Public Transit Is Good Even When It's Bad

Taken October 23, 2022.

I’ve always enjoyed taking the bus despite public transit in my area of town being an utter embarrassment—the busses run infrequently, sometimes just never showing up. They are consistently late when you’re under a time crunch, then conveniently early when you anticipate it coming at a certain time. It’s unpredictable at best. Not to mention you’re dealing with the wider public at large, which includes the poor, working class and homeless mixed in with the occasional character. Ideally, I would like to move somewhere with good transit, but I’m still saving money for that venture.

While there are rare instances of violation and potential danger at the average bus stop, it’s usually far and few in between. My first occurrence of this was when I was 17 years old and starting to take the bus for the first time after I moved in with my dad and step-mom. It was my only source of transportation as my dad went into work at five in the morning every day. My step-mom would drop me off on Mondays when I was scheduled to start late, but otherwise I was on my own and fully relied on the bus as a way to get around town. The first few weeks was an adventure trying to get adjusted to waking up at an ungodly hour and the times the bus routes would usually arrive. It was trial and error. I went to one bus stop that was pretty quiet. Not a whole lot of traffic passed by during those hours, I wasn’t in front of a house or business and any nearby businesses that were nearby weren’t even open because, again, it was an ungodly hour of the morning. It meant that if anything were to happen to me or if anyone wanted to try anything with me, it was an opportune setting to do so. One man took advantage of this when he approached me and started talking to me. Me, being naive and nice so he would leave me alone, made small talk with him. It wasn’t until a few minutes passed when I realized he was videotaping me. I remember being frozen in fear—I was being violated and I couldn’t do anything except wish the bus would arrive. A few minutes later it did, and I ran on as quickly as I could. For the remainder of the day I was in a complete daze. I told my friends, who were horrified. I told my dad and he immediately wanted to buy me a taser, to which I told him not to because if a taser was found on my person at school, I would be for sure suspended. He brought me to the police station the next day to file a report. The police didn’t do anything but did make a mention a man with the same description was doing the same thing to women who went to a nearby gym. My dad told me if it happened again, I was switching routes. A few weeks passed by before the guy came by again. It baffled me he was acting as if we knew each other and were friends. I yelled at him to fuck off, and once again I was saved by the bus. The following week I took a completely different route to school.

It was a massive learning experience on how to deal with strange men in public. I also learned the value of constantly scanning rooms and different environments to make sure I knew how to exit if an emergency happened and what to do if I found myself in a dangerous situation. If I yell, will anyone hear me? Is there enough foot and car traffic for anyone to notice if something happened to me? Can I rely on a witness to be nearby if I’m attacked and/or brutally raped?

It wasn’t until sixteen years later I would be waiting at the bus stop. A drunk, homeless man was there, jacking off in front of me. The feeling of being frozen in fear and panic set in again. Once more I was being violated, but this time I knew it was best to not engage, especially since it was obvious he was blasted out of his brain. I also knew the police wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, and would merely just give him shit for being homeless. So I went into the group chat and everyone immediately kept talking to me until the bus arrived to, at the very least, make me feel a little safe in an otherwise violating situation.

While those two instances were traumatic, I still advocate for taking public transit. Why? It’s way to be engaged with the community. You get your regular drivers who will say good morning to you as you hop on the bus and say. “Have a good day!” as you get off on your stop. There is one person who rides part of my route and always tells me, “Have a good one, Chica!” as he gets off on the stop before mine. I know when I get on my routes, I see the regulars who recognize me and vice versa. You also get a better idea of what the community needs. You see people where people work, if they have disabilities and the bus is able to best accommodate them, people with children and how best to service their needs, the elderly, students in high school and college—all walks of life board the bus. Seeing those demographics in one place makes you attune of any props that are on the ballot, volunteer efforts, or local politicians asking what their cities need to make them run more efficiently and for the people, not the rich.

Our culture has become so dependent on cars that we have become our own isolation chambers. I understand for some people, a car is going to be more beneficial than taking public transit because they travel far distances to work, are disabled or have children that makes taking them to school and outside sports practice/dance/music lessons virtually impossible through a bus route. But entrusting people to ride around in two ton death machines also feels reckless as a society. It’s so much easier to tune out everything going on around you—you become desensitized to the world around you, and you are unable to see how the community is changing either for the better or the worst. My brother, who doesn’t drive, would constantly point out stuff he’d see while I was driving that I didn’t know existed until he said something. I was always so busy keeping my eyes on the road, I missed a lot of what was happening in my environment. Now that I use public transportation as my main source of getting around town, I see more of this stuff on my treks to different destinations.

In a world that makes us feel isolated enough as is with overbearing jobs, and the constant need to feel like you need to be consistently busy to feel as if you have a fulfilling life (Thanks Capitalism!), we further isolate ourselves by being boxed in by a huge hunk of metal, away from the rest of the world. We lose our empathy, our sense of belonging, our sense of self. How can we be good to each other when we simply don’t think about the people in the other hunk of metal beside us but rather as the car that cut us off? Forgot to use their blinker? Has horrible politics based on their bumper stickers? We no longer see them as people, but rather as other hunks of metal who have managed to piss us off by either making our commute inconvenient at best and nearly kill us at worst.

Riding the bus gives me a chance to daydream—I daydream a lot and when I am able to let my brain wander, I feel more at ease. I get to take photos, feel more relaxed. Sure, maybe the fact I have to run on a schedule with the bus is inconvenient a bulk of the time or makes my commute to work and home longer, but it also provides me an opportunity to listen to my podcasts and enrich myself with knowledge while I’m waiting for the first bus to arrive on my route. The possibility of dealing with creeps is always going to be thing because I’m a woman walking around in public. There are a lot of things about public transit that can be annoying, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs. In the long run, it’s a public good, environmentally friendly, and a thousand times safer than driving a car.