re buses

Just to clear up 1 misunderstanding about the 'Baba on the bus' post...
A pretty common practice here on buses: Passenger skips the ticket counter and goes directly to the bus, gets on and buys his 'ticket' from the driver (only the driver usually doesn't give him a ticket, just lets him stay on the bus). The driver then pockets (all/most) of the fare (I've always been under the impression that he keeps the whole thing, but actually, how would I know?) leaving the bus station completely out of it. The passengers do this because the driver will knock off all of the station fees and just charge for the trip- so the ticket is cheaper. For several years, a lot of bus stations have had controllers working the platforms, making people show their tickets and kicking ticketless passengers off the buses. This is a fairly new practice here in this town and always causes an uproar on the bus. Everyone yelling at the controller (the mean bus station lady) and the controller yelling back... but the controller always wins. EXCEPT- some passengers just go half a block from the station and wait for the bus to come by. They get on and pay the driver and go merrily on their way...