Howard Payne: See, I'm in charge here! I drop this stick, and they pick your friend here up with a sponge! Are you ready to die, friend?
Harry: Fuck you!
Howard Payne: Oh! In two hundred years we've gone from "I regret but I have one life to give for my country" to "Fuck you!"?
Jack: You're crazy! You're fuckin' crazy!
Howard Payne: NO! Poor people are crazy, Jack. I'm eccentric.
Swat Cop: Anything else that'll keep this elevator from falling?
Jack: Yeah. The basement.
[Howard hears on the news of Helen's death.]
Howard Payne: Interactive TV, Jack. It's the wave of the future.
Jack: Harry! Tell me good news, man.
Howard Payne: Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. He didn't make it.
Jack: You, FUCK!
Howard Payne: It was the watch that lead him to me, wasn't it? Huh? It seemed a little hammy to me to build a bomb out of my precious retirement gift, but, you know, I figured a sign that said "Howard Payne" would be pushing it.
Jack: I'm gonna rip your fucking spine out, I swear to God.
Harry Temple: All right, pop quiz. Airport, gunman with one hostage. He's using her for cover; he's almost to a plane. You're a hundred feet away... Jack?
Jack: Shoot the hostage.
Helen: Are they going to help us?
Stephens: Sure they are, they're the police. Hey, your taxes are paying their salaries. We die, they gotta take a pay cut.
Howard Payne: Jack, nothing tricky now. You know I'm on top of you! DO NOT attempt to grow a brain!
Howard Payne: This day has been real disappointing, I don't mind saying.
Jack: Why, because you didn't get to kill everyone?
Howard Payne: There will come a time, boy, when you will wish you never met me.
Jack: Mister, I'm already there.
Howard Payne: I'm the guy with the plan 'cause I'm smarter. I'm smarter than you.
[Howard gets decapitated by a light in the subway tunnel.]
Jack: Yeah? Well I'm taller.
Jack: Tell me again Harry, why did I take this job?
Harry Temple: Oh come on, thirty more years of this, you get a tiny pension and a cheap gold watch.
Jack: Cool.
Answer: If they had, there might have been the possibility that to get to these routes they would have to go down a different road and depending on which route they take they might have to slow down to make the turn which would likely cause the bus to drop below 50 mph. Better to just keep going straight and keep the bus going. There's also the possibility that had they taken a different route, they would have to deal with a lot of traffic especially if there was traffic stopped at a red light. By using the highway, there'd be no traffic lights and less traffic to deal with.