Now that Seattle voters approved taxes and fees that will improve bus service within the city, and therefore increase the value of the core in relationship to that of the surrounding districts and suburbs (a good situation which comes with the unhappy fact that the core is becoming more and more expensive and sending more and more working-class people out into areas that are cheaper but far from jobs and require the ownership and maintenance of very expensive cars), we have a little breathing room to address less pressing but by no means insignificant public transportation matters.

One of these concerns the drivers of our buses. If one of their goals as urban servants is the maintenance of public peace (or sanity), it is of the greatest importance that they never forget to check if a rider wants to use the rear door to disembark at a stop. Not doing so, not seeing if a man or woman is back there waiting and standing, not acting on their justified impatience (the bus could leave a rider's desired stop and make them late for work or something), often triggers an eruption of the worst and most disruptive emotions. It always begins with the waiting rider yelling: "OPEN THE BACK DOOR!" Then almost immediately, he or she is joined by seated passengers: "OPEN THE BACK DOOR!!!" And often one of these contributors is much louder/madder than the rest because he has had much more to drink than the rest.

But if the first round of frantic pleas are missed by the driver, whose attention is still focused on the needs of the main entrance, the back of the bus enters a state of madness that is much like that of a zoo whose animals have sensed and can't stop screaming, leaping, and running in circles about some danger that their human keepers cannot understand or see—is it a coming storm (but the sky is clear)? Is it a comet (again, the sky is clear)? Is it an earthquake (but the ground is not moving at all)? The meltdowns I have seen when the back door was not opened soon enough. The brain-breaking barking I've heard. Drivers must never ever fail to check and even double-check the rear door.