By Joshua Emerson Smith
In normal times, Roland Howard would cherish his time riding the Route 7 bus.
The former pastor and university professor, who uses a motorized wheelchair, strikes up conversations with fellow riders whenever possible. He even found his current church through a driver, who’s also a preacher.
But when Howard, 67, rolled off the bus at University Avenue and 47th Street after a dentist appointment last week, he admitted to feeling a bit uneasy. Taking the bus is probably the biggest risk he takes now when it comes to COVID-19 — from exposure to strangers to the close contact with drivers who help him board and exit.
“I’m concerned about this virus that’s going around,” he said through a blue surgical mask, “and because of my age and because I have a lot of ongoing disabilities, everything that they say is conducive to (contracting it), I’ve got.” The neighborhood is full of people like Howard — older, many with disabilities, many who have no choice but to use public transit even in the midst of a pandemic.
For three months, as much of life froze across San Diego, the Route 7 bus kept rumbling along, connecting City Heights to downtown San Diego. Now it is providing a vital lifeline as this diverse neighborhood struggles to recover.
Today, Route 7 carries more passengers every day than any other bus offered by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System. While ridership on other popular routes has plummeted 70 percent — more than 90 percent in some cases — people have continued to ride the 7 bus in sizable numbers, according to MTS data.
With ridership down a relatively modest 53 percent, the route still serves more than 3,100 passengers a day, all with varying degrees of dependence on the transit system.
Ron Dobbins, who lives about a block away from the stops on either side of University Avenue at 47th Street, is among them. On a recent weekday morning, he waited for the bus on the south side of the road in front of Pronto Laundry.
The 75-year-old has continued to take the bus a couple times a day despite the coronavirus. This time he was headed to pick up the newspaper at a nearby 7-Eleven, he explained through a mask, his white, short hair peeking out from under a baseball cap.
Dobbins knows he’s particularly vulnerable to the disease as a senior. But if he’s worried, he doesn’t let on. On the upside, he said, there’s been lots of room on the bus since ridership declined.
“I’m nervous when I have to cross the street, I mean, the way these people drive. I’m nervous when I see some of these homeless people. They definitely look strange. Some of them are on drugs. Some of them are mentally ill. Some are using alcohol. I mean that makes me nervous,” he said, “but not the bus.”
Later that day, Dobbins and his wife sat under the red, metal shelter at the transit stop while their clothes washed at the laundromat. Several people were waiting for their laundry in their cars, as the businesses wasn’t letting people hang out inside. A few minutes later, Kirk Taylor, 55, got off the bus. Grappling with several disabilities, he said he uses transit to get to medical appointments.
“The bus is the most riskiest because you don’t know what to touch,” he said. “That part’s really tricky. You have to wash your hands a whole lot and not put them in your face.”
As restaurants, bars and other businesses in City Heights and elsewhere have reopened, bus ridership has ticked up in recent weeks on the 7, as well as on Route 10, which also runs along University Avenue but connects to Old Town, instead of downtown.
Taylor said that people on the bus have recently become more relaxed about efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. Perhaps surprisingly, that’s made him feel more at ease while riding.
“About a month ago, people would get on there with gloves and the face mask. Now it’s a lot less intense because things are almost back to normal as far as the buses,” he said.
Coronavirus infections have recently started to spike, as the economy reopens. Public health officials recorded at least 10 community outbreaks across the county since mid-June, which they define as three or more cases from different households linked to a specific location.
Just Friday, the county recorded a record daily total of 440 positive test results — the third-straight day of record numbers last week. For weeks before the lockdown was lifted, the daily number of people being infected peaked in the low one hundreds.
None of the recent outbreaks have been traced back to public transit. However, about a dozen bus drivers have tested positive for the virus, including one along Route 7. Most have since returned to work. None has died. Christopher Castor, 56, a bus driver on Route 7, isn’t taking any chances. On a recent, weekday afternoon, he used the blue surgical gloves and face shield provided by the agency as he helped folks in wheelchairs on and off the bus.
“I’m scared of catching it,” said Castor, a San Diego native who has lived in City Heights since 1974. “When I get home, everything comes off, jump right in the shower.”
MTS put in place a number of safety precautions to prevent the spread of the virus on its trolleys and buses. The front of the bus is roped off and accessible only for people with disabilities, and other passengers board through the rear doors. Cash payments have been temporarily suspended, at least until early July, when MTS hopes to have plexiglass barriers installed to protect drivers.
