A bus driver was talking to me yesterday about his terrifying experience of being confronted on the bus by an angry and unbalanced passenger wielding a machete.
I hesitated before sharing this story because I do not wish to stoke Americans' fears and prejudices about mass transit.
Yet I doubt that the problems caused by this kind of passenger behaviour will be resolved by simply ignoring them. Nor is it helpful to dismiss with a would-be urbane shrug the fears aroused by such incidents as the mere discomfort of white* suburbanites, with their underexamined prejudices and overprotected lives, faced with the gritty realities of city life.
This fear of intimidation and violence on mass transit should be recognized and addressed. In the short term, a stronger and more visible presence of security personnel on the bus system might be helpful. In the longer term, we need to think hard about the causes of the social problems underlying this violence. I'm no expert in this field, but I wonder whether we see here the malign confluence of three long term trends: a hostility to mental health care in institutions that goes beyond legitimate civil liberties concerns, a concomitant reduction in public spending on both mental health and public housing, and a persistent punitive and prohibitionist rather than harm reduction and public health approach to drug use.
The bus will matter in any serious attempt to combat climate change and to improve transport policy in general. Let's not duck uncomfortable debates about the bus rider experience.
*For the record: the machete wielder was white, the bus driver African American.
#Bus #CapMetro #MassTransit #PublicTransport #PassengerViolence
#Transit
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