free buses!!!!

When I studied in Moscow in 1992, the cheapest and easiest way to travel around town was the ‘Edini Billet’ or Unified Ticket.  It was something that a person could use to travel on all modes of transportation from Metro, to bus, to tramway, to trolleybus—and it was not expensive.  I thought it was still that way so a couple days after I arrived, I bought a Edini for October.
 It’s pretty expensive now—like $65 or something.  I’m making the most of it.  To accompany the ticket, I bought a booklet that shows all the bus, tram, and trolleybus routes.  Several times, I’ve taken a bus to my teaching job rather than the metro and arrived quite quickly.  I was lucky.  I had to wait for the buses only about one minute each time.   One evening, I was able to run to the bus and not wait even a second.
The biggest difference between the metro and bus/trams is that the metro involves practically no waiting.  There must be thousands of trains running down there because the usual wait time is 2-3 minutes, and never more than 5.  The metro is not totally great because you have to walk to the station, admittedly not usually a big distance, and you have to ride an escalator for as long as 2.5 minutes.  And, of course, back UP the escalator.

Rotating bar

When I got on the first bus, I was pleasantly surprised to find no asking for tickets or money.  Since I had my pre-paid ticket, I simply waved it in front of a little box, a green light appeared and I pushed a bar to walk to a seat.  The buses are clean, comfortable and the announcements are absolutely understandable.  They even have a digital read out of the time, temperature, and the next stop.

10:25 PM   4 October

The temp: 21 Celcius 70 F.  Hmmm...maybe it's the temp ON the bus, not outside.  This was a Wednesday night, so I thought that the other bit was Thursday's forecast, or 17 Celcius.  The next day, however, the writing was again TH+...  Then I remembered that I'm not in an English-speaking country.  So...I don't know what it means.

The name of upcoming stop, the one nearest to me:  5th Podbelskova Entrance.  I know it is a strange name.  It seems that they may have run out of names.  They name the block, Podbelskova for instance, then they name all the streets in and around that block Podbelskova 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.  Podbelskova has 6.

I thought everything was peachy keen with the buses—that they had found the way to make bus transportation absolutely without problems.  The problem is that the bus driver is in a small ‘room’ behind glass.  He or she takes money from those people who enter without a ticket through a small hole in the window.  The controlling bar is far away from the driver and the driver cannot see the people entering the bus when they go through the control bar.

This is how it SHOULD work and usually works.

Many people, especially young people simply duck under the bar and enter the bus for free.  Though I had seen at least one person do this every time I rode the bus, I thought I’d probably have a difficult time filming anyone doing it.  I thought maybe I would have to ask a friend to demonstrate this little maneuver.  (What a bunch of trouble that would be!)  As luck would have it, I guess this type of free travel is extremely common.  I positioned myself on the bus, pointed my camera directly at the entrance and began filming.  I didn’t have it in front of my face to make it extremely obvious, but I didn’t hide it much.  At the third bus stop, I was fortunate enough to record just such behavior.  I should have continued because at the next stop, a man with a baby stopped at the bar while his wife snuggled up behind him and they scooted through as if they were one passenger—another way to ‘fool’ the system.

Sometimes it works this way.