Wait…why are busses depicted as a dangerous way to commute in American media?
I never really thought about it before but busses are one of the safest ways to commute to work I can imagine. I’m not ever worried when I take the train but if I had to pick which I’d feel more safe on it would be the bus.
I used to travel between towns late at night when I was a teenager/young adult woman and it would be straight up cozy and a nice way to end my day.
I think a bus feels safter to me because the driver is always right there in case something happens, while you’re kinda on your own on a train late at night.
So did you ever see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Remember the plotline about the Red Car trolley being bought out and dismantled by Cloverleaf, and the villain's Big Reveal that they planned to demolish Toontown and put a highway through it, and people would use it because the Red Car trolley wasn't there to use anymore and so they'd be FORCED to buy a car?
That really happened, in the US. Only instead of the villain being an evil cartoon posing as a judge, the villain was General Motors and Ford and all the big car companies. They bought public transit lines and dismantled them. They lobbied congress to fund the interstate highway system and they CONTINUE to lobby the us govt to keep trains and public transit from having any money, while making sure the roads get lots of it. They are responsible not only for the dismantling of public transit but also the public's perception that public transit is bad and even dangerous.
American media thinks busses and trains are dangerous because the car companies have spent DECADES and billions of dollars on propaganda making sure Americans think that so they will continue to buy cars and not question how much roads and highways have destroyed the landscape.
Yeah. You might notice, if you live in the US, people saying that planes (arguably public transportation) are the safest way to travel. That’s because planes aren’t really in competition with cars. So Ford and GM don’t bother talking trash about them.
Unfortunately, due to decades of budgetary abuse, busses and trains are frequently poorly maintained and not infrequently unpleasant traveling experiences. (Of course, so are a lot of cars, but that’s seen as an individual problem rather than a societal one). I took the greyhound bus from college home once. It was filthy, smelly, and a bad enough experience that I never did that again. I’ve had similar experiences in busses in some other cities. These experiences have all been in places where busses are mostly what poorer people take, and I doubt the neglect of transportation for the poor is coincidental.
But I’ve taken private busses rented by the organizers for local events and they were great. Cleaner than my car and considerably more comfortable. Which means that a good bus experience is totally possible if we’re willing to fund it. I’ve also taken trains, trams, and busses in Europe. I’d much rather do that than drive. I’ve been to Washington DC many, many times but never driven in it, because DC’s public transportation is way better than trying to drive there. So I’m definitely on team “public transportation yay!” But we’re not going to get a critical mass of people on that team until we make good public transportation the rule in the US rather than the exception.
One could argue that people should just deal with filth and vile smells to fight climate change. While that would be true, I’ll counter with the fact that people will not “just”. As others have said before and better than I, any plan that counts on people “just”-ing, is doomed to failure.
