Get on the bus: art abounds on urban route

Crystal Reese loves driving Metro's #1 route. She likes the scaled-down buses introduced for the run a year or so ago.

“People love them. They're cozier, yes, more personal. People like the art work on the sides of the buses. Kids love it. I enjoy seeing people's faces light up when they see the bus.”

Artist Constance McClure rides the #1 regularly from her Walnut Hills home to the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Over-the-Rhine, where she teaches. McClure calls it the Art Bus, and speaks of it as a social as well as practical transportation solution. Like Reece, the driver she most enjoys, McClure takes pleasure in the trip and prefers the new, smaller buses.

These hybrid buses and a newly configured #1 route were introduced a year ago, along with a new designation for the line: “The One For Fun.” The buses themselves, funded 100 percent by federal stimulus dollars, are 30 feet long (10 feet shorter than standard buses). Each is individually and exuberantly decorated with images reflecting attractions along the route.

A segment from one of the Cincinnati Art Museum's treasures, Vincent van Gogh's Undergrowth with Two Figures, flows over a side of one bus, while on the other side we see a view of the Contemporary Arts Center's Shepard Fairey exhibition. Krohn Conservatory, represented by an iridescent blue butterfly, shares a bus with Fountain Square's ice skating rink and, of course, a view of the fountain itself. The handsome profile of a string instrument recalls Music Hall, accompanied by  the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's lighted candle on the opposite side. Figures from the Cincinnati Museum Center's famous murals are on the fourth bus, which they share with representatives of the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla, polar bear and elephant all could be seen as seated on the bus. Several pieces of bus art include facades of the buildings housing the city-defining attractions.

The route meanders from its starting point at the Museum Center to within easy reach of a couple of dozen attractions before winding up at the Cincinnati Zoo. You can visit all the institutions decorating the buses and also find your way to the Fire Museum, the Weston Art Gallery, Paul Brown Stadium and the Great American Ball Park. The inclusion of Cincinnati's theaters (Shakespeare Company, Ensemble, Know, Playhouse in the Park) along the route is now a shade optimistic as the operating schedule has been cut back from midnight to 7 p.m., making only matinees trips possible. Still, the run continues to begin at 6 a.m.; service is every 30 minutes until about 9 a.m., then hourly until about 3 p.m. when 30-minute service resumes.

“The run is very peaceful,” Reece says. “You don't have school kids causing a commotion, there's no bad language, the people are different. Local people are going to jobs, but we get a lot of out-of-towners in the summer and in the holidays. People ask about restaurants, what's going on. Now, with the holidays, Krohn Conservatory is pretty popular; there are the trains at the Museum Center, and the Zoo has the Festival of Lights.”

The downtown loop was my first experience with Route #1; I boarded with McClure on Park Avenue in Walnut Hills just before 9 a.m. on a weekday morning. The riders were on their way to work, as was McClure. “We notice when a regular doesn't get on,” she says, and twisted around to say “hello” to the regular sitting behind us. He works for a hotel, he told me, and uses the bus to get there. No, he said, he doesn't actually go to the attractions on the line. “Working at a hotel doesn't leave you much time.”

If McClure takes an earlier bus she chats with a couple of Cincinnati Art Museum guards on their way to work, she said, adding that “a lot of young people use this bus to get downtown.”

The #1 route is particularly scenic. We swing through Eden Park, moved into Mt. Adams along Ida Street, with its striking view of the basin area below, circle around at Celestial Street and retrace our way to Paradrome. Then a slow, steep trip down Parkside to a brief run on Columbia Parkway before dipping farther down to Eggleston and then taking a twisting route through the downtown streets.

A new set of people board at Government Square and when we reach Central Parkway, McClure heads to the Art Academy. By the time we reach the Museum Center and end of the line, I am the only passenger. The return through downtown is slightly different, because of one-way streets, but the scenic pleasures of the run in Mt. Adams and Eden Park are as rewarding going out as going in. I get off where I had boarded, at Park Avenue.

I ride the rest of the route another day with Reece, after meeting her at Metro's Queensgate Operating Center.  

“I love this route; it took me a long time to get it. I've been driving for 16 years, and on this route for three years,” she says. “I do love to drive. Whatever bus they give me, I'll be OK. I have enough experience to know when to pull over and stop. That's key.” Yes, she does sometimes go to some of the attractions on the route. “So I know what they are. I want take as much knowledge as I can.”

Reese's one complaint? The route's hours aren't long enough. She'd like to see the route return to its original time frame, running until midnight. “It was good for people working in Mt. Adams, people working late downtown, good for night baseball games and the Playhouse in the Park.”

A few days later the small bus, with “#1 The One For Fun” blinking in its route panel above the windshield, arrives precisely at 4:55 p.m. at the Park Avenue stop, with Reece at the wheel. I stepped into a new bus experience. The interior is on two levels, the lower almost like a little sitting room. Two seats on either side face each other, with a set of two seats facing forward on each side of the center aisle, in a conversational grouping. Above, all seats face forward in the usual bus fashion but there are only three or four rows of them so the space appears home-sized. A few people talk up there, but depart one by one. The familiar streets (University, Eden, Corry, Jefferson) look mysterious in the winter night. When we reached Route #1's end of line just above Shields and Vine, the Zoo's bridge across Vine Street was pulsating with holiday lights.

On the return trip, a man I didn't recognize got on board and called me by name. His leather cap threw me off; usually I see him in the halls of the Art Museum, where he is a guard. He remembers that I used to be on staff there. We always talk a little when we meet in the galleries, and now in the “sitting room” of the #1 bus, we caught up, and I learned his name for the first time. He is David Johnson, on the bus because of an errand in Corryville but now headed home to Eden Park. We talked about how working for the Museum becomes part of you, how you feel a real kinship with the institution and everything it holds. I left the bus warmed by the conversation, and thinking perhaps McClure is right about the Art Bus nickname. Route #, like art itself, brings strangers together and gives friends another way to share experiences both familiar and new.
    
Route #1 is sponsored by Hollywood Casino at Lawrenceburg in a partnership coordinated with Cincinnati-based Advertising Vehicles; the back of each bus features advertising for the Casino.