Come on, The Girl on the Train, do it for public transport | Catherine Shoard
Britain seems to be falling out of love with our buses and trains. Emily Blunt to the rescue …
Forget Brexit. If you want some depressing public opinion percentages, look no further than a survey published on Tuesday asking commuters if they’d consider ditching their cars for public transport: 97% said no. Almost as many said they wouldn’t switch even if such transport was free. Sample quote: “I tried taking the bus, but when it’s raining, you have to share with damp, smelly people, and that’s my idea of hell. Car for me, all the way.” Hell, it seems, is other people who think other people are hell.
As one of those folk who tends to get damp in the rain yet still inflicts themselves on others, I find such logic not just irresponsible but unfathomable. Instead I side with the likes of Darius McCollum, whose fandom of the New York transit system means he has been arrested 30 times for posing as an employee (he also, it should be said, has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which may have affected his behaviour). He has the uniform, he sure as heck has the knowledge, and most of all he has the love. Down in the driver’s cab or up in that bus’s bothy, he says, he feels part of a community: everyone together, going in the same direction. Yes, life can be hard and wet and whiffy, but at least you’re a part of it, not isolated in your own little cocoon.
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Source: Guardian Transport
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