For now, people casually flash their bus passes as they board in what has evolved into something of an honor system. The agency also recently voted to lower fines for fare dodgers to $25 per violation, down from nearly $200.
Castor, who has had the route for five years, is as much tour guide as driver. He likes to tell riders about the history of the buildings passing by, dropping bits of trivia, such as how City Heights was briefly its own city called East San Diego until the city of San Diego annexed it in 1923.
“City Heights was still called East San Diego until the ’80s,” he said, steering smoothly through traffic.
He could have chosen a more desirable route with his seniority at MTS, Castor said, but he enjoys serving his own community.
“When I first did it, everybody’s like, ‘Man, why?’ It’s always there. Nobody wants it,’” he said. “I love the people, and it’s cool. The people know me.”
One of Castor’s favorite stories is how Route 7 was named after the former streetcar by the same number, which ran from downtown through Balboa Park to a turnaround at the current location of The Tower Bar. It was one of the last three streetcar routes in operation before the system was shut down in 1949. The transit system was privately run until 1967, when the city took it over. Many of the landmarks Castor passes by have been shuttered for weeks and are just now coming back to life.
On a recent afternoon, Bruce Grizer, 60, stopped into The Tower Bar for a pint to break up his bus commute between Kearny Mesa and South Crest. The bar at University and Euclid avenues reopened on June 12 with social-distancing adjustments — plexiglass shields, fewer bar stools, taped-off service lines.
Count Grizer among those who believe the novel coronavirus worries are overblown.
“My personal opinion is the hysteria is fueled by the government and, I’m sorry, but also the media,” said Grizer, who writes technical journals. “I spent 35 years in the medical industry, and (I’ve) seen the bird flu, swine flu, whatever flu you want to talk about. To me, this is just another variation.”
He said he didn’t know of anyone who’s been sick with the virus. Bartender Tasha Parker, 34, chimed in that her cousin caught it and had to be on a ventilator for nearly a week.
Like the businesses along University Avenue, some Route 7 riders are coming back for the first time in a long time. Tim Cutter was waiting at a stop in front of San Diego Electric for a bus to take him to work in Hillcrest. A cashier for Ace Parking at Scripps Mercy Hospital, Cutter said his motorcycle was in the shop and this would be his first time taking the bus since the lockdown started.
“You know, I was a little nervous at the beginning, but actually I took a look at the bus before I hopped onto it, and there’s actually enough space there, you know,” Cutter, 61, said, through a thick black mask strapped tightly against a massive white beard. “I wear gloves, I wear (a) protective mask when I get on there so I’m not touching anything that could be contaminated.”
Not everyone in the neighborhood is rooting for mass transit to come roaring back. The guys working inside San Diego Electric have had an often contentious relationship with those who hang around the bus stop. They say the shop’s metal rollup door has been routinely tagged with spray paint, sometimes several times a week.
That hasn’t happened since the lockdown, said longtime employee Frank May. “It used to be every weekend, but since the virus shutdown …”
“ … it don’t happen no more,” co-worker Gene Anderson finished his sentence.
“But the riff-raff, we have all kinds of entertainment out there, arguing couples,” May continued, adding that law enforcement apprehended someone in front of the bus stop just that morning. “They had an arrest out here, about 17 cop cars, all of them guns drawn.”
The owners of the store petitioned to get the bus stop removed or relocated, May said. When that didn’t happen, they made sure to diligently water the prickly bushes between the bus shelter and the storefront. The plants, May explained, keep people from littering and falling asleep in the planter box connected to the front of the building.
For most folks that use the bus, it’s an indispensable resource. It’s a place to socialize. It’s a government service that provides freedom to those who otherwise would’t get to enjoy it.
The bus became an indispensable part of Howard’s life after he was hit in the head multiple times with the butt of a gun during a robbery in Atlanta, where he was teaching divinity and English classes.
Howard was in a coma for more than two months following the attack, and when he came out of it, his right side was paralyzed for about eight years.
He fought his way back to health and established a community in San Diego. Young men, he said, regularly call his cell phone seeking guidance.
Now the virus has threatened to upend that.
“I like to communicate with people and I get to know all of the different drivers and talk with the people that are there,” he said. “I kind of just include everybody.”
joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com