Riding the 85: On the Bus

Apr. 29—The driver greets her boarding passengers, closes the doors and the 85 bus exhales as it pulls away from the Lawrence Senior Center.

It is 4 p.m. on a glorious April day, one of the spring's first to top 70 degrees.

Passengers are chatty, including regular Angie Garcia, who climbed aboard at the Senior Center where she does community health outreach.

Garcia rides to and from work on the 85, a Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority route custom designed in 2014 to serve those who depend most on public transportation.

It takes riders to and from Lawrence's poorest neighborhoods and seven of the city's 13 elderly housing complexes.

Regular stops include Greater Lawrence Family Health Center and food destinations including La Fruteria supermarket, the Farmer's Market at the Campagnone Common and food pantries.

Garcia, sitting up front on a high bench seat from which passengers' feet dangle like those of children, tells the bus driver that the center will soon reopen for regular programs after a long pandemic pause.

The driver, Tracy Bagley, gets peppered by riders each day with the question, "When is the center opening?"

"May 10," Angie announces. "Now you can tell them. We will have a big reopening."

Other bus passengers include Luis Perron, who works at Dunkin' Donuts, and Ramona Heredia and Emma Lugo, a kindergarten teacher at Parthum Elementary School.

The 85 takes people in need of medical care to the health clinic, especially the elderly, says Heredia.

Lugo says the free fares on the MVRTA lines (good on all 24 routes) are a big help for those with little money.

The 85 shuttles passengers around downtown Lawrence from Haverhill and Lawrence and Park streets to Broadway, around the rotary at Manchester Street and back to Broadway to Essex and Union streets and to Haverhill Street.

The route serves elderly housing buildings including Elm Towers and Mary Immaculate.

This day is the driver's 13th anniversary with the MVRTA. She drives noon to 7 Monday through Friday, making 15 loops a day on the 85.

She greets and cajoles and at times referees when riders, on occasion, get argumentative with each other.

The passengers like the driver. Do they all feel that way? Well, there is one regular rider who doesn't like her, she says.

Regulating masks has been hard, she adds.

In January the MVRTA lost one of its beloved drivers to COVID-19.

Gleason Nicholls, 51, from Lawrence, who was fully vaccinated, had worked 16 years for the Transit Authority.

At a memorial for him at the Buckley Transportation Center in Lawrence, fellow drivers, in an impromptu salute, leaned on their horns for a minute in memory of their friend and colleague, said Noah Berger, MVRTA administrator.

Meanwhile, on the 85 bus, later in the route, a passenger gives Bagley a Boston cream donut. One older gentleman gives her a banana each day.

She's learning Spanish, she says. In Lawrence, where about 80 percent of the city's 80,000 residents have Latin roots often tracing to the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, many folks speak Spanish.

The first word she learned was Luna, which means moon. She learned it when someone pointed out a beautiful moon.

This day, April 13, the streets and parks are full of people feeling the sun on their arms and faces as they play basketball, relax on North Common benches or walk.

Two small children play miniature golf on a makeshift course they have created in the parking in front of a small auto repair garage.

The domino players are at their tables in the northeast corner of the Campagnone Common.

Along the way, another regular rider, Francis Cialek, a retired city worker, boards the bus. He uses his cane to help him navigate his steps.

Bagley tells him about the Senior Center reopening in May and Cialek, not shy about expressing his thoughts, says the center just had a dinner for police and firefighters.

What about the seniors?

Cialek says he's bound for Walgreens to buy his wife chocolate for Easter.

He's wearing an old-school Lawrence ball cap given to him by a friend years ago.

Farther down the line he and another passenger get into a loud discussion about the merits of former Mayor Daniel Rivera's tenure in Lawrence.

Cialek derides him; the woman says the state must have thought he did a good job since it hired him at MassDevelopment.

As the back-and-forth grows in volume, the driver slips on her referee's jersey and reminds her charges to play nice.

The 85 needs to travel in peace and continue getting its passengers where they need to go.

Editors note: This is story 2 in a series of stories about the bus routes serving Lawrence-area riders who rely on public transportation.