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Night Buses Provide Transportation, Shelter

Valley Transportation Authority buses run between Palo Alto and San Jose all night long. Some riders are going to work, and some are heading home. Others are home.

Temperatures were in the 40s at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Palo Alto Caltrain station and bus terminal. Three men waited for a bus. One sat on a bench wrapped in a sleeping bag, and another stood next to a worn suitcase.

"We're waiting for a special bus," said Hank, who was wearing a heavy jacket and thick black mittens. The driver on line 300 lets them ride until the end of the route to stay warm.

On line 22, David Wang was riding home after an 11-hour shift as a waiter in Menlo Park. Rebecca Cortez was also heading home after working as a Wal-Mart cashier in Mountain View. Cortez said that some bus rides are better than others, since a few drivers ignore passengers who smoke, drink and bother others on the bus. Other times, the buses can be hot, crowded and late. But service is good in general, Cortez said. Sometimes, she also takes the bus to go out on weekends. On those nights, she tells the driver, "I guess you can take me dancing tonight," as she boards the bus.

As the 22 headed down El Camino Real toward San Jose's Eastridge area, the bus's suspension squeaked with each dip and bump in the road. Some passengers slept, others looked out the window. Some men were talking in Spanish in the back of the bus.Now and then, someone who needed to get off pulled the cable on the wall, which made a pinging noise.

Line 22 made its final stop at the Eastridge Shopping Center at 10:16 p.m. Some of the passengers who waited for the 10:26 p.m. bus on the 22 line to Palo Alto smoked, others just shivered. The bus was 10minutes late. Most people slept as the bus went through San Jose at 11:00 p.m.

A couple kissed in the back corner. Ceci -- the bus driver -- used the bus's PA system and said, "Please remember where you are at, you are on a public transit bus. Act accordingly." As they got off the bus a few stops later, Ceci again used the bus's speaker system. "I'm gonna put y'all on America's Funniest Home Videos," she said, as the couple walked out the back door laughing.

Ceci stopped the bus at a stop in Sunnyvale to pick up a passenger, and the man tried to board the bus with two dollies stacked with boxes. The driver told him he could not ride with that much luggage, but the man refused to move from the doorway. Ceci asked her dispatch center for police assistance. By now the other passengers were all awake. Some yelled at the man to get off the bus. He stood his ground, but the bus didn't move. "This is a first for me," said Ramona Valdez, who was trying to get to her desk clerk job at a motel by midnight.

Five minutes later, three Sunnyvale Police Department officers arrived. As the bus pulled away, the police questioned the man in a nearby parking lot. Enrique Cedillo, a dishwasher on his way home from work, thought that the bus driver had unnecessarily caused the delay. The man could pay for the trip, Cedillo said, so he should be allowed to ride. Ceci came over the loudspeaker and apologized for the delay. "If I had enough money, I'd buy y'all a soda, but I'm broke," she said.

Ken Thomas rode the bus all night long, as he usually does when the nights are cold or the weather is bad. "I'm not the only one," he said, noting that at times the buses are filled with people doing the same thing. The 67-year-old man speaks with a stutter, the result of a stroke. Thomas said that his speech poses a problem, because sometimes people think he is drunk. Earlier that evening, Thomas fell asleep on another bus. The driver told him not to ride his bus again., The 22 pulled into Palo Alto just after 12:00.. Ceci announced that it was the end of the line, and the last few passengers got off. Ken Thomas walked across the bus terminal and stood next to the 22 line sign to wait for the next bus to Eastridge.