Yesterday I was on the Vermont Rapid bus when I saw the stolid expression of the chubby little Salvadoran lady standing in front of me.... Yesterday I was on the Vermont Rapid bus when I saw the stolid expression of the chubby little Salvadoran lady standing in front of me suddenly blossom into joy. She reached over and touched the hand of another woman sitting in the first row, who woke from her musings with her own small cry of happiness...just two friends meeting unexpectedly and breaking into animated Spanish chatter. It filled the bus with warmth on that wet gray morning....

Then when I stepped off to go to my favorite Armenian bakery--I was making a detour on my way to the office--I passed by a small group waiting for the Santa Monica bus, where two more chubby little Salvadoran ladies were conversing joyously. The bus was coming, and they finished their parley with an extravagant hug...maybe it was the wetness of the day that drove people towards each other for emotional warmth, I don't know.

What I do know is that I see such scenes pretty much every day on the buses, trains, and sidewalks of a city known more for road rage than conviviality. And I know I won't see them among motorists....

What's the best you can expect when you're driving and somehow recognize a friend in their car? A nervous beep of the horn, a quick wave as two ghosts scrutinize each other across the gulfs of distance, speed, and darkened glass? More often you see the drivers, each in his cage, waving fists, bulging their neck veins, and cursing and screaming as they compete with their fellows for the right to arrive first at the next stoplight.

Here at New Colonist, as at other similar publications, we usually tout public transit for its energy, financial, and land use efficiency, but there is a profounder level of efficiency that is more important. That is the efficiency of exercising our soul's pleasure, which public transit affords in ways that private driving never can. Let's not forget the real bottom line in our urban calculations: we live, we die, we probably don't come back. How much of that time do we want to spend alone, with only the radio and the steering wheel for company? Give me love on the bus instead, any day of the week.