Further to my post a while ago about the métro, I thought I would write about the best way to displace oneself in Paris, apart from on foot: on the hundreds of smart green single-decker buses which ply the streets. The bus is certainly slower than the métro, but (as might be expected) allows more to be seen of the city. The buses are also run by the R.A.T.P., but the network is denser still. The routes wend their winding way from arrondissement to arrondissement; often they pass through unexpected places, and spark the surprise of recognition when they emerge at a familiar corner or before a mighty land-mark.
It has become clear to me that the R.A.T.P. sees the bus routes as the continuation of the métro, since the sequence of underground lines, 1-14, is taken up again by bus number 20 (providing for the possible creation of six new underground lines). The digits of the bus route numbers also corresponded generally to their starting points and destinations. Routes 91, 92, 94, 95 and 96 all start at Montparnasse, for instance; routes 30, 31, 35, 38 and 39 from the Gare du Nord. Ingeniously, every route has its own colour. Dark yellow means that I need to run!
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| The R.A.T.P. does its bit to help with the traffic problem |
Pleasant though the passengers' journey might be, the bus driver's job is not easy - harder, I imagine, than the métro driver's. On every journey I take along route 91, the driver's deftness, even in a bendy-bus, is called into action. Indeed, in a competition called the Bus d'Or (the 'Golden Bus'), which sifts out the crème de la crème of France's conducteurs de bus, driving route 94 counts as a phase in itself; as does passing through a mock-up of the 'guichet du Louvre' (the Louvre gatehouse, with fifteen centimetres of space on each side of the wing-mirrors!). You can see a video about the competition here.
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| The 'Montmartrobus' - small enough to navigate the hill. |
That said, the drivers provide another element, generally absent from the métro, and that is the good treatment of their passengers. Always they give a courteous 'Bonjour'. They offer good-humoured advice when stuck in hopeless traffic. At Christmastide, at least one driver on route 47 decks his cab with yards of tinsel. The entire journey is more life-affirming, since Parisian civilisation can be observed at leisure: pipe-smoking behatted elderly gents, calm ambling nuns, the young queing for the cinema, care-free cyclists in the bus-lane, Peugeots and Renaults inextricably entangled in embouteillages, immaculate restaurants and brasseries... The rue assourdissant is a better view, surely, than a tunnel wall!
Some bus routes of note:
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| Bus 91. |
91 Ligne 91 carries me daily to the university. There is no direct métro line between Gare Montparnasse and Gare de Lyon, so the bendy-buses carry out this intense job instead, every five minutes, mostly along bus lanes ('couloirs de bus'). This journey is no faster by métro.
83 Number 83 wriggles along south-east to north-west and is a good route to see inconspicuous corners fairly rapidly.
58 Ditto, except that this bus goes north-east, from Montparnasse to Châtelet.
67 Ligne 67 will be well-known to anybody who has encountered Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7, that puzzling film. The journey in this film from Parc Montsouris to the Hôpital Salpetrière can still be undertaken today, on the same route, although not on the same vehicle!
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| Route 72 (only on special occasions!) |
39 Number 39 is good for the tourist: starting at the Gare du Nord, it strikes straight out for the Louvre, and thence over the river to Saint-Germain-des Prés.
29 Ligne 29 has recently been the subject of a collection of poems by Jacques Roubaud (like Raymond Queneau, a member of Oulipo) - 'Ode à la ligne 29 des autobus parisiens'. This proves it all about Paris! You can hear an extract, along with some of the sounds of the buses (including the ticket stampers!), here. It is not terribly easy to read, still less to listen to, because Roubaud is playing with the language and throwing in many literary references, but is worth hearing just for the beauty of the intricate French and internal rhyme.
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| On route 89 - near Jussieu. |
89 Ligne 89 is my favourite, starting off as it does from the Bibliothèque François Mittérand, and plunging into the fifth arrondissement which I now know best, passing the Jardin des Plantes, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, the most beautiful church in Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg, Saint-Sulpice, the second most beautiful church in Paris, Montparnasse and the Gare de Vanves-Malakoff. From library to railway station via a succession of churches... I might have drawn it up myself!
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| Route 84, place du Panthéon, in the rain, awaiting departure. |
