Posted by Gene Colter
Everything you needed to know about commuting via public transportation you learned in kindergarten. How to assemble in an orderly fashion, for instance. And you’ve been forgetting or ignoring that simple, sage counsel ever since.
I should stop here to note that my boss, corporate co-founder and blogging veteran Steve Cody is the resident expert on All Things Bad about New Jersey Transit. By way of apology for venturing into his patch I will note that I am not about to decry NJT. Instead, I will wail on the only thing more hellish than a Jersey train: a Jersey train passenger.
To explain: Recently I did something so simple and yet so productive: When a fellow passenger approached my row of seating I scooted in to let that person sit down. The whole transaction – “May I sit here?” “Of course. Let me move.” – took just a few seconds. Now let us contrast this with the average seating scenario on a crowded midtown NYC train.
Passenger A is sitting at the end of the row near the aisle. Passenger B approaches and asks to sit. Passenger A gathers up laptop, papers, personal radio, food, beverage, coat, bag, small arms (OK, maybe not that last one) and stumbles into the aisle. Passenger B falls into the inner part of the row near the window, and passenger A then collapses back into his seat, and both spend the next four minutes trying to get situated. Meanwhile, 40 other passengers have backed up in the aisle and out the door onto the platform waiting for this awkward dance to finish. It gets repeated over a dozen times at busy stops, which is why the midtown NYC train arrives on time about as often as Britney Spears arrives clean and sober for a photo shoot.
At church/synagogue/mosque you scoot in when another worshiper arrives. At the bar you scoot down a seat when a couple comes in and wants to perch and partake together. But on the train you insist on getting up and making the other person move to the inside, as if the aisle seat on an NJT train were somehow the equivalent of a first-class sleeping booth on Singapore Air.
This train, it seems, is making all stops for idiots.
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