There was a report of a man pulling a gun in NY or perhaps NJ to defend his new place in the gas line outside a filling station today. There were reports yesterday of people trying to pry open the doors of waiting buses to ensure one of the limited seats. Driving and even riding a bus or train are largely passive, isolated activities. The isolation instilled by driving is obvious, your bringing your private castle with you. Public transit compels a deliberate facelessness, a minding your own business regimen enforced by the sardine can milieu of the transit system be it train or bus. Riding and walking on the other hand almost require an openness to the world and the people around you. The rider or walker are taking on the world, deliberately taking a piece of it for themselves and yet sharing that space with the people around them. I suspect that like the sous-chef mentioned in the article ( that must be quite a law firm he works for ) once he has been reminded of the flavor of freedom that a bike gives he will not let go. Washington has a very different culture from NY and I’ve never been to a genuinely bike intensive city like Amsterdam but the differences that I have seen between cities like central Paris that value pedestrians ( with the then relatively new Velib ) over machines has always been striking.
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