Metro Transit has gone green, they say in their ads, by buying a bunch of all-electric buses. They’re made by a company called Gillig, and they’re lousy.
The first sign of a problem with these buses is, literally, the sign — the external readerboard which lists what route the bus is running. The signs are electronic, like everything on the bus, but even on the new buses’ first day in service (and still now, months later) the electronic route number and name are often gibberish, with the lower half of all the letters missing, or the text flickering in some electronic code instead of English.
Metro gave these new buses an ugly paint scheme, in assorted florescent colors that vary from bus to bus and even from the front of the bus to the back. A bus should look like a bus, not a piece of pop art, so old folks like me know it’s the bus.
Inside, the seating arrangement is the worst of any bus I’ve ever ridden, with only two front-facing seats in the main seating section, surrounded by about a dozen sideways seats. Can’t speak for other humans, but my body wasn’t built for going sideways at 30 miles per hour. It leaves my back and neck sore, especially if the driver is too enthusiastic with the brakes and acceleration, or the bus goes over some bumps. And all buses go over some bumps.
There are another dozen front-facing seats in the balcony, but most of those seats have a wall or a wheel-well that reduces the foot space. And I got big feet.
And anyway, you have to climb stairs to get to those seats, and climbing stairs is not my great talent, especially in stop-and-go traffic. So I’m usually stuck in a damned sideways seat on these damned electric buses.
And they’re usually the only buses running on the #105 and #128, two routes I frequently ride. So my back and neck frequently hurt. And I’m frequently grumpy on the Gilligs.
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One afternoon, riding the #128 with very few passengers, I kinda knew the driver, so I asked him if he liked these new electric buses. And he talked for a block: “I hate ’em. Nothing but trouble, a control panel like a fighter jet, a million dumb doodads, with always one or two of them not working. One day the back doors won’t open, the next day the turn signals won’t signal, the next day the signs are out of whack…”
“Oh, I’ve seen that about the signs. And I’ve seen two of these new buses getting towed back to the bus barn.”
“It might’ve been me. I’ve had two runs end in a tow with these suckers.”
He was saying all this while the Gillig was zooming at 35 mph in a 30 mph zone, so I said, “What about the acceleration?”
“That’s the only thing I like about these buses. They got some gumption and get-up-and-go.”
So I said no more, but that’s what I hate most about the new buses. Too much get-up-and-go. Most buses, diesel or electric, run on putt-putt power, but I’ve driven cars that couldn’t go from zero the thirty as quick as these buses. And that ain’t good. Slow and steady is better for my body. I’m really not looking for a land speed record on the bus.
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All of which brings us to a sorta sucky day a few sorta sucky weeks ago. It was windy, slightly rainy, but I’d forgotten my jacket, and that morning’s sideways ride on an electric bus had left my back and neck in moderate pain all day.
I was a little wet, a little cranky, a little pained, waiting for a bus toward home, and here it comes and it’s one of those damned electrics. It was nearly full, so my choice was a sideways seat or no seat at all. I took a damned sideways seat.
Before I’d sat down, the driver accelerated, too abruptly. Half a block later, he braked roughly in traffic. Then, at a bus stop, he braked hard and it sent a fresh jolt up my back and across my neck. After a few passengers came aboard, the driver accelerated too enthusiastically, again. At a light, my neck was turned 90 degrees and I was watching — the bus driver had plenty of time and space, could’ve stopped smoothly at the red, but instead he stopped with a jolt. And the bus was going down a fairly steep hill at this point, so I had to hang on tight to keep from slipping from the sideways seat I was in to the sideways seat beside me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, perhaps ever-so-slightly too loud. I popped up from my seat, grabbed a stanchion, and said still too loud, “I’ll just stand.”
Indeed I stood in the aisle for the rest of the ride. Which ain’t great for my legs, but it’s better for my back than being pushed and pulled with every nudge of the brake and gas. And it turns out, it wasn’t a long ride.
Was it rude to say “Jesus fucking Christ”? It was a prayer! And this was a bus, not a library! And I would’ve had nothing more to say — I was looking out the window, not for an argument.
After a block or so, though, I swiveled my sore neck and made eye contact with the driver, who was glaring at me in his rear view mirror, so I glared back.
A block later we were still glaring at each other, and he said to me, “You gotta problem?”
“No problem,” I said, and that’s all I said.
He was still glaring at me, and after a few bumps and brakes he said, “You sure look like you gotta problem.”
“That’s just my face, man. It’s a problem face.”
That’s a laugh, right? My back hurt, my neck hurt, and I just wanted a damned bus ride. But he was still glaring at me, so at the next stop light I added, “Anyway, now that I’m standing, you probably won’t cripple me slamming on the brakes.”
“I can try,” he said, and tapped the brakes, but it was a tender tap, not enough to topple me or even stir anyone. The other passengers were hanging on already.
“You’re doing it on purpose?”
“Doing what? I’m just driving the bus.”
“Driving the bus shitty,” I said.
And at that, the driver pulled to a too-sudden stop at the curb, and said, “This is where you get off.”
It wasn’t a bus stop, and we were a mile from my destination, but that’s where I stepped off. The door closed, the bus roared away without me.
Usually I’m chill with bus drivers, even lousy drivers. If I don’t say thanks as I’m stepping off the bus, it must’ve been a particularly bad driver, and this time I didn’t say thanks.
Maybe I deserved to be evicted from the bus, maybe I didn’t, but I’ve watched other passengers get the boot, and you can’t win. If you stay on when you’ve been ordered off, the driver radios the police.
So I walked two blocks in the rain to the next stop, then waited fifteen minutes in the rain for another bus, filling my increasingly soggy notebook with what had happened, and hoping it might make an amusing story. You’ll be the judge of that.
When the next bus came, it was another damned electric bus. All the front-facing seats were taken, so I rode in a sideways seat.
6/15/2026
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