Here’s a little something from my colleague TruckerBiker:

I recently rode the bus into downtown Minneapolis. It reminded me of a bit of bus culture I find baffling: the insistence on exiting via the front door.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many people are waiting to board the bus at the front. Virtually every rider gets off at the front, forcing those on the curb to wait until the last person has stepped off and cleared the way to the fare box. Every stop is like a quarterback sneak.

Buses, I’ve noticed, have rear doors. If people used those for exiting, they wouldn’t block anybody from getting on at the front. In at the front, out at the back. What’s so hard about that? What’s to resist? If nothing else, it lets the bus get going a little sooner. Can anyone explain the mystery?

Roadguy has visited at least a few cities where everyone boards in the front and exits in the back, and it does indeed save time overall. But if an individual is walking to a destination that’s toward the front of the bus, it saves the individual several seconds to use the front door.

What do you do? And, perhaps more importantly, what would you prefer everyone else to do? Let us know in the comments below.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.