THE coaster bus ride from Spanish Town to Half-Way-Tree during peak hours may not be as burdensome for travellers as many may believe – in fact, if you’re willing to ‘lap up’, the experience, according to participants, is more pleasure than pain.

Lapping up, which involves a woman sitting on a man’s lap for the 14-mile journey, has become quite popular on the route, even though the conductors deny that there’s anything happening beyond just innocent fun.

But with seat names like ‘Good hole seat’, there’s a huge question mark about how much of it is actual fun and how much borders on the obscene.

“A just the vibes and the hype of the music that we play and people just enjoy themselves and feel good,” one conductor explained, while vehemently denying that actual sex takes place. “No man, nothing like that nah gwaan, people can’t have sex on my bus. No man, a just the vibes that we give them.”

Other conductors approached also denied knowledge of sexual indulgence on the buses while others outrightly denied the very existence of passengers ‘lapping up’.

However, as this reporter found out, a number of buses plying the route during peak hours – between 6:30 am and 9:00 am and between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m – carried out this practice. Buses identified in the act are those popularly known as the ‘shotta’ buses, namely ‘BET’, ‘More Love’, Sweet Love’, ‘Excess Love’, ‘Pon top a Tings’, ‘Rise to the Occasion’ ‘Hot Sauce’ and ‘VIP’.

Lap-up passengers include both adults and students, with a large number of female students observed from The Queen’s School, Holy Childhood, Immaculate Conception High and Priory High, while boys from Jamaica College and Calabar High and various evening schools were also spotted taking the buses.

When one Calabar student was asked why he walked two-and-a-half miles to catch a bus, he explained that he was doing so to meet a particular bus, naming one of the infamous lap-up buses.

His reason for doing so was simple – it was one of the ‘vibes’ buses. Though reluctant at first to talk about the lap-up scenario, he soon explained that, “only what you want to happen will happen”.

“If the man want to fly a so, but is not all the time that happen. Is just the vibes. Is big people start it still, schoolers just start follow, das all.”

A ‘loader man’ in Half-Way-Tree explained the process.

“You have a set of people who not travelling unless they take the lap-up buses. They come out here during the evenings and wait on them,” he said. “And is not only schoolers but big people too. Woman a sit down in the man dem lap, most time, they don’t know the man, but some of them come out here in groups. Schoolers sit down in schoolers lap or in big man lap, it doesn’t matter.”

But is it desperation to get to their destination that forces commuters to travel in this fashion? Or is it another way of practising ‘safe sex’ as many believe?

When asked why someone would want to ‘lap up’ in a bus, the loader man’s answer was unambiguous.

“But lady, you can’t get pregnant that way!”

The routine is simple. To get on to one of these buses from Kingston, one must walk from Half-Way-Tree to any bus stop on Molynes Road, sometimes as far as the intersection of Molynes Road and Washington Boulevard, just about two and a half miles away. From the old capital, one must wait for the bus at the gate of the Spanish Town Hospital or in Greendale.

Many will ignore the ‘regular-looking’ buses and will instead take the ‘shotta bus’, no matter how packed it is.

These buses have midnight black tint, making it almost impossible to see inside from the sides and back. After picking up passengers, the windows are then drawn, the AC is on and the sound system is blaring.

Beside the driver is seated at least three females on what is termed ‘the good-hole seat’. This is a cushion placed on top of the engine and the farther the bus travels the hotter the seat gets. The back seat itself will accommodate 10 – five seated and five in laps. The rest of the bus is then crammed.

Incidentally, if you ignorantly enter one of these buses you are told you have to either lap up of get off.

The loader man we interviewed told of an incident two Fridays ago, where police pulled over one of the buses crammed with students on Molynes Road. When everyone disembarked the final count was 109.

“You can’t really blame the ‘ductors’ for packing up the buses,” he suggested. “The government is to be blamed. You find that the people don’t want to sit down in the traffic, so that is why they take the coaster buses instead of the ‘chi chi white’. What the government needs to do is give more licences to coaster owners to run the route. You find that the boss (owner for the buses) mek more money when the people dem lap up still,” the loader man added.

He said there were currently nine licensed buses plying the route and even then they were running contrary to their road licence – which is HWT via Hagley Park Road instead of via the Boulevard. He noted too that other buses do ply the route though they were not licensed to do so.

One commuter, Althea McDonald said ‘lap up’ had been happening for a long time, even on other routes.

“Mi dear, I remember in 1997 when I lived in Portmore. I took one of the buses with my little son and sat in one of the middle seats. A Holy Childhood girl was sitting in a man’s lap with her uniform spread over his legs. A matronly lady was sitting beside them. All of a sudden she jumped up and bawl out ‘Lawd Jesus!’ Apparently she realised something was going on. Upon her outburst, the man jumped up in fright with his penis hanging out and the girl’s uniform back wet up! I couldn’t believe it. I just used my hand to cover my son’s face.”

The police too are aware of the practice of ‘lapping up’. Inspector Haughton Newell of the Half-Way-Tree Police Traffic dDepartment said that lapping had indeed been taking place for a long time.

“It’s not anything strange. We are aware of the situation and we do prosecute for excess passengers,” he said. “A lot of school girls and even adults travel on these buses. We are indeed aware of the overcrowding on the buses and whenever perpetrators are caught they are prosecuted.”

Newell reported that last week, a bus was stopped and emptied on Molynes Road and over a hundred passengers, mainly schoolers, disembarked.

He noted, too, that these coaster buses were licensed to carry 29 passengers, but recalled another incident earlier this year where one of the buses ran contrary to the route and was stopped in the Maxfied area and again over 100 persons came off.

However, “police can’t stop this”, one loader man declared confidently. “Some owners (of the buses) have their ‘big links’ in the police force, so even if police and everybody know ’bout it, it can’t stop.”