Monday 7 April 2014

Miserable subway passengers, a grouchy runner - and a lesson from Bob Dylan

It’s one of those tasks that’s so difficult it’s become a kind of fascination to me. When I ride over the Manhattan Bridge towards work each morning, I’m generally passed, at a gap of just a few feet, by a B or D subway train taking commuters into Manhattan. The passengers stare out the window, blankly, apparently staring straight through those of us labouring up the slope to the bridge’s summit or speeding down from it. The stares are so blank that I’ve taken to waving at individual commuters to see if I can get a reaction.

A subway train passes a cyclist on the Manhattan Bridge:
the subway passengers can't see the cyclist. Fact.
The net result so far, from scores of waves, is one half-smile – and she might just have been reacting to a witty lyric on her iPod. The experience of being in a subway train seems to be so utterly different from the experience of riding a bike that the people on the subway trains can’t react to a human being outside their train on a bike.

Yet the reaction of the subway commuters to cyclists, it’s dawned on me, is only one example of a far more widespread city phenomenon. Big cities are full of people moving around conscious almost solely of their own environment, their own needs and their own sense of right and wrong behaviour. We’re mostly gliding around in little bubbles of our own distinct worlds, over and below each other, avoiding contact as far as possible. But quite a few of the crashes in cities, it strikes me, are cases where, almost literally, two worlds – two contrasting sets of expectations about norms and behaviours and who should give way to whom – collide. This makes it a phenomenon worth noticing and exploring.
Two cars collide in Northern Manhattan - but so, quite
possibly, do two competing expectations about who
gives way to whom.

The driver I encountered on 55th street in Manhattan 10 days ago illustrates the most obvious form of the problem. I’d spotted that he was driving erratically as he left a parking space near Broadway. He then squeezed past me, dangerously, driving in a parking space, only for me to catch up with him at the traffic lights at 9th avenue. His window was rolled down and he was deep in a conversation on his mobile phone. “Stop talking on your phone!” I shouted at him. “It’s making you drive like an idiot.” He gave me a dirty look and slowly rolled up his heavily-tinted window. I was an unwelcome intrusion from outside the two worlds he was carrying around with him – the world inside his sports utility vehicle and his interaction with his interlocutor in the telephone call. His reaction was to close down his interaction with the place where he was physically present – and where his driving presented a serious danger.

There are multiple ways that people pursue the illusion that their cars are private spaces. They can blast out music so loud that any outside intrusion is inaudible. They can choose to drive a car so large or so fast that it intimidates other road users. They can talk incessantly on the telephone to people outside their immediate confines. People want to drown out the mixture of stress and boredom that comes from sharing a city street with a host of other people with competing claims on the space. Their desire to do so makes the street a little less safe for pedestrians, cyclists – everyone outside their world-in-a-car.

The little bubbles in which people move around also reflect their culture. At my son’s school, it’s mostly the parents with the mild, mid-western accents of hipster incomers that arrive bearing their children on long bikes, tandems and other unlikely bits of cycling apparatus. If I see children spilling out of some huge SUV – there’s a family that arrives daily in a Cadillac Escalade, one of the biggest vehicles on the road – I’m far more likely to hear a traditional Brooklyn accent calling out after them.

Inhabitants of Duffy Funeral Home's world worry about
where they're going to park. Other users of Park Slope's 9th
St worry where they'll ride their bikes. Here's where those
worlds collide.
The cyclists, I suspect, mainly mix with the other cycling-inclined families and have firm views about the environment, physical fitness and cluttering up the area with cars. The Italian-American SUV drivers come to the school from outlying areas of single-family homes. Many, I suspect, feel that a big car is both a status symbol and a way of keeping one’s loved ones safe. I'm sure they tut-tut quietly at the risks the rest of us are taking.

We maintain our contrasting cultures while sharing the same bits of road partly through the impermeability of a big car’s steel sides. It’s no coincidence in my view that cars that keep the outside world at bay are far more popular than, say, convertibles for city driving.

But it’s not only the motorists that are travelling around in little bubbles of their own worlds. Look on the average city street and nearly everyone is cutting him or herself off from the wider street. Headphones – once limited to discreet earbuds – are now often a large and obvious symbol that the wearer wants to be left alone. Mobile telephone calls and texting take the participant away from his or her immediate surroundings. For many runners, they seem to form an almost indispensable aspect of the experience, providing the rhythm and focus that interaction with the wider world might take away. A pedestrian cursed at me the other day on the Lower East Side for riding, perfectly legally and safely, onto a bike lane across a small city park. It's no coincidence, I think, she was a runner sequestered from reality by her headphones.
A cyclist, runners and motor cars in Park Slope: sure,
they look close together. But they could be worlds apart.

The question, of course, is how far any of this is a bad thing. Would New York City – or any other big city – be a better place if subway commuters were waving to me every morning? Should I expect that runners eschew headphones to try to make their runs as pure an experience as possible of interacting with the city? I’m inclined to say no. When a behaviour is as widespread as this retreat by city dwellers into their private worlds, it suggests a deep need. This is part of how inhabitants of big, densely-packed cities get by without assaulting each other or rioting more often than they currently do.

I'm struck, however, that it’s often the people least cut off from the reality of the city around them – cyclists out on the streets, intensely aware of all that’s going on – that are disproportionately involved in campaigns to make the streets safer. It’s a serious safety issue that so many vehicles allow their users to cut themselves off so thoroughly from events outside. It’s hard not to imagine that people with clearer views of pedestrians and cyclists and fewer barriers to hearing street sounds might be less likely to run them over.

I have no immediate policy magic wand to wave to bring about that change of perception.

