Worst Bus Route in Ottawa

I don’t know if any of you are participating in the Ottawa Citizen’s Worst Bus Route poll over on the Greater Ottawa blog, but I see that my local bus – the #14 – is a strong contender for first place. It’s got some fierce competition from the #2, but both these bus routes seem to be almost universally reviled by passengers and drivers alike.

I live near the western end of the route. Many of the complaints I’ve read are from people who work or live at the eastern end.

Up until this weekend, I don’t think I’d ever taken the #14 past the Rideau Centre. But on Saturday evening, I took it to Sandy Hill to visit Janet, and then back again.

An interesting thing happened to the eastbound #14 at the Rideau Centre: every freak in Ottawa got on the bus.

I’m not saying we’re all normal at my end of the route. Far from it. But at the beginning of the evening – before I even knew what was going to happen at the Rideau Centre – I snapped a picture of this guy, who is a more-or-less typical character on the western end of the #14. Just some harmless guy minding his own business, deeply engrossed in his Betty & Veronica comic book.

I didn’t take pictures of the people who got on the eastbound #14 at the Rideau Centre because they were kind of scary. There were so many of them and they didn’t seem quite right. They just swarmed on board, and the next thing I knew, the bus was jammed full of freaks and weirdos of the unappealing sort.

They weren’t all disagreeable, of course. Some of them were just pitiful. And a few just looked exhausted and miserable. The ones who sat in front of me seemed unusually itchy.

They were a pretty motley, bedraggled collection of survivors, for the most part.

Later that night, when I left Janet’s, I took the #14 again, this time heading west towards the Rideau Centre and ultimately Carlington. Several people straight out of Trainspotting were on the bus. They were entertaining. This young woman got on at the Rideau Centre. Her name is Sherrie and she’s 23 years old – I read it on her hospital bracelet after she lost consciousness. She looked pretty sick and miserable up until then.

I didn’t see the Bandanna Guy. Jen, from Please Pick Up Your Socks, described him in the comments over on the Greater Ottawa blog. Apparently he rings the bell with his chin for every bus stop in the east end, and then rearranges all his bandannas.

Anyway, if you take the bus and you haven’t already weighed in on Ottawa’s Worst Bus Route, you still have time.