Remember how I was waxing poetic about Dushanbe’s marshrutka system? I really glossed over a lot of the other routes of transportation. In particular, I did not do justice to Dushanbe’s beautiful rusty old trolleybus network. My love for this relic of Soviet Russia has grown many times like flower in pot. These elegant green and white and iron oxide colored buses quickly whisk people from one stop to the next, manned by a driver and a fare collector who rides in the door and tells the driver whether to stop and mercifully wait for people running for the bus or to drive by completely without stopping. In general, they are far more eager to take an extra one Somoni fare from a passenger than to maintain a “schedule,” though, so I rarely miss them like in the US. Here are some of my favorite stories about the trolleybuses so far.
Sunny Side Up
I already told most of this one in my post on marshrutkas a few days ago, but I’ll put it here again because I keep making the same mistake. On my morning commute, the sun streams through the windows on the left hand side of the bus. On my way home, it also streams through the windows on the left hand side of the bus. This would not be as much of an issue if the entire left side of the bus were not open seating to be chosen from like some Rebecca Black-esque buffet directly in front of me whenever I step on the bus. In my stupidity, I forget that the sun on the foamy leather seats ensures that side of the bus remains 20 degrees warmer than the other. Thus, at every stop, inside a force is begging the driver to start driving again, if only to get the draft through the windows and roof vents going again.
Clown Car
Sometimes, with the buses, you’re at the mercy of how desperate the fare collector is. One time, about 20 of us piled up onto a bus together to head to a bazaar. We all squished ourselves into an area at the back, and the bus moved on to the next stop, where we proceeded to sit for five to ten minutes waiting for the rest of the space on the bus to fill up. One by one, in ways we did not think possible, more and more people found their way onto the bus. Then, and only then, were we allowed to keep on going.
Hail Marying Through Intersections
Either one of two things has happened since the Wikipedia page on the Dushanbe trolleybus system was written. One: the system’s overhead infrastructure has been much improved and no longer requires some unconventional operating procedures that I’m about to describe (doubtful – see below), or Two: I haven’t ridden any trolleybus off of Rudaki so I honestly have no idea if what I’m about to say is true off the number one bus.
According to Wikipedia and legend, the trolleybus wires, particularly at complicated intersections, are very deteriorated. This is something I have been able to independently confirm (again, see below). The wires at intersections are so deteriorated that, at least at one point, the bus crew included a roof surfer a la Slumdog Millionaire to realign the electical pickup poles whenever they popped off, which apparently was at every single intersection. There was one time when I actually saw a guy on the roof bending one back into shape after an incident, which explains why the poles are often very clearly not parallel to one another. In any case, the roof surfer also served to coordinate what I will refer to as a Hail Mary Intersection Interaction, which is a standard operating procedure in which the bus driver accelerates to 30 or 40 mph and blasts through an intersection without heeding any traffic signals as the roof surfer yanks down the collection poles, hangs on for dear life, and then re-connects them to the wires as the bus exits the intersection. That is how they do it in Tajikistan, and you know what? The MBTA in Boston could learn a thing or two from the clearly frugal budget on which the trolleybuses operate here.
Oh Snap
On National Unity Day, we were on our way to the stadium, moving quickly to avoid the rain. To our right, a Trolza was plowing its way up Rudaki, when it slowed down a little bit. We heard an enormous bang, and turned around to see a cable flying across the road with a large fitting in tow that had, until seconds before, anchored it to a metal pole. The overhead pickups of the bus sparked wildly and flew up past the wires as they slipped off their contacts driven by the forceful springs that normally hold the wires captive. The bus came to a stop, and the entire bird’s nest above the street oscillated, hoping that no other weak spots would be discovered. Cars simply drove around it like nothing was wrong. As for the bus, in a few seconds the fare collector had leapt out and grabbed the rope connected to the pickup rods (they use a manual rope since the pickups slip off a lot) and within thirty seconds the bus had its pickup rods back on the overhead wires and was beginning to head off again. So much for that wire of infrastructure.