In San Francisco I walk a lot. Some of the hills are too challenging for my simple road bike, taking the car out just to get to the newspaper shop is stupid, and I have never worked out how the bus system works here.

I do, however, see people – usually older women with shopping bags – hanging around near street corners a lot. While enjoying my Swensen’s ice cream the other day, I saw them again: more and more women gathered by a shop on a corner. Then, suddenly, they were gone.

I waited a few more minutes, eating my ice cream, and more people appeared. Then I saw what brought them to that corner: it was actually a bus stop. As I walked over, I noticed that there was a yellow band painted onto a lamp post. It actually had two numbers stencilled onto it, obviously the numbers of the busses that stop there.

With this attitude towards passenger information I am not surprised that people in the US stick to their cars as much as they do.
The stop on the other side of the street at least had the words BUS STOP painted on the lamp post, but nothing else. No timetables, destinations, routes, fares. A closely guarded secret for the natives. Nobody seems to want more passengers.