User-friendly transit?

To the San Francisco Chronicle:

[ letters [at] sfChronicle.com ]


Columnist Debra J. Saunders quotes the Sierra Club's Dan Becker, saying higher gas prices have given us "no improvement in mass-transit ridership" (SF Chronicle, 27 May 2004).

Saunders cites speed and convenience as reasons why most middle-class persons flee from mass transit. She's too polite to discuss social and inter-personal hassles.

Our buses and commuter trains are "designer-friendly", not user-friendly. As a life-long transit rider and pedestrian, I can't believe transit vehicle designers ever consider the social and bodily interactions of strangers packed together during peak hours.

If they cared how we feel, there wouldn't be any seats where one rider could hinder the coming or going of another, thus causing stress, anxiety, anger, even fear. There'd be more single seats, more lengthwise seats. There would be much more space for standing without becoming physically intimate (a forced closeness which annoys females and gladdens frotteurs).

When conflicts inevitably arise in badly-configured vehicles, riders blame fellow riders, and/or the driver. Nobody thinks to blame the vehicle's uncaring designers.

Riders, and those who avoid riding, just assume a mass transit experience MUST inherently be sixth-rate (ranking below travel by private car, rented or shared car, taxi, bicycle, motorcycle, etc.). Like so many of our unspoken assumptions, this bit of common nonsense flows from ignorance of life overseas.

I know, from personal experience, that mass transit in Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand can be more pleasant, less crowded, faster, and more attractive to the middling classes.

So why not here?


Tortuga Bi LIBERTY
San Francisco

28 May 2004, Friday

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SUN
PO Box 426937
SF, CA 94142-6937
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