I am not an angry person. For me, tears spring forth quicker than a biting retort. But on a recent April afternoon, I felt hot fury pump through my veins over a disagreement with a bus driver.
I was waiting for the route 2 bus under the bus shelter at 20th Avenue and East Union Street. The shelter is about, oh, I don’t know, 50 feet east from the sign for the bus stop. I regularly wait here. I regularly board here. So do the other 2 riders.
The bus was late. Par for the course. When it finally crested the hill, it didn’t stop, or even slow. It chugged by. I shouted and sprinted to catch up, outraged and spreading my arms wide in a “what gives?!”-kind of gesture. The driver opened the doors in the middle of the street. I boarded.
“That’s not the stop!” The bus driver yelled at me. “You have to be at the stop!”
I bristled. The bus shelter wasn’t the stop? The painted curb stretched from the bus stop sign to the bus shelter where, again, I have regularly been picked up from. I told him this.
“You have to go to the stop,” he reiterated.
I saw red. Clearly, he was wrong. And, not only that, but he had tainted the bus driver-passenger relationship, normally a pleasant and cherished interaction for me.
I did what any sensible person would do. I emailed the communications team at King County Metro to factcheck this asshole. Perhaps, my vindication would double as service journalism, instructions for how to ride the bus properly. After all, hoards of newcomers will descend on our city for the World Cup.
I pounded the following questions into my keyboard:
1) What counts as a bus stop? Is it just the spot directly under the “bus stop” sign?
2) Does the entirety of the painted curb count as the bus stop?
3) What about the bus shelter within the painted curb?
4) When bus drivers are scanning for passengers, are they trained to only look at the bus stop sign for passengers or the entirety of where the painted curb is (including the bus shelter)?
Understandably, Al Sanders, the King County Metro public information officer, wanted to know why I was asking.
I was not proud of this and confessed the real reason for my inquiry.
“I’d love to say this was for a story on bus riding tips, but in reality, I just had an experience where a bus driver drove past me while I was standing at a bus shelter and claimed I wasn’t at the stop,” I wrote. To save face, I added, “I wanted to find out the truth and see if I could do some service journalism in the meantime! So, in a way it’s bus-riding 101.”
He apologized on behalf of the driver and set to work.
Nearly a week later, my rage long-dissipated, I received the answer and a serving of humble pie.
According to the operator’s manual, the sign is the stop. If you’re waiting in the shelter, generally speaking, you need to walk to it when the bus comes because it’s where passengers with disabilities can board. That’s why, when one bus lines up behind another at a busier stop and opens its doors early, the driver makes the second stop at the sign. Fuck. I’m the asshole. And I’m ableist. I’m already packing my bags.
“For the stop such as the location on 20th and Union—where the shelter is a short distance from the bus sign—bus operations would encourage riders to keep an eye out for the approaching bus and as soon as they see the bus is coming, move to the bus stop flag,” Sanders wrote. “If it is dark outside in the morning or evening, riders also can use a flashlight or cellphone light to help the bus driver see them more clearly.”
I am sorry to all the bus drivers who have violated the bus driver bible and picked a wretch like me up at a not-officially-sanctioned stop. Forgive me for luxuriating under a rare covered shelter in this rainy city (it wasn’t raining that day, but whatever). I am stuffed with crow and capable of change. You will not catch me boarding the route 2 bus from the bus shelter again. I swear it.
