This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The Times is reporting that assaults, both passenger-on-passenger, and passenger-on-driver, all out of proportion to the increase in ridership, which is also at an all-time high. The article offers a smorgasbord of possible answers, from increased incident reporting to more crowding.
Speaking from personal experience, though I’ve never, ever come close to assaulting anyone, I myself get a lot more edgy on a bus than I do on a train. The bus tends to be a more stressful experience. On the bus, I’m still stuck in traffic. Plus, the lurching as it starts and stops is more likely to make me sick.
But also there’s something more intimate in a bus, and not in a good way. Subways and trains are more anonymous. On a bus you can see the driver. You can second-guess his decision to wait to pick up a passenger, etc. Everything in a train is calmer and more regular. There are rarely unexpected stops, the conductor is anonymous and distant. Everything seems out of your control, so it’s harder to get angry about it.