In case you don’t check the front page of the New York Post every morning to see the latest on the city’s most heinous crimes (ahem, not that we do) the big story today is about a passenger who was stabbed to death yesterday while riding a Bronx-bound D train, at around two in the morning. The accompanying story is jarring: An altercation between a 36-year-old homeless man and a 37-year-old exterminator resulted in the former’s being stabbed in the jugular and the hand, and then bleeding to death on the train.
The Post coverage is particularly gripping, since it focuses on the experience of the other passengers trapped in the car with a man who had just stabbed another man in the neck. Witnesses started pounding on train doors and one pulled the emergency cord in a panicked attempt to escape. It’s an image that sticks with anyone who takes public transportation: You’re trapped underground in a steel cage with strangers, and there’s nowhere to hide or retreat if someone goes postal.
The story hits the root of a key deterrent for potential mass-transit riders: The other people riding it. Cramming the population of a city like New York into a maze of underground cars creates a forced melting pot that’s a perfect breeding ground for class and race divisions. It calls to mind the famous image of Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities describing the lengths he takes to avoid contact with the undesirable masses…by taking cabs. (One can just imagine what the class relations are like on Dubai’s new rail system.)
But ingrained fear of strangers or no, public transit is the most important option for transporting an urban population. The number of people in cities is simply too large, and expanding too rapidly, to rely on cars. Plus there are the emissions and fuel costs that make mass transit a necessity — not to mention the fact that exponentially more people die in car accidents than as prisoners of train-riding psychopaths.
Still, we’re willing to bet that today’s Post headline had at least one would-be subway-rider say, “You know what? I think I’ll drive to work.”
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November 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
There is something deep rooted and important here that is a particular phenomenon in the United States.
Just yesterday someone e-mailed me asking what were the chances that a sleeper car could be put on a particular Amtrak day train she likes to ride. Not to sleep, but so that a private room would be available with it’s own toilet. She said that riding in business class compromised her needs for privacy.
Truth is, I’ve run across the same thing in regards to shared living situations. There are some people who don’t want to share a bathroom, even at home. And don’t want someone else around at home.
There’s a divide here in living styles and I think it’s reflected in politics and land-use planning as well. It’s the nature of living together that you have to take each other into account and compromise (wear headphones). A lot of people object to that - in living as well as politics.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I think the necessity of sharing space with strangers is what makes cities the diverse, creative, wealth-producing places that they are. Far from being a necessary evil, it is the most distinctive feature of urban life. The elimination of this feature was one aspect of modernist city planning, but we reject that now. So we want mass transit for the type of civic interaction it creates, not just for sustainability and practicality.
And really, you can die anywhere. Subway murderers are terrifying, but they are far more rare than deadly car accidents (as you mentioned).
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Travelling is a risk, no matter what form you happen to choose. It’s just that these kinds of unfortunate events on public transit, garner way more publicity because they are a dime a dozen. The press has a way of blowing things up even more with their sensationalizing reporting. Its unfortunate but how about in the same story putting up some comparative numbers concerning deaths by other means of travel.
You hardly hear anything about car wrecks other than on the traffic reports on the radio and tv. They happen so often, that covering them as they did this, would result in it pretty much being the only news you hear of all day.
People I’ve spoken to here in Dallas have a problem with public transport because there isn’t a personal space bubble for everybody on a train, unlike on the road where everybody has a steel cage, on a train 200 people share one. They also mention the areas they might have to go through whilst on the train that might see some criminals/crazies/homeless board the train. Those are the two most common reasons I’ve heard as a possible deterrent for them using Public transport.
This won’t deter a lot of people from taking public transit. A lot of people don’t have any other means either by choice or by circumstance.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
[...] of the commenters on the Infrastructurist post put it well: I think the necessity of sharing space with strangers is what makes cities the diverse, creative, [...]