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This one goes out to the two guys desperately waving at the bus stop at Lomas and Edith boulevards Northeast, as the No. 11 inexplicably passed them by last Friday afternoon.

I was in that bus, pointing along with other passengers at the frantic gentlemen left behind, and it reminded me, again, of the mass transit caste system in place here.

The New Mexico Rail Runner Express commuter train has the feel of a chardonnay-tasting in Corrales. Albuquerque's ABQ Ride bus system has the feel of slugging Mad Dog 20/20 wine from a paper bag under the Coal Avenue Bridge.

Rail Runner trains are clean and staffed by perky conductors and ticket-takers with state-of-the-art fare-collecting machines. ABQ Ride buses feature an amazing array of smells, especially in the afternoon, and are staffed by an irritatingly high number of people who don't appear to like their jobs and still demand exact fares via a 1980s-era collection box.

Of course, the above paragraph is a horrible generalization, and plenty of exceptions exist. Still, there is an undeniable vibe-difference between Rail Runner and ABQ Ride. The best place to see this in action is at the Alvarado Transportation Center downtown. Those uninitiated should check it out, especially as a sizable bit of one's taxes are being spent there.

Walking up from the ABQ Ride bus bays to the Rail Runner terminal feels like going from a gas station bathroom to a health spa. Perched symbolically above the buses, a person waiting for a Rail Runner train tends to avoid looking at the ABQ Ride milieu below. The eye goes instead to the invariably excited young children, faces beaming as they eagerly await the train's arrival. Commuters who have gotten to know each other over the months chat in informally created lines that correspond to exactly where the train doors will stop upon arrival.

Only a few feet below, people wait anxiously for their buses, trying to avoid eye contact whenever possible and gasping for breath in exhaust-filled air. Late buses aren't as much of a problem as they used to be, but having the exact fare is.

It is an uncomfortable but obvious fact that ABQ Ride patrons are, again very generally, a different lot from those riding Rail Runner. Bus ridership in this town is overly limited to those without their own vehicles, without driver's licenses and in varying degrees of what we consider hardship, in our automobile-addicted society. And, yes, maybe some ABQ Ride patrons are, for lack of a better word, "freaky" and difficult to work and clean around. No one would argue the fact that bus drivers have a hard job.

Yet this begets a chicken-egg situation - one with ramifications on future mass transit here. If ABQ Ride continues to provide a second-class service relative to Rail Runner, few people with their own vehicles will ever take the bus, regardless of gas prices and gridlock.

If folks like those two poor guys at Lomas and Edith last Friday get burned once by an inattentive bus driver, what's the likelihood of their using ABQ Ride again, if they have their own vehicles? Who would subject themselves unnecessarily to such second-class treatment?

Key is an Albuquerque writer and middle school teacher. Visit his blog at frannyzoo.blogspot.com.