Difference in Transportation #1

[Bus]

(c) 2012 MTS

San Diego has the bus network called MTS. Some universities have their own shuttles. The first transportation that I took after arriving San Diego was bus. I remember there was just a succession of surprises from it.

Time table is rough.

There is a time table for main bus stops, but not every single one of the bus stop. I like this style, because we don't have to care about the time on a minute by minute basis.

Simple and clean!

In Japan, there is a bunch of advertisements on a train, bus, station.. everywhere. When you get in the bus or train, you can see the many ads hunging from the ceiling, put on the window, placed on the straps. It definitely spoils the view. Sometimes MTS or a shuttle has one, but not too much, so it's not big deal. Besides, it's much neater and cleaner in the bus than I expected before.

Some seats are high for me..

I'm not so short in height, but my feet could hardly touch the floor on a backseat of the bus..! I got a culture shock then.

Bicycle!?

We can take our bicycle on MTS. In my country, we can't, or if we can, we should pay extra fee for the bicycle. Though I have never tried that before, it seems very easy to load the bicycle on front of the bus.

How to get off the bus?

There are yellow cords above the window. As the bus is reaching the bus stop, we pull it and let the driver know to stop the bus. It was so surprising to me and when I saw the passenger pulling the code, I thought he was playing with the code! In Japan, the bus has the button with English description. When the bus is close to the bus stop, the button gets red light. Every transportation has English sign, so people who speaks English may have less confusion in terms of travelling.


Anyway, MTS website explain "How to" kindly. http://www.sdmts.com/how_to_ride.asp