Traveling by transit

Over the past couple of years, I have adopted an informal habit whenever I have traveled or moved places — to collect transit passes from wherever I am. This started out unintentionally, as a byproduct of using public transit to move around most places, but by now, I have sought them out intentionally, even if purchasing single-use paper tickets would have been more cost-effective. Furthermore, rather than simply as a method of transportation, I have been increasingly thinking of public transit when traveling as an experience worth writing and thinking about in its own right — as a key part of fully experiencing a place one is visiting.

Accessibility

If one wants to venture distances longer than a couple of miles, or about a 30-minute walk, public transit can in many ways be more accessible than a taxi, ride-share, or renting a car. In my personal case, I have usually been “driven” to use transit over renting a car simply because I am not yet 25, and would thus be charged additional fees on top of the daily rate, which are still usually not within my budget. Additionally, the usual detriments of driving — navigating and parking — still arise here, coupled with the unfamiliarity of driving in a new place.

Ride-shares or taxis alleviate this issue, but even over the course of a few days can easily run up to hundreds of dollars in charges, once surge prices and tipping are taken into account. Conversely, a weekly transit pass can be magnitudes less expensive — a seven-day pass from the Chicago Transit Authority for example is only $20.

Transit authorities can do their part to help explain to tourists how to navigate their system, pay their fares, and see sights around town on the bus or train. An example of this in action can be seen in Vancouver, Canada, where the regional transit authority, TransLink, has put together a tourists’ guide not only on how to use the transit system there, but also showing which sites — for shopping, museums, the arts, nature and more — can be visited in Metro Vancouver via public transit.

New perspectives

Unlike when one is driving, public transit by definition means someone else is operating the vehicle, allowing you to dedicate full attention to looking outside, through windows that are often much larger than on a private vehicle. Some of the most spectacular views I have seen when visiting places — of city skylines, ships docked in bays, winding rivers, and mountain vistas — have been from glancing sideways from the road, aboard a trusty bus.

Arguably a shortcoming when riding transit in most cases, the necessity of sharing space on a bus or train car can give a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of regular people where one is visiting, beyond merely other tourists at the major attractions, or the friends and family you are traveling with within the confines of a car. When you are visiting a place, it is not only a collection of facilities for your amusement, but rather a living collective organism, with people working, resting, playing, and yes — visiting, but of which you are only one small, temporary part of as a tourist. Hopping on a local bus, as it meanders through residential neighborhoods, past corner shops, and alongside local parks, allows one to see and experience daily life as it looks in the place you are visiting, and navigating a transit system can help orient oneself to the streets and geography of a new place. These sights and experiences would be largely absent if one only took ride-shares or rented a car to zip between the biggest tourist attractions on major thoroughfares.

In many places, the public transit system is an integral component of the city’s culture, history, and even aesthetics. Who could imagine Chicago without the elevated rail of its ‘L’, or Boston without its Charlie Card or eponymous song? In Berlin, while riding transit, one can even read between the lines (or the rails) of the city’s tumultuous 20th century history by riding the trams. When the city was divided in two from 1949-1989, the trams were dismantled in the west and replaced by buses, but maintained in the east. To this day, trams in Berlin, for the most part, only run in what was once East Berlin. Sidestepping transit can result in this rich part of local history and customs being overlooked, in my view to the detriment of the visitor.

Returning to the example of Chicago, even experiencing when transit fails can be an opportunity to connect with the place you are visiting. Having stayed in Chicago on a couple of occasions this past summer, I experienced firsthand many of the issues residents have been experiencing with “ghost” buses and trains — services that are scheduled, but never show up. Experiencing, and investigating into this matter myself brought me up to speed with at least one portion of local politics and news — something that would have completely avoided my attention had I only used ride-shares during my time there.

Mind the gap

Of course, that is not to say there are limitations associated with using transit while on vacation. The confusion associated with leafing through a road map can just as easily be swapped out with a new kind of confusion, of sifting through timetables and fare schedules, which can vary greatly from place to place.

This kind of suggestion is also most applicable to larger cities with comprehensive transit systems. Especially in smaller or rural areas, this may not be the case, and although there are notable exceptions — such as Glacier National Park being established intentionally along a Great Northern railroad line, which is now Amtrak’s Empire Builder — it is not always practical to be reliant upon transit, especially if time is of the essence.

At least when traveling in the U.S., the often-maligned status of public transit — neglected, allowed to decay, and as a place of last resort to merely existing — means that travelers on it run the unfortunate, but real risk of being caught up in issues with transit currently, such as reliability issues, drug use, harassment, and littering. In Minneapolis and Saint Paul, where light rail trains are connected to the airport, rising issues with substance use, smoking, and crime aboard the trains in particular has resulted travelers using the train to go into the city, but not to return to the airport.

Summing it up

The travel writer Rick Steves recently had a thread on Twitter of how his experiences with travel have informed his views on “social-ism” — of how his times on Europe showed to him the possibility for society to be more community- and collectively-oriented than the status quo in the United States, without abandoning our affluence, pluralism, or even capitalism. To only rely on cars for moving around, sequestered from everyone else, on antagonistic roads where the friendliest posture toward others is ‘defensive’, is one of the clearest physical manifestations of this isolationist tendency in American society. If one seeks to break from that mold when traveling, and to truly get a sense of another place’s people, geography, places, environment, and culture, moving around by transit can be a key part of accomplishing this — at only the price of a fare card and a little patience.

One final note — this is a bit delayed, but Saturday, 18 March was Transit Operator and Worker Appreciation Day. I certainly appreciate everyone, from the drivers to the mechanics, and more, who have gotten me to where I need to go, even on lazy Sunday afternoons and late Friday nights. Next time you find yourself aboard transit, make sure to thank the bus driver on the way out!

Austin Wu is a Gazette editorial fellow. editorial@thegazette.com

Opinion content represents the viewpoint of the author or The Gazette editorial board. You can join the conversation by submitting a letter to the editor or guest column or by suggesting a topic for an editorial to editorial@thegazette.com