The middle-aged blond guy sitting next to me smells like stale cigarettes and sour beer. He’s wearing faded jeans, a flannel shirt and three days’ worth of stubble. It’s ten past eight in the morning. It looks like he’s going to have a rough day.

The student on my other side is sleeping, his backpack clutched in his arms. He is jostled awake as the bus comes to a sudden stop, the driver curses, and we all take in a sharp breath. Everyone is cranky today – people yell at no one in particular: “Move down! There’s plenty of space back there!”

A young woman standing in front of us clutches her coffee; she has a slightly pinched look on her face. It’s possible that her skin-tight synthetic grey business pants are cutting off circulation to a critical artery somewhere beneath her wrinkled shirt. She stares straight through the passengers seated in front of her, who are also starring straight ahead. We all avoid eye contact. There are probably 30 of us crammed into this section of the bus alone.

Then the door refuses to shut because there are too many people crammed in the doorway; the speakers repeat their sinister warning chime as we all crane our necks to see what’s holding us up.

“Get off the bus! There’s not enough room!”
“I’ve had three buses pass me already! I’m going to be late!”

Finally someone takes off their shoulder bag to create an extra 10 inches of space, and by a small miracle everyone shuffles slightly to the left and the door finally closes. Then, just when I think my morning commute couldn’t get worse… someone farts.

Welcome to the 99.

The 99 B-line is an express bus that runs the 12 km route down the Broadway corridor from Commercial Driveto the University of British Columbia.  During the morning rush hour, a full bus leaves Commercial Drive every two to three minutes. At its peak, the 99 will carry up to 2,100 passengers per hour.

It’s not like this all the time. By far September is the cruelest month – the onslaught of fresh UBC students is a sharp contrast to the relatively spacious and carefree summer. Comparatively, from May until August the 99 is a blissful caravan filled with light, laughter and liberty. Cigarette girls wander up and down the aisle with free refreshments. Stewarts offer fluffy pillows for you to rest your sleepy head. Troubadours play music and make merry. Everyone smells great.

At least that’s how I remember summer compared to the lunacy of September, when every face wears a grimace and I am often perturbed by the unnatural intimacy of strangers’ proximity – here a thigh pressing against my own, there a crotch staring directly into my eyes. I once had a passenger straddle my leg as he tried to make room for people shoving past to get to the door. I could feel his balls against my knee. That was a bit much. True, there are some mornings when the warmth of another human being has been strangely comforting. It depends on my mood and who’s sitting next to me.

Besides the troubling squish of packed human flesh, the next strongest attribute of the 99 would have to be the smells. Oh, the scintillating scents of the 99! There is the intermittent flatulence, the smell of fresh Egg McMuffins, body odour, and strong coffee. Occasionally there is the halitosis of the mouth-breather sitting next to you. In winter there is also the hot, moist smell of mildew and wet pea coats.

Perhaps because of the madness, there’s a certain camaraderie amongst me and my fellow riders. For instance, there’s the Latina woman I see most mornings. We exchange smiles while we’re waiting for the bus; she always grabs a 24, one of the free daily news rags, and talks loudly in Spanish on her mobile phone. We catch the bus at the same time – it’s the last one that runs during rush hour from our stop east of Commercial Drive. For a while the bus was running really late or early, or bypassing our stop altogether, and we started to check in with each other to see if it was time to abandon ship and just walk down to Commercial to get in line and catch it there. On rare occasions we’ll also be on the same bus coming home and exchange a few words.

“Long day today!” She’ll exclaim.
“Sure was!”
“See you tomorrow!”

This summer I struck up a conversation with a woman at my stop who was also putting her bike on the front rack of the bus. We cyclists have to stick together, you know. She had an easy smile, kind blue eyes and messy, short blond hair. Our conversation started with the usual banter about how hard it can be to get your bike on if the rack is sticky, and over the course of the 45-minute ride meandered to discussing how she and her female partner had conceived their two children with a gay male friend with whom they were now in an open parenting relationship.

Otherwise, I’m not really the chatty type. More often, I’m the type of passenger who prefers to cocoon myself in a bubble of music and literature, occasionally looking up to catch a glimpse of the mountains between high rises and strip malls. Headphones on and nose in a book, I can ignore the passengers shouting to get let off and the asinine repartee of people making polite conversation.

I choose my reading materials and music carefully. As much as I like to complain about the 99, at least I can sit and read – something I couldn’t do if I was driving and stuck in traffic. I don’t have to worry about paying attention to the road, deal with bad drivers, or be alert. Some days, if I’m reading a good book or magazine article, I’m disappointed to come to the end of my ride. At the least, literature and music puts me in a time bubble in another dimension.

I know riding the bus is a pain. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to commute as far as I do and I could walk or bike both ways (for a variety of reasons ranging from sweat to laziness, I prefer to just bike home). But I much prefer it to driving. When I’m sitting on the bus and look out the window to see all the single-passenger cars going by, I can’t help but think of all the carbon emissions being spewed into the fresh ocean air Vancouverites are always going on about. In the summer, on the ferry on the way toVictoria, I’ve seen a thick dome of brown smog hovering over our beloved Stanley Park and glassy high-rises. As an asthma sufferer, I can’t help but think of what this is doing to my lungs.

Vancouver needs better public transit along the Broadway corridor. According to Translink, Metro Vancouver’s public transit provider, the 99 passes up to 2,000 people every morning. While there has been a lot of debate around prioritization for the next expansion of the Skytrain,Vancouver’s monorail service, one thing that’s for certain is that Vancouver needs to take an aggressive approach to increasing public transit capacity across Metro Vancouver. As gas prices continue to rise, as air quality declines, and as populations increase, we can’t afford not to.

So while I may have trying moments during my daily commute, I’ll choose it over driving alone in a car any day.