Day 277 of 1827: Public Transit Revelations

I was going over my notes today, and I realized that I had neglected to post a couple of things that I discovered recently about the public transit system in Santiago.

Let’s fix that.

Back when Dan and I visited the chocolate expo at Portal Ñuñoa, he showed me a neat trick that you can do at the bus stop.

Every bus stop has a sign next to it that lists off the different routes that stop there. That’s obvious enough, but also there’s an identifier in the bottom right corner of the sign. It starts with “PD” (short for parada) and has a number after it (e.g., “PD160”).

It turns out, if you send a text message to 1111 with the bus stop identifier and the number of the route that you are interested in, you’ll get a response back within a few seconds with an estimate of how long until the next bus arrives!

So for example, if I was at the bus stop in front of Portal Ñuñoa, and I wanted to see how long until the next 514 arrived, I could send “PD160 514” to 1111, and within a few seconds, I would get a reply letting me know when the next 514 bus was scheduled to arrive.

Neat! It’s especially helpful for late nights when the buses run much less frequently, and you want to figure out whether it’s worth it to stand around in the cold or just flag down a taxi.

The other thing I discovered recently is just what the heck the recording says before the doors close on the Metro trains.

I tell ya, if you want to test yourself to see how good your Spanish listening skills are, try figuring it out sometime. I’m actually still not 100% sure that she’s saying what I think she’s supposed to be saying.

The first thousand times, I heard, “Se ni sea cierre lo puertas“… which is gobbledygook.

But now that I’ve listened to the announcer say that phrase at least 50 or 60 thousand times, I think I’ve finally figured it out:

“Se inicia el cierre de puertas.“

There’s nothing like understanding Spanish broadcast over a distorted speaker on a crowded subway train to make you feel good about your language skills (: