I also found the first page a little confusing - I thought it was the woman with the child who was narrating, not the innocuous figure in the background.
I don't want to seem like im picking a fight here, or slapping down valid reactions, but I really can't see that this line of criticism is justified relation to this sequence.
Barbarara isn't the narrator. The narraror mentions Barbarara in the third person, when he says "Barbarara had ridden the iso-block bus four days a week for almost four years. She was used to strangers talking to her".
There's only one person talking in the scene. Therefore that isn't Barbarbara either: it's the stranger. Up to that point the narration is just general exposition about MC1 public transport.
We're being shown a bus in an urban wasteland. We're seeing how people feel on that bus. We're being told it's the bus to an iso blocknow, and how that differs from the norm. We're being told this is Barbarara's work commute, and then shown that she is kind to frightened strangers. It's good, involving storytelling.
I'm a big believer in Wagner's style, but he (and T.B. Grover) has done
this kind of thing many times. It's clear, it's efficient, it's interesting. More interesting than a caption on a pucture of Barbarbara saying "This person is Barbarara, she works in an iso block but is basically a regular decent cit".