My my Metrobus!

I’ve been meaning to write an introductory post about the Metrobus, and after a recent great adventure, I think the time is right.  I started taking the bus to work 2 years ago – route #1, which goes from Parkhurst to Gandhi Square via Oxford Road.  In recent weeks, I’ve been exploring some of the many, many other routes.  The Metrobus is often ignored or even vilified – usually by people who have never ridden it.  A friend told me, “the bus is for old people,” and I laughed – it’s pretty true that the bus is popular among the gogos – but I said in that case I fit right in.

The bus is actually incredibly useful, and when it works well, it’s marvelously quick and efficient.  The breadth of areas served is seriously impressive, and that doesn’t include the areas further afield covered by long-range commuter buses.  Some of the downsides are the useless website, waiting times that can vary greatly and the service disruption caused by frequent strikes.  The website puts on a polished game face, but offers scant useful information – particularly to the visitor or newbie rider.  Knowing the Metrobus's organizational vision and mission doesn't help you take the bus!  Worse still, there are no maps (?!?), but instead a timetable of routes that assumes the reader has significant knowledge of Jo’burg neighborhoods.  Fortunately, there is an easy way around this oversight: the Metrobus call center is wonderfully helpful.  When I’m trying out a new route, I simply phone them, tell them I want to get from point A to point B, and they tell me the bus options, times and prices.  Their number (011 375-5555) is the general City of Jo’burg phone number, and Metrobus is option 6.  The cost for a ride is usually under R10 each way, and cash is accepted on board.  For frequent riders, multi-journey bus passes offering cost savings are available for purchase from Computicket outlets in most local malls.

That’s just what I did recently when I wanted to investigate a bus option to take me to a possible new job site waaaay up in Fourways.  The call center recommended bus #80F (Gandhi Square to Fourways, via Jan Smuts).  I could have caught the bus mid-route on Jan Smuts, but I was curious to see Metrobus’s hub at Gandhi Square.  So, I caught the #1 at Oxford and Riviera and headed into town.  The bus was full of chattering school kids from Parkhurst Primary – funny enough, I used to witness their shrieking descent from the bus at school every morning, and now I was joining them for their trip home.  They all disembarked at various stops in Hillbrow and the quiet bus carried on further into town.  It had been ages since I had been this deeply into Jo’burg’s CBD and it spurred memories of working in Durban’s CBD years ago.  Suddenly again I visualized the pavement as a boiling pot, spilling over with pedestrians and hawkers selling the most incongruous selection imaginable: nail polish, muti, plastic squirt bottles, all amidst the backdrop of colorful facades, handpainted signs and constant music.  It felt wonderfully familiar and personal; like finding a part of me that I didn’t know I’d missed.

Gandhi Square

At Gandhi Square, I paid my respects to the statue of the landmark’s namesake, but didn’t have to wait long for the 80F.  I asked for a ticket to the end of the line; the fare from end-to-end was R14.60.  I grabbed the prize upstairs seat of the double-decker bus and settled in for an unexpectedly illuminating tour of Jo’burg.  Even though I’d seen all the areas covered by the route, traveling in one go from the CBD, with its maximum density and non-stop waves of people and activity, to the stuffy upper suburbs, with their manicured corporate campuses and homogeneous strip malls, was a profound observation of extreme transformation.  Headed out of downtown, walls sprouted and grew ever higher.  The sprawl unspooled the further north we traveled.  Right before we stopped, I could see the Magaliesburg in the distance and pavement return to dirt as we reached the upper boundaries of the city.  Turning away from the rustic, we pulled into Fourways Mall, where I took the photo below (sigh) before hopping on another bus home.

Fourways Mall

Fourways Mall is a hub for many northern routes, so it wasn’t hard to find a bus for the return trip.  After a quick check with the driver, I hopped on the #552 (Fourways to Soweto, via William Nichol and Jan Smuts).  Filled with riders leaving work at 4:30 and headed home, the bus had a lively atmosphere.  At the back, 9 seats facing each other were occupied by men and women so engaged in spirited conversation that it seemed they were at a restaurant rather than on a city bus.  Even better, a guy selling bags of snacks continually walked the aisles, upstairs and down, banking on the after-work munchies of the passengers on a long ride home.  I hopped off at Zoo Lake and walked home – getting my modest exercise associated with taking the bus – fully pleased with the unexpectedly grand tour of Jo’burg that the Metrobus had delivered.