Or Public Transport Depression.
Is it just me - (an aside; I hate people starting articles and comment with 'Is it just me', because it's either A) blatantly not and an easy way to persuade people to side with you, or B) blatantly IS becuase you're trying to say something oh so individual and outrageous and pretending to be funny: I fear I'm doing the latter) - but does public transport depress people?
It's more when you travel on your own: the whole being surrounded by people you don't know, and never will, people you don't care about and vice versa. In fact, public transport encourages this sort of thing, that sort of introspective space to go into your own little world. You think things about people you're trapped with for a journey, and probably judge them. I know I do: one of the reasons I don't like using buses is because of the people you're likely to find on them. Idiot kids, who can't drive, in huge groups, called Dave B and Dave H, Darren, Chezza, Nikkeh, Danielle, Luce, etc. Who shout and scream and act like twats. I swear I was never like that, ever. Then you get women with massive prams and Argos bags on the back of them that roll into your shin while you're standing and give you looks as if you KICKED the pram. Then there's the old dears,...And there's always one really weird, deranged looking guy that spots you as you get on and won't stop looking at you til you get off - often, conveniently, at the same stop as deranged guy.
The worst thing about buses is how they look, too. Messy inside, steamed up windows with hearts and text speak written on them, and they just seem like boxes of artificial light. It's a strange qualm, but that sight just depresses me: at night, a box of people bathed in artificial light. It makes me think that there is no meaning to life.
Trains - slightly different. Still that sense of your own little world (yet it's 'public' transport - ). Bit more classy (richer people?), nicer setting and easier journeys and so on, but their main problem is alcohol. Alcohol on trains is, in my opinion, stupidly dangerous, and it's advertised and encouraged! It's almost as bad as Air Rage where people drunk on planes get violent and aggressive. Like being on a plane, when you're on a train and there's some idiot who's drunk and starting to eye you up for an argument, where the hell can you go except another part of the train? Trains basically trap you in an awkward space for a suitable enough length of time for anything to happen. A guy got stabbed on the underground recently, and they stop somewhere every minute.
And taxis, what the hell are they about. You can't even throw up in one nowadays!
I realise this is a weird thing to opine (again, is it just me?), and as I am wont to do I've taken it to some extremes to make my point clear. But basically, public transport's paradox of being a lonely experience, often a sorry excuse for a method of 'transport', usually late, never clean or pleasant, and in a country supposedly the most advanced in the world (of course, the actual infrastructure is usually at meltdown), I'm suffering from a case of PTD.
"When you're sad and feeling blue, with nothing better to do, don't just sit there feeling stressed, take a trip on the National Express!"
The Divine Comedy
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