FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Enough with the Sad Subway Porn. Here's Proof that Mass Transit is Not Hell on Wheels

Despair, ye riders of mass transit! Don't you know that subways and buses are dreary, cramped mobile compounds, the movers of the poor and downtrodden? No wonder everyone is so taken with images like these, "Michael Wolf's fine portraits":http://photo...

Despair, ye riders of mass transit! Don’t you know that subways and buses are dreary, cramped mobile compounds, the movers of the poor and downtrodden? No wonder everyone is so taken with images like these, Michael Wolf’s fine portraits of sorrowful and weary Tokyo commuters.

Slate has collected some of them, claiming that they capture “the sweaty and uncomfortable reality of the daily grind of city life.” Yes, these photos feed our imagination of colorless urbanity, of the exhausted denizens who must toil through it, riding smashed together, sick of everything, hating everyone. The city is a monolith made of millions, and poor humans are crushed beneath it.

Advertisement

Tokyo is an extreme example—you, too, would be annoyed if you were literally stuffed into cars during rush hour.

And sure, we get annoyed on subways, in buses. But this brand of commuter voyeurism belongs to a photojournalism tradition called ‘sad subway porn.’ ‘Wait,’ you say, ’that’s not a real thing.’ It is now. And it exists primarily to reaffirm our lingering white flight prejudices towards mass transit; our vision of subways and buses as places teeming with sadness and desperation, of the huddled masses en route to the night shift.

The implicit subtext to the affluent consumer of these images seems to be: this is what we’ve left behind. See how comfortable we are in our SUVs and leather-seated sedans.

Look, people get annoyed with everyone everywhere. Like other drivers, for instance. The worst commutes in the world take place on car-choked highways, not subways, according to the Commuter Pain Index, which shows car-centric. Beijing, Mexico City, and Moscow have the worst rides to work:

And there are plenty of people who wear the same pained expression as they drive home alone through the suburbs. But they, I suppose, would be harder to photograph, and their exhaustion would fit less neatly with the ‘big city grind’ narrative.

So here. Let’s combat this unfortunately mainstream construct with some proof that people truly are capable of enjoying mass transit. Images of folks stretching their legs, reading, playing music; you know, doing things that you could never do in a dumb car with your hands on 10 and 2. This guy, for instance, certainly doesn’t mind taking the train:

Advertisement

Look at this nice group of people, smiling and chatting and just taking the subway.

via Flickr

You can’t read while you’re driving.

And your suburban commute doesn’t come with live music.

h5. A French sax player in Paris

You won’t see impromptu Shakespeare performances or breakdancing, either.

via NYT City Room

Or strippers.

Mass transit is a stage and a public space. It hosts events that thousands of people look forward to every year. Like the no pants subway ride.

via The City Fix

It allows folks to experiment with a sense of community. Someone installed a swing on San Francisco’s BART. People loved it.

Here’s a Brooklyn-bound pop-up bistro.

via

These guys get it.

From the confines of your gridlocked car, you would never get to see an evil viking.

Or hang out with Jay-Z.

Or Meryl Streep.

The point is, the subway contains a lot more than dreary commuters wishing they weren’t crammed beneath that bearded dude’s armpit. Though it certainly contains that too. The point is that mass transit is ripe with opportunity. It is full of scenes and ideas that you wouldn’t or couldn’t access in any other venue. If the subway is overcrowded and miserable, the answer is not cars. It’s more subways. Or more frequent service.

And mass transit is clearly the future of people-moving. Half the planet now lives in cities, and more move in every day. Oil stores are in decline, and gas prices climb ever higher. We’re going to be riding more trains, trams, and buses, simple as that. Time to embrace that fact, and to understand the sad commuter porn not as an unfortunate reality, but a template on which to improve. This is a good thing. Because seriously, what’s the most interesting thing that ever happened to you on your drive home from work?