A rare good public transportation experience
I've had most of the usual awful public transportation experiences - vomiting passengers, being felt up, violent crazies - but I'd like to mention my one truly spectacular experience on a city bus.

A weekday in downtown Chicago, a blizzard hits, temperatures keep dropping. Offices let workers out early for safe travel, but too late. I wait in vain for over two hours at the unheated, outdoor elevated train station, truly in fear for my life from hypothermia, then learn trains have stopped running due to the weather. I walk block after block to find someplace to warm up, and all I can find open is a McDonalds, where I fortify myself with several cups of scalding tea before heading back into the storm, desperate to get home. Streets are impassable, littered with stranded vehicles, nothing is moving, so taxis and buses aren't an option. I prepare to turn around and spend the night at McDonalds. Suddenly, to my shocked joy, I spot a lone bus lumbering up the street. It stops in front of me, and the bus driver opens the door, saying, "You'd better get in here." I grab the last seat, next to an elderly woman who keeps farting loudly and falling asleep with her head on my shoulder, but I don't care. I'm out of the blizzard and heading home.

The bus driver is on a mission: To get all of his passengers home safely, which he calmly assures us of throughout the trip. Time and again, streets are completely blocked by stranded vehicles, so the driver takes alternate routes, whether other streets or across the snow covered grass of Lincoln Park (yes, we go off-roading in a bus in 2-3 feet of snow). Each time he gets past an obstacle, the normally jaded, silent, city-dwelling passengers cheer, and pretty soon we start a sing-along. Rather than making passengers get out at bus stops, the driver drops off each passenger as close to his/her front door as possible.

A trip that usually takes 40 minutes took 4+ hours, and what should've been a harrowing experience turned into a party, all thanks to the bus driver who kept our spirits up, assured us of our safety, and was determined to get each and every one of us home. People can complain about the CTA all they want, but we're pretty damned lucky to have people like this working in our city.
(bunnybutt, Fri 26 Jun 2009, 17:57, 9 replies)

Wow
That sounds heartwarming!
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Fri 26 Jun 2009, 18:07, closed)

What an awesome bus driver
Way to go, Mr Driver!
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Fri 26 Jun 2009, 18:28, closed)

wow
what an awesome bus driver!
(jonpup, Fri 26 Jun 2009, 22:24, closed)

awwwww...
you get a click for that one!
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Sat 27 Jun 2009, 1:39, closed)

That is truely heart-warming, even if you had an icicle hanging off your arse for most of it :D
*clicks*, great story :)
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Sat 27 Jun 2009, 10:06, closed)

he sounds like a top bloke
* clicks *
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Sat 27 Jun 2009, 13:09, closed)

You'd never find that happening over here : (

( girlinthehole, Mon 29 Jun 2009, 14:52, closed)

No click for you
But the driver got one.
(MadBouncyDog Barking at the moon since, Mon 29 Jun 2009, 23:55, closed)

*click*
what a legendary bloke!
(berk, Tue 30 Jun 2009, 10:35, closed)