That one time you rode the bus? That single sparkling day you had to leave your car at the garage for an oil change and flagged down the 27H and finished the new Ann Patchett somewhere between the village shops and The French Cafe and it was so stress-free and convenient and why doesn’t everybody do this?
Yeah, nah.
Recently, I spent 35 minutes avoiding eye contact with a man zooming up and down the aisle with outstretched arms yelling “I can fly… we can ALL fly…”
Unrelated, but if you think it’s easy to tell the difference between the contents of a leaky water bottle and urine, then perhaps you’ve never had to hold your breath for 35 minutes while the teenager slouched in a dry seat in front of you vapes all the way to high school.
Some days, the worst thing you see on the bus is a grown man’s Garfield bag taking up an entire seat. Other days, you wish you could unsee the messages being typed by a pimply young man in a wrinkled suit who is maxing his afternoon commute with a Sugar Daddy side hustle.
There is a bus driver in Auckland who tells every passenger to “have a fabulous day, be happy and safe, keep smiling”. Every. Single. Passenger.
There was another bus driver who stepped out from behind his safety glass enclosure, crouched in front of a small girl, and presented her with a tiny plush koala. He said “I like you – you’re nice and quiet” and I don’t think I was the only passenger who considered pressing the emergency button.
Some mornings the bus smells like last night’s dinner clinging to a coat or a cheap perfume that hasn’t had time to mellow. Other times it smells like the solvents in the bag someone is huffing on the back seat. Once, I sat behind two passengers who ate potato chips and argued over who had shoplifted the best flavour.
“Hello, how are you?” said a polite young man to the bus driver as he boarded on Queen St. “May I ask you, when does the road get well?” (And that young man was everybody who spent 200 years navigating road cones and concrete cutters to get to a bus stop handily situated next to an abandoned building site while workers completed a rail link that doesn’t assist your commute one little bit).
There are definitive rules about how to behave on public transport. There are also absolute givens that are not written down but possibly should be.
In Japan, for example, it is considered rude to speak loudly or use your cellphone in this moving shared space. In Auckland, at least seven passengers will be scrolling YouTube, conducting a WhatsApp video call, or watching an international football match. None will be wearing headphones.
Auckland Transport’s conditions of carriage “encourage” passengers to offer their seats to older people, pregnant women and anyone with a disability or mobility difficulties. Obviously, if you are under 30, this does not apply to you because … actually, I don’t know why. Is it because you are a self-entitled brat?
Passengers are not allowed to board the bus with radioactive materials or poison. Fair enough. How about two buckets of KFC, a hacking cough and unspeakable racism?
On a bus, space is limited and on an afternoon bus, nobody has cleaned their teeth since breakfast. Toothpaste, not talk, is near the top of my list of unwritten rules for public transport.
That list, in summary: More transport, less public.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016. She is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk and misplaces her HOP card at least twice a week.