The People on the Bus
By: Mr. Wilson on
May 5, 2006
"There's some weird people. Over time, you get a feeling who to sit by and who to avoid" "Here we usually just see poor people and students."Who wants to ride in a noisy bus with weird people? And although most people won't admit it, I think there is a strong bias against riding with "poor people and students", both due to the various stereotypes that go along with those titles, and due to the fear of association with those stereotypes. The second result is that it makes bus riders look bad. It extends stereotypes to everybody who rides the bus. When Joe Public reads the article, he sees a story about: a guy without a car; a student; a poor woman with kids; a disabled woman; foreigners; a scandal-monger; and an abused woman. That's hardly the crew Joe Public wants to mingle with. Now when he looks at a bus with this article fresh in his mind, what is he likely to think about the riders on board? In all fairness to Ms. Kenney, I'm not accusing her of seeking out an inaccurate slice of the bus-riding public. There are weird people on the buses, and there is an impressive diversity among the riders. It's just that these articles always seem to end up making buses and their riders sound less "good" than the author probably means to. I have been a regular Star Tran rider for over four years now. I've met almost all the characters: talkative guy; intoxicated guy; indescribably stinky guy; talks-to-herself lady; crying baby; horrible mother; obnoxious teenager; and so on. But for the most part they are no more or less a drain on my day than the obnoxious drivers I would have to put up with had I driven. Most of the time my ride to and from work is loud (from the bus, not the riders), but relaxing. Perhaps I'm over-analyzing this sort of article, but I don't think that's the case. It took some members of my family two years to "accept" that I am a bus rider, in large part due to generalities they had come to know as fact after reading this sort of article, or from talking to one-time riders. It seems to me that it is relatively common for people to miss the point of these articles.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
Yup - I thought the same thing as you did, Brent.
I live right near a stop for a bus that takes me almost to the door of my workplace. I’ve taken it quite a few times. My co-workers find that very strange. “Don’t you have a car? Why would you take the bus, then?” Umm, because it’s one less car on the road! Because it’s raining and I didn’t want to ride my bike in the rain! etc.
The article won’t link for me.
I love public transportation. In fact, wherever I end up WILL have reliable public transporations, because I vastly prefer it to driving. I thought it was really odd when I moved here that the busses stop running at 7, just when people should be using them the most- to get to bars and then to get back home. 😛
Lincoln is nice, though, that I can live a 10 minute bike ride or 25 minute walk from work.
The article won’t link for me.
That would be the idiots in charge of the LJS website doing their daily Changing Of The Links. It should be fixed for now.
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