I have marveled at the Parisian transit system since my first experience with it, but for this post I will address on specific topic; Bus drivers. The bus drivers here in Paris are the antithesis of their counterparts in Vancouver, which is to saw they are super awesome here. It's like someone running the buses realized that they were running buses to move people around and not to post unyielding route times for all the world to admire.
In Vancouver, the only time and place you can possibly get on a bus is when said bus has pulled up to it's stop. If it is pulling away from the stop, it will not stop to let you on. If you run to catch the bus, 99 times out of 100 the bus will pull away instead of waiting for you. And in some rare instances bus drivers will simply not stop for you at all. The buses are strangely the least Canadian part of the city; Very unfriendly and rarely accommodating.
In Paris, this very morning in fact, I saw my transfer bus leaving the station as I stepped out of another bus. I ran to the edge of the station's 'island' that all the buses stop around and waved as he approached, he popped the doors and slowed down. I jogged over and hopped on as he rolled along with his doors open and, once I was aboard he pulled out of the station. That's right, not only did he let me on after he had left his stop in the station, but it was we completed a rolling embarkation to boot.
Time and again I have seen bus drivers take on passengers at almost any possible point, wait for passengers running to catch a bus and just generally act like decent human beings towards their passengers. It really is a strange thing coming from the iron-fisted regime of Translink.
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