Buenos Aires Bus System

We had a major accomplishment yesterday…we rode a Buenos Aires city bus!

This was not the first bus we rode in the city, but it was the first bus that we used the Guia de Buenos Aires, the rather complicated city bus guide

Buenos Aires is a big, big city and while the cost of a taxi is relatively inexpensive it will cost 2 to 3 times more than the cost of a subway or bus ride. I am not quite sure what the city transportation planners were thinking when they built the subway, because it is very inconvenient for many places in the city.

The subway is designed with 5 lines coming into the city center but none of them connect to each other and there are many places in the city that would require walking dozens and dozens of blocks even to reach a subway station. So, the best mode of public transportation around the city is the bus.

…the only problem is understanding how to use it.

To solve this problem the city publishes what is commonly referred to as the ‘Guia’ – which is a compact little book of some 200 pages that lays out each part of the city in a grid on one page and lists the buses that run to/through that part of the grid on the facing page. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong!

First of all, I know I am getting old and need to get my eyes checked…but the guide is printed in what appears to be an 8 font size and often there are dozens of street names scrunched into a tiny section on the page – this makes it pretty difficult to tell what exactly is going on.

Second, while it is relatively easy to determine what bus goes to a particular section of town it is NOT easy trying to figure out how to connect where you want to go with where you are. “Cross referencing” I guess is the easiest way to describe it, you basically try and determine if there are any buses in the general area of where you want to go that also go to the general area of where you are – hopefully there are and your walk is not more than a half dozen blocks to catch your connection.

Yesterday we went to a “Cowboy Fair” in a section of the city that is a long distance from where we are living, in fact, the bus ride was more than 30 minutes long. We listed ALL of the buses that went to where we wanted to go, some 12 or more within a few blocks, and cross referenced them with ALL buses that went by the area where we live by a few blocks. Eureka! We found 1 bus that was listed on both lists, that was only a short walk from our apartment and dropped us on the corner of our destination.

Unfortunately, the same bus that takes you to a destination is not necessarily the same bus that brings you back….we are still working on that!

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