I Got Back On The Bus Yesterday. And It Was Fine.

I got back on the bus yesterday. And it was fine.

It had been 13 months since I road a bus or a train. Ironically — or, to be more accurate, dangerously — the last time I rode on a public transit vehicle was a New York City subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back on March 11, 2020 — the week New York shut down amid a huge surge in COVID cases. Since then, I’ve never gotten sick or tested positive (and, working at Rice University, I’ve been tested perhaps a dozen times.) But I still did not want to get on a bus or a train.

Houston Metro has been pretty hard-hit by the pandemic, just like most transit agencies. Revenue is down, service has been cut, and ridership is way down. Every day or two, I get an email from Metro delineating the latest COVID outbreak among drivers and transit police. I admire Metro for being so up-front about all this, but I admit it discouraged me from riding the bus again.

The most important factor that led me back onto the bus, of course, was being fully vaccinated. That increased my comfort level a lot. And I was a little surprised when my wife, also fully vaccinated, expressed no concern about me riding the bus again. But, then again, she’s a public school teacher who’s been going to work every day for this entire school year.