On the bus
Parc bus, rush hour. It is ten degrees warmer than hell, and I have had exactly two hours sleep. I find a spot near an open window and cling to a pole that is slick with someone else’s sweat. The smell of bodies is everywhere.
The bus crawls slowly up Parc Avenue, which is and may forever be narrowed by construction. Through the window, I see drivers sitting comfortably in their air conditioned cars and seethe with impotent rage. If the revolution ever comes, it will begin on an un-air conditioned bus in rush hour.
Question: Why aren’t all forms of mass transit air conditioned?
Answer: Because politicians don’t take the bus.
To my left, a woman is distractedly pecking at the keypad of her Blackberry. The make-up she is wearing, which is generous, is smearing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. I try to imagine what it would feel like not to be able to wipe the sweat from my face. I seize the opportunity to wipe the sweat from my face.
To my right, a young couple is sitting with their infant daughter. I smile at them and make a silly face at the baby. She is in remarkably good spirits, cooing and gurgling at her mother, and this inspires me to feel marginally better about clinging to a wet pole in hell. I look out the window at a cyclist who is beet-red and panting with effort. Yes, I think, it can always be worse.
As we cross des Pins, the baby abruptly changes tone. Her cooing sounds become lower, almost guttural; I see worry shadow her mother’s face. Oh god, I think: she knows. The mothers always know. I look anxiously past the woman with the Blackberry to see if there is any room left at the back of the bus. There isn’t. I realize that I am trapped and feel instantly nauseous.
The baby kicks at her mother and starts to whimper. Her mother hushes her, rocking her gently in her arms. The baby is quiet for a moment, her little brow furrowing as she debates her options. To cry or not to cry? As the bus lumbers past the mountain, she makes her decision: she will scream. And so she does–loudly, insistently, and without once stopping for breath.
I slump against my pole and begin plotting the revolution, which I decide will be fought with an army of screaming babies during a heat wave. I content myself with knowing that the government would immediately collapse, and that soon afterward all city buses would be installed with air conditioning. And barcaloungers.
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Eversince I arrived here in Montreal with my wife three weeks ago we don’t have a lot of things to complain about, but yes, we’re missing the A/C in the busses and metros that we were used to in Barcelona. Usually the A/C in most of the places is way too strong so we are really wondering why public transport has none. Do politicians go to a movie theater that often?
Take a hot and muggy night, add in a long and very loud thunderstorm and you end up with a sleep-deprived city of 1.7 million.
If half of us weren’t on vacations, you’d be having your revolution by now ;-P
Yeah, I am myself quite sleep-deprived with these nights… I cannot even write my URL correctly, so here it is again, I hope to blog about Montreal as well seen that it is my new home now: Canada Here We Come!
AC is buses? Doesn’t it work anywhere in the world? I’m thinking a whole lot of energy required to keep such a small contained environment cooled, especially with doors opening every two minutes and if there was AC, many customers wouldn’t have the decency to keep windows closed. A lot of energy makes a lot of heat, which would pretty much defeat the whole purpose.
The metro would be a good place to put AC. It may work in the wagons, but there’s still the problem that metro stations don’t have two sets of doors like shopping malls.
I just remember that one time I went up to visit some friends in Mile End(that would be you Vila)
The bus was so hot and so crowded that people who were sitting outside on terraces drinking sangria would point and laugh at us as we crawled up the street.
AC vs Politicians… aint that the goddamn truth
Yesterday I was helping a friend move his stuff with a car (no AC but at least we had our own windows). We were behind the 80 bus going through the park and we both said: thank god we aren’t carrying all this stuff on that bus in this heat. The entire busload of people looked absolutely miserable and this was after dark already and much cooler than earlier in the day. The 80 is painful and I count my blessings every day that I don’t have to ride it at rush hour.
I found the thunderstorm to be a relief, really. I got at least 5 hours last night compared to the 1.5 the night before…
The yeas have it, clearly. Now, about those barcaloungers…
I still prefer this weather to the cold.
My real beef with the buses is the smell. For the love of God people, there is no excuse to be so stinky. If my face is going to be jammed into your armpit during the rush hour ride home, do us all the courtesy of taking a shower.
I don’t know if it is efficient but about half the buses in Toronto have AC… it’s just the ones that don’t that you dread. I feel the pain in this article so much.. and heightened by the ache of an only 2 hour sleep.
The screaming babies revolution on heated buses pulling up to Ottawa would be quite the sight I must say!