05 August 2008

Commuting blues…and greys and greens

This morning, as I was waiting for the train, two rambunctious ladies across the street started scrabbling over their desire to stand in just the same space. First it was a little nudge, then what looked like a bigger push and then a shove—and then one of them kicked the other. This kind of scene was rare but possible in DC, and everyone’s attention would be purposefully fixed on the combatants—or people would most assiduously look away from the action, trying to display their lack of responsibility for anything that might happen. Here on my train platform this morning I saw neither thoughtful looking nor purposeful not-looking. I seemed to be the only one really drawn to the drama across the way. And when one kicked the other a second time—right in the leg—I thought it was a bummer that the kicker won her spot and the kickee just bleated and moved on to a less delicious patch of gorse. Survival of the fittest and all that.

My commute is filled with all manner of new bits that superimpose against the old. The weather has been wretched lately, and that messes with the trains (this was also true in Washington and Boston, where the trains are mostly located underground. Go figure). And, in the upheaval, I have been watching the Kiwi reserve at work and looking for the times when it breaks down.

Take last week, for example, The train, stopping and starting, was limping along until we got to the mid point between Muri and Paekakariki. Almost home. Unfortunately, the train stopped at that point, and didn’t start again. The 40 or so people on my car were silent, speaking neither to one another nor to the conductor. This is pretty typical. As the time ticked on, though, it seemed more and more strange that no one asked for more information—and none was offered. The conductor and the train diver chatted quietly in front of us, and no one interrupted to ask what was going on or how long we might be there. The conductor then took the rather unusual step of opening the front door and getting off the train. All of us on the train leaned towards the centre of the car to watch him go and leaned back upright once he was gone. We sat for a few minutes this way and then the door opened again. Again we all leaned and listened, again we all silently leaned back away. I, who in normal circumstances would have marched up to the conductor and asked what was up, just watched us all being curious, all being silent. It was like a satire of proper polite society—only it was real. Finally Michael called my cell phone from the train behind (he had missed the 5pm train). He had heard that my train was stuck with signal crossings that were broken. Good to have people in the right place to give you information!

It is not always this way, although information travelling does seem to be somewhat of a challenge in the public transport system. Later last week I sat in the pouring rain waiting for my train to take me to a meeting in the middle of the day. I was all alone on the platform and shivering in the cold and wet. The train was late, and then later. Finally a woman—a conductor—popped her head out from a room I didn’t know existed at the station (the station seems to be a place where the train personnel wait inside and the passengers wait outside). “Are you wanting to go to Wellington?” she asked. I nodded, damply. “The train is out. You’ll have to catch a bus,” she told me, nodding in the direction of the “Train Replacement” bus stop.

“When does that arrive?” I asked.

“Now,” she told me. “You’d better get going.” And so I rushed into the rain as the bus pulled up and took my seat amongst the utterly silent crowd. The bus let us off at the Plimmerton stop, where there was a train waiting at the station, presumably for us. Just as we got on to the platform, though, the train took off, leaving the 25 of us from the bus standing in the rain, bewildered. I had tried my wait-and-see experiment earlier in the week; this was time for action.

“Why did that train leave without us?” I asked. The conductor shrugged and explained that the busses were all dropping people off in Porirua. I pointed out that we had all just emerged from a bus and that we had been dropped off in Plimmerton. He allowed that that seemed to be true.

“How do we get that train to come back and get us” I asked, looking at it right there, 30 metres from the platform. The conductor shrugged, it was impossible. “When is the next train?” He consulted the schedule, thirty minutes. “How could we get there to be one sooner?” Another shrug, no way for that to happen. “How can we get our bus back to pick us up and take us to Porirua?” No way for that to happen. I realised that I was in the middle of a circle of my fellow passengers, trying to watch what would happen with the pushy American and the clueless train operator. I took a step back, defeated and slightly embarrassed about all those Kiwi eyes on me. But a man near me stepped into the fray.

“Look, we can’t be expected to wait 30 minutes,” he said firmly. And, with a fellow Kiwi stepping up to argue, the crowd got restless.

“Couldn’t you tell the bus to come back?” one lady asked.

“Couldn’t you send a train here sooner?” another man interjected.

“Why did they leave us behind anyway?” someone else wondered plaintively.

The Kiwis were talking—even demanding! One man was going to miss his plane, and a handful of people in the group started chatting about planes and what might or might not be flying that day. And then—miraculously—the bus driver called to us from the other end of the platform; he had seen us waving to him to stop. We piled on the bus and he made a couple of phone calls to let people know where we were going. Someone asked him why the conductor hadn’t been able to do all of that. “Who knows,” he shrugged. “Some people never ask for anything.”

This is a new day, though, and I burst through the tunnel on a working train and a brightly sunny day. It’s cold and crisp, and the mountains on the far side of the harbour are powder-sugar dusted with snow. I walked along the Harbour to work, marvelling at the many-armed starfish on the rocks, the lovely hills in the distance. This is the end of my commute. I crane my neck to see new angles of mountains, stare hard at the rocks in the hopes of a seal or a penguin (both of which I’ve seen in these waters) or even a whale (which others have seen but I haven’t). I live on the edge of the world, it’s true, but the commute—even with the squabbling native (merinos) and the broken trains—is the world class.

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