanging just half in the open doors. Getting off was no different. Doors opened long before the stop was in sight, and a passenger hoping to disembark at a less popular stop (where the bus paused more briefly) would swing themselves down to the bottom step and hop off when the vehicle hesitated just above zero mph -- often stepping down into traffic if the bus driver didn't see fit to pull over to the curb.
You'd be justified in demanding what in this system inspired my fondness. The thing is, it was so absolutely demand-based. The system formed itself to whatever I -- the customer -- wanted. At least in my common routes, admittedly very well-traveled corridors, buses ran constantly all day and night. I never waited more than a moment for a bus to come along. The few times I went much farther off the beaten path, the waiting times were longer, but the routes made up for it. I always seemed to find a bus whose route twisted and turned to the various streets I wanted to go, so I never had to transfer. Then, if I wanted to get off at a corner that wasn't a real stop, and if I asked the driver nicely, I was likely to get to hop off the (almost) stopped bus and hardly have to walk half a block to my destination. Not to mention that you could pay the fare with any of the smaller denominations of bills, and the driver would make change for you while driving off with his knee on the wheel. Not having to scrounge exact change was the height of convenience to me, even if it was quite rightly one of the major safety complaints leading to reform.
Most of all, though, I'll miss the vendors, if the new buses fulfill their threat (advertised on signs inside them) of banning traveling salespeople. On the old buses, old and young men and women boarded and exited the bus incessantly as it lurched along, selling ice cream, socks, or Band-Aids, or just playing music or telling jokes for donations. The cost: a small coin, never more than a dollar. And they always sold something I needed or wanted: scissors, a stapler, traditional songs sung unexpectedly sweetly, Chilean rhymes rapped with the height of urban skill. Once one recounted the passes and goals of a recent soccer game in perfect radio-sportscaster style.
If the new, clean, speed-capped buses of the Transantiago plan keep allowing the poor, the old, the very young, and the dirty to sell their wares or talents or intellect, maybe then the new system can give us the combination of old and new that marks Chile's capital at its best.
Sometime around the time I arrived in this country, there were approximately 7,500 individual buses running in Santiago -- loud, fast, and dirty. Far from being government-run, these were owned by hundreds of operators, some of whom supposedly so small they owned just a single bus. They'd speed up and down the streets, passing each other to get to the crowded bus stops first and pick up more passengers. Many decorated the insides of their buses with fabric, stickers, fake flowers, action figures glued to the roof; many blasted music; some boasted colored black lights. Whether this was to attract customers or just for their own fun I never knew.
The way to catch one of these roaring, smoke-belching monsters was to try to read its window sign (usually hand-painted) as it sped past at insane speeds, which listed main streets along its route, and flag the bus down if it listed the desired destination. The successful bus-riding visitor learned quickly to pick our major streets from the long lists. But that was only one challenge met: next was getting on. This could be hazardous, as buses often pulled out into traffic as people were still hanging just half in the open doors. Getting off was no different. Doors opened long before the stop was in sight, and a passenger hoping to disembark at a less popular stop (where the bus paused more briefly) would swing themselves down to the bottom step and hop off when the vehicle hesitated just above zero mph -- often stepping down into traffic if the bus driver didn't see fit to pull over to the curb.
You'd be justified in demanding what in this system inspired my fondness. The thing is, it was so absolutely demand-based. The system formed itself to whatever I -- the customer -- wanted. At least in my common routes, admittedly very well-traveled corridors, buses ran constantly all day and night. I never waited more than a moment for a bus to come along. The few times I went much farther off the beaten path, the waiting times were longer, but the routes made up for it. I always seemed to find a bus whose route twisted and turned to the various streets I wanted to go, so I never had to transfer. Then, if I wanted to get off at a corner that wasn't a real stop, and if I asked the driver nicely, I was likely to get to hop off the (almost) stopped bus and hardly have to walk half a block to my destination. Not to mention that you could pay the fare with any of the smaller denominations of bills, and the driver would make change for you while driving off with his knee on the wheel. Not having to scrounge exact change was the height of convenience to me, even if it was quite rightly one of the major safety complaints leading to reform.
Most of all, though, I'll miss the vendors, if the new buses fulfill their threat (advertised on signs inside them) of banning traveling salespeople. On the old buses, old and young men and women boarded and exited the bus incessantly as it lurched along, selling ice cream, socks, or Band-Aids, or just playing music or telling jokes for donations. The cost: a small coin, never more than a dollar. And they always sold something I needed or wanted: scissors, a stapler, traditional songs sung unexpectedly sweetly, Chilean rhymes rapped with the height of urban skill. Once one recounted the passes and goals of a recent soccer game in perfect radio-sportscaster style.
If the new, clean, speed-capped buses of the Transantiago plan keep allowing the poor, the old, the very young, and the dirty to sell their wares or talents or intellect, maybe then the new system can give us the combination of old and new that marks Chile's capital at its best.
posted by stream at 4:58 PM
1 Comments:
I loved the old system too. The new "Transantiago" appears overly complicated and centralized. The major benefit - apparently - will be safety and cleaner buses.
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