A bus paradox
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My friend suggested earlier the idea of a bus paradox: that being that you will never arrive at the time you want to arrive at if you take the bus. It's a theory we were discussing after a frankly bizarre set of coincidences in my own journeys to work in the morning in the last few weeks.
Having worked at the same place for approaching eight years, I've more or less left the house at the same time every morning. Admittedly, in recent years I've taken to going to work a little earlier, but on the whole the difference in the time I leave the house hasn't varied too much.
The reason for this is that I use the bus. As public transport goes, my bus route is quite well catered for, given that there's a bus every ten to fifteen minutes during peak times. While the buses are timetabled pretty well, the traffic makes a big difference to how long the same journey takes at different times. Getting a bus ten minutes earlier, for example, could mean the difference between a fifteen minute journey and a thirty minute one.
In the last week, I've been deliberately trying to leave a little later. I've been hoping to run into somebody on my way to work who I know is more likely to be on that route slightly later than I normally would be. My point here is that despite leaving later, my plan has been thoroughly thwarted by my friend's suggested bus paradox.
The paradox suggests that if you have a time in mind, you won't arrive at that time by bus. In my case, I want to arrive later, but events have conspired to ensure that not only does that not happen, but I actually arrive earlier than I normally would. But it works the other way too. If I'm in a rush and keen to get somewhere by a certain time, the bus will get me there late; either through traffic or just for not showing up on time (or, sometimes, at all).
Since I'm normally ten minutes ahead of the time I now want to arrive at, I've tried leaving ten minutes later, thus meaning I'd get the bus after my normal one. This week, the last few attempts at this have been abysmal failures. It would appear that on all occasions, I've managed to arrive at the bus stop just in time to catch an arriving bus that is largely empty, and then drive past a selection of similarly vacant bus stops and straight into town without so much as a lengthy red light. To add insult, I've often caught up with what would have been my usual bus on the way! Had I known it was this simple months ago, I wouldn’t have rushed!
Next week, I might even try for fifteen or twenty minutes later. Knowing my luck, however, I'll either be hours late or the trend of this week will exacerbate to a point where I actually arrive the day before. Perhaps I'll be the first to discover a bustime continuum.