Finding the "Qawi" Routes

Rich, who's one of the founding members of this project, told me this story the other day of how he was talking with a friend of his who rides a lot of buses. Rich was asking him about what buses he takes to get different places, and the friend, who has a very good understanding of the bus system, paused and asked Rich: "Do you want me to tell you about buses that just go places, or do you want me to tell you about the qawi buses?"

Qawi means strong in Arabic, and for this purpose, it's one of those general words that ends up hitting the nail on the head. We've been trying to come up with different survey questions to ask passengers, like is this bus reliable, is it fast, does it come frequently, etc. All of those questions are trying to get at that more fundamental idea of is this bus qawi. Two buses that I rode on Sunday may help illustrate the difference between the qawi and the not-so-qawi buses.

Rich's friend told me that if he wants to go from the main bus station through downtown, he doesn't take the downtown shuttle bus that was created for that route. Instead, he takes the Kuliyyat Hateen bus that leaves from the bus station, goes through downtown, but then continues on to south Amman. As he explained, the Kuliyyat Hateen bus runs more frequently and the lines are shorter for it.

I rode it on Thursday, and sure enough, it was qawi. It departed with little wait, quickly got us into south Amman territory, and with the exception of downtown, traveled along fast roads that ran by important neighborhoods and buildings that people would want to go to. Even the driver, 'Ala Al Deen was qawi. I sat next to him, and he would point out to me the names of different stops and where people could transfer to other buses.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it, but I did on the next bus I took, the Pavilion Mall bus to Abdoun.

The bus went from the main bus station to the affluent neighborhood of Abdoun. When I told a friend later that I took the bus to Abdoun, her response was: "They even run buses to Abdoun?" It's the height of Amman's wealthy car culture. There are a lot of Mercedes and big SUVs driven by a family's personal driver. At the same time though, there are a lot of house maids, security guards, janitors and others who work in Abdoun, and they depend on the buses like this one to get there.

Unfortunately, this bus was not qawi. It took a ton of tiny backstreets, doubled back on itself a few times, and then when we made it to the western edge of Abdoun, the driver parked the bus and took a 15 minute break where he was eating seeds from a plastic bag and staring off into space. Finally a few riders yelled that we had been waiting for more than 10 minutes and he started the bus up again.

This is the kind of bus that you take only if you have to. And often times, there may be an alternative bus or combination of buses that can get you somewhere much faster. Since our group has limited resources, our goal over the next few months is to focus on finding those qawi routes, and using those as the basis for a first-draft map.