Public transit is a rare space of non-transactional encounter with strangers.

Evidence

For many people, myself included, public transportation is the last non-transactional space in which we are regularly thrown together with a diverse set of strangers, all of whom have different destinations for different reasons. Strangers have a reality to me on the bus that they cannot have on the freeway, simply because we’ve agreed to be in an enclosed space in which we are subject to each other’s actions. Because we share an understanding that we all need to get where we’re going, for the most part people act respectfully, literally making space for others when necessary. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 449

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Feeds the privilege critique: the bus is offered as a low-barrier practice of attention requiring no park or free time.

Related

• Enforced physical proximity to strangers generates mutual consideration (similarity 0.89)