I took buses from 1990-1996. I was living in a Board & Care home from 1990-95 and the owners did not allow anybody to have a car. I took buses to work 3 or 4 days a week which was a 1 1/2 hour trip each way, and I was taking buses 5 nights a week to AA, CA, and NA meetings. I also took buses to school two days a week. This was in San Jose, Ca, a city with a population of 1,000,000 people. I was often downtown catching buses and the buses were often standing room only. I mean lots of times I was often standing shoulder to shoulder with other passengers. Funny thing is that if I had a seat on the bus and a women got on but there was no seats I would ALWAYS give up my seat to her. ALWAYS. But I was just thinking about a month ago whether those women even wanted me to give up my seat. I just did it automatically but maybe they didn’t like me or maybe out of pride they really wanted to stand. I don’t know. But I got a car in 1996 and I literally have not take a bus since. except maybe as couple Greyhounds to visit my dad. But I took buses growing up and even after I got sick in 1980. I remember when I was 19 and my schizophrenia was full-blown.I was taking a bus across town to visit my parents and midway through the trip i got the idea that the bus driver was going to kidnap all the passengers and drive us somewhere and demand ransom… Something like that had just happened a few months prior and it was all over the newspapers. So I got off the bus in the middle of nowhere and walked 5 miles back to my group home. Lol.
I road a bus for two years when I got my driver’s license suspended for driving at night without my headlights on. It was an interesting experience but I’m not so sure I want to repeat it - the bus riding, I mean.
Gertrude Stein + Alice B.Toklas did that on a one lane road one night in France during WW II - driving without headlights. She said pretty much the same thing you said - about riding the bus.