SITUATION: LIKE SARDINE IN A PAN
A PTSC bus is loading up one evening during peek hours at the Arima bus stand. The bus is filled and the driver starts taking more passengers, standing room only. Many passengers walk in and gather at the front of the bus. The driver urges them to walk down further into the bus but few of them move.
"Oh gosh, if it was alyuh standing up out dey alyuh would'a want ah squeeze to go home, move down nah man," a male passenger standing in the bus shouts.
The passengers move down a bit more allowing more people to come in, until finally another standing passenger shouts, "look, drive, drive, it cyah hol nobody else in here yuh know?"
"What yuh mean it have no more room?" the first passenger asks, "look at how much space it have inside the back ah the bus."
"Well, you go down in the back, dey nah!" the second passenger tells him.
"People doh like to go quite down in the back," an elderly lady adds, "when yuh press the bell the driver doesn't always want to open the back door and next thing yuh taking too long to come out through all them people and he drive off, I ain' able wid that!"
Other passengers nod and say that has happened many times when the bus marshal is not present.
"And is because it have so much people in the bus and the driver does cyah see the back good that that does happen," the second passenger continues, "yuh cyah be fulling up the bus ram cram so!"
"If it was you outside I sure you would'a want the driver to make a lil' space for you! You know how long a next bus does take to come?" the first passenger persists.
"Me? Stand up outside what bus? I would'a just go and take a car."
"Well, I wish you would'a stay outside and take yuh car, and give yuh space to somebody who cyah afford to take a car, yes," the first passenger says.
The two passengers are joined by others and they continue to go back and forth up the road, until finally they stop and the bus gets quiet again.
Well, fellow Trinbagonians? What do you think? Should the driver try to take as many people as possible given the length of time the next bus will roll in or should he take into consideration the comfort and even the safety of the people already in the bus?
Leh meh hear yuh nah?!
Trinbagonian Baby
Real Issues, Real Trinidad and Tobago, In Real-time.
I always wondered at the legal issues surrounding the over-filling of the buses. It can't be safe to have so many people in one vehicle. If the police can stop drivers who overload maxis or cars and make them offload to the required amount, aren't buses subject to the same rules?
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