SAN FRANCISCO (dpa) – Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet kiss passionately – in the middle of the early morning rush hour on Highway 101.
The two Hollywood stars are being watched on screen by the passengers of a special small bus which runs daily through California’s Silicon Valley between San Jose and Palo Alto.While the bus pushes its way through the morning and evening rush hour traffic its passengers can relax before or after the rigours of work by watching blockbuster movies such as “Titanic”, “Star Wars” or “Forrest Gump”.Rocky Boyer is one of the commuters to have deserted his car in favour of the movie bus. Instead of sitting alone behind the steering wheel to drive 80 kilometres to work and pay 175 dollars a month in petrol, Boyer likes to let someone else do the driving – and pay half that price. For a bus ticket.“It’s great. There’s no stress, nice people and good entertainment,” the engineer said.And Boyer gets to work quicker, for many of California’s highways have an extra lane for vehicles carrying three or more people. While other drivers sit locked in a traffic jam, the minibus races by.The cinema on four wheels was the brainchild of Brian Peoples. The 35-year-old aeronautics engineer was fed up of commuting alone to work every day.The search for people to accompany him was so successful that he now has eight movie minibuses on the road in the Silicon Valley.Commuters meet every morning at a pick-up point such as a shopping mall where they can leave their cars. Then its off to work with a film.The drivers drop the passengers off where they want to go and then drives himself to his real work. For the chauffeur is usually working on the side, earning an extra 500 to 1,000 dollars a month depending on the number of passengers.Peoples himself says the business does not earn him enough for him to give up his main job. He would need a fleet of at least 20 minibuses before he could make a living from it. Advertising on the vehicles covers the cost of hiring the buses.But Peoples says the idea is the most important thing.“We have to save petrol and protect our nerves because the daily battle through the traffic makes all drivers ill,” he said.The service is popular with local engineers, computer programmers and secretaries, but for highly-paid managers who work a lot of overtime the buses are not suitable, Peoples said.The bus drivers collect their passengers between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., meaning later workers must still rely on the automobile.The driver, of course, is not able to watch the film. The passengers meanwhile usually need three or four trips, depending on the length of their journey and the duration of the film, before they get to see The End.
