I Miss Public Transportation
I miss public transportation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the daily lives of billions of people has been drastically changed, and one of the sectors that has been changed the most has been public transportation. More than 20 million people have started using Teams to work remotely (reuters.com)and public transportation use has dropped by 90% (washingtonpost.com). Life has changed, very quickly, and though we’ve all adapted in one way or another over the last month of social distancing and quarantine I can’t stop thinking about the metro and buses.
I love public transportation, the concept of mass transit with little effort is one of humanity’s greatest achievements both technologically and socially. The ingenuity of people like Blaise Pascal, the credited inventor of the bus and Charles Pearson, the first person to successfully propose an underground transit system, is greatly underappreciated. I say this because there were 182 million trips taken on the DC metro alone in 2019 (wmata.com)
My fascination with public transportation comes from my upbringing in La Paz, Bolivia, a city of 2 million people with no official public transportation but rather a circuit of informal transportation with over 25,000 minibuses and 17,000 taxis (paginasete.bo). If you look at the numbers you’ll realise that it’s a lot of minibuses carrying passengers, more than 77% of the city’s population dependent on minibuses. The efficiency of this system is abysmal, sometimes it’s faster to walk the mile than to hop on a minibus. If you want to see how bad it is I recommend watching the TV series Don’t Drive Here hosted by Andrew Younghusband.
What drew me about public transportation growing up was how much it opened the world to me. We all live in a bubble, even if we live in New York City, we stick to our neighbourhood. This bubble suddenly grows when you start using public transportation, and it grows quite rapidly. Not only does the bubble grow, but our world view does as well. As soon as you walk into that metal box (be it a metro car, a bus, an uber pool, etc) the stories of everyone inside converge. Suddenly everyone, regardless of race, economic background, or place of origin shares an experience. I once heard that living in New York the teacher, the unemployed, and the CEO all take the same metro car, and I believe it.
With the convergence of stories comes the piece I miss the most of public transportation, conversation. I’ve had some of the best conversations with people in cramped minibuses, trains, and shared ubers. I think it’s a feeling of safety from the swaying metal box you’re in, or maybe it’s the fact that you’ll never see this person again that helps spark some of the most beautiful chats. These are the pieces of life that I miss the most, the small “insignificant” conversations that lead me to love life. I’ve gotten love advice, financial advice, some really good food recipes, and some fond memories all from taking some sort of public transportation.
I miss waiting in line at the bus stop early in the morning and feeling the cold air sharply penetrate my lungs, I miss seeing the family with 3 kids that always got off two stops after I got on, and the cheery good morning I got every time I walked into the bus. I marvel at how society is handling the pandemic and the way entire cities and countries have shut down for the safety of people. I marvel at how people have come together to help our medical professionals and our small businesses. And I hope to one day to ponder how great life is when taking the bus and asking a stranger if they mind me sitting next to them even though it’s the only seat left on the bus.
So here is a thank you to all the essential public transportation workers who have kept transit open for our other essential workers.
