PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Bucharest public transport in the ?80s did not differ much from what it was like in the preceding decades. Just that the trams, buses and trolleys were growing older, dirtier and frailer. It may be that the crowd was bulging, too, as the Bucharest population was growing constantly. The House of the People and other such gigantic buildings that were under construction at the time attracted a whole lot of workers into the Capital. In winter time, when automobile driving was forbidden on the streets of Bucharest, the car owners were obliged to squeeze into the public transport buses as well. The squash was a favorable milieu for pickpockets and fare dodgers, when there were no more ticket sellers, and no room for controllers.

Also, since many old buses were taken off traffic, those that still functioned followed one another at big intervals, and waiting for them in the stations became an unbearable experience.

The routes were frequently changed, in accordance with Ceausescu?s whims (in the ?70s, he ordered the route of tram no. 5 to be moved away from the whereabouts of his house. The noise bothered him!) Another reason for waiting endlessly in a bus station was whenever the bus routes happened to interfere with Ceausescu?s official convoy and the buses had to stop and wait for it to pass on.

At some point the cityscape witnessed the appearance of a monstrosity: buses fuelled by liquid gas. In order to save the Diesel oil, two oblong tubes were fixed on the bus roof, which looked extremely ugly and were probably rather ineffectual. And since they were truly dangerous, like ?bombs in the open?, some sly guy called them ?Elena Gay? ? a pun on the name of the plane that launched the first atomic bomb combined with Elena Ceausescu?s claims to a savant chemist?s expertise. (129)