But an idea came to me the other night as I undertook a late night ride home past the still-buzzing bars and music venues of Bleecker St, the Greenwich Village street where Bob Dylan performed many of his earliest gigs. In Talking World War III Blues, one of the songs from that early era, he describes a dream about being the lone survivor of a third world war. Then he remarks, in the last verse, that many other people seem to have similar dreams.

"Everybody sees themselves/ Walkin' around with no-one else," he says.

Not everybody’s dream can be right, he says.

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours," he drawls.

That's the nearest I have to a solution. I'll let you be in my street-world if I can be in yours.

14 comments:

  1. When I graduated from Army Basic Training, my grandfather gave me his military whistle. Yes it is is very LOUD. And I use it to cut through the cell phones, earpieces and other ways that people use to distract themselves.

    First I try my Pashley's "Ding-Dong" bell. A lovely minor third is chimed. But if that doesn't work, the whistle is used.

    Historical comment: The whistle was repeatedly used to signal the attacks of one of the infantry platoons in the Battle of Groningen that liberated the city in 13-16 April 1945. See:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Groningen

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kevin,

      I too use a vintage device to cut through the headphones, cellphone conversations and so on. It's been honed over centuries of use by East Anglian merchants, Scots farmers and seafarers and is powered by a big pair of 44-year-old British-sourced bellows.

      I think you know where I'm going with this.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  2. I like listening to music, it gives some character to what can sometimes lapse into a mundane daily commute by bike, but i've shied away from headphones to try a different approach, a bar mounted radio/MP3 player or bluetooth speaker.

    These aren't so loud as to cause annoyance to others and their sound is directional enough that you can still hear it. But they still allow you to be totally aware and in tune with your surroundings.

    http://portables.about.com/od/headphone1/fl/Review-Outdoor-Tech-Buckshot-Bluetooth-Speaker.htm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Monchberter,

      How nice to see you in my comments sections, rather than below the line at the Guardian bike blog, where I've more often encountered you.

      I mentioned in a previous post ( http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/06/it-was-as-inconvenient-time-for-work.html ) how I solve the music-while-one-moves issue by constantly having tunes going round my head. One recent very cold morning, for example, I suddenly had "Midnight Train to Georgia" going round my head. That was nice because it seems a rather warm song.

      I know there are some New Yorkers riding around with speaker arrangements a little like yours.

      As you'll also see in that previous post, however, I doubt you'd be able to hear much from your speakers at points while riding over the Manhattan Bridge. The sheer range of noises there is extraordinary. But I did notice the other night while waiting for the lights below the bridge at the Brooklyn end quite how superb a rhythm the trains produce as they go over the joints above. I was practically dancing in my saddle.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  3. "I'm struck, however, that it’s often the people least cut off from the reality of the city around them – cyclists out on the streets, intensely aware of all that’s going on – that are disproportionately involved in campaigns to make the streets safer."

    Very nicely put.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chris,

      Thank you for your kind words.

      While we know we don't always achieve it, we here at Invisible Visible Towers aim to please.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  4. An unusual and happy pedistrian/car interaction for today:

    I was walking to work and a car pulled far into a crosswalk I was approaching so he could see if the way was clear to turn right onto the main street. I didn't worry about it, was just going to cross behind him; but he saw me before I reached the crosswalk, backed up, and actually apologized through his open window.

    Of course, if last night's storm (hail still on the ground early this morning in Austin, looking like snow) is any indication, the apocalypse is upon us, so there you go. :)

    I need a better clueless-pedestrian-alerting device. I use what you use, but mine doesn't seem to have much volume!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Beth,

      I guess part of my message is that people aren't actively looking to be bad (though they quite often are). So, when people spot others, they do sometimes act out of proper fellow-feeling. Part of it is that we want the way we get about to send a message about ourselves. There are people who seem themselves as primarily considerate drivers ("not like all those other fools out there") and who consequently want to behave well.

      On the pedestrian-alerting device, I do have a bell as well (and I use it then the voice in roughly the way Kevin Love describes above). I guess being a sturdily-built 6' 5" Glaswegian does put a certain power into my yells, though.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  5. For most of us, subways or undergrounds are something we encounter only on holiday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Steve,

      Sorry to be confusing.

      Think of a subway, metro or underground as being a bit like the transit tunnel in the middle of Seattle but longer and more complicated.

      But I take the point. I know I'm unusual in that, of the seven places I've lived, (London, Glasgow, St Andrews, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Budapest and New York) five of them have urban underground rail systems. It's not a complete coincidence, of course, My father worked for such systems.

      I hope the basic message that people get very focused on the environment in which they're travelling and fail to notice those on the outside has at least some relevance for day to day life over there in Ocean Shores, WA, however.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  6. On my way home today, in suburban DC, there was a runner salmoning in the bike lane with earbuds in. She smiled and waved and did not move out of the bike lane, so I had to move into the traffic lane where the speed limit is 40 for cars. In this case, she was the most vulnerable person in the lane so I felt like I had to move over, but the lane is a BIKE LANE (with bikes painted on it and everything). It wasn't some kind of shared use trail! If she hadn't had the earbuds in, I might have stopped and talked to her about her choice of running location. On the other hand, at least with her running against the traffic pattern, she was able to see me coming so she could wave. Sigh...if it's not the cars trying to kill us, it's the inanity of pedestrians so wrapped up in their own world they're a danger to themselves and others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. South Lakes,

      There are few current trends in urban and suburban traffic more irritating than runners' delusion that they belong in bike lanes. I suppose the tendency shows that lots of people want relatively quiet, straight routes, but I wish people wouldn't do it. I hate having to pull out round obstructions in the bike lane.

      This definitely happens here in New York City as well. One time recently, having had to pull out round a couple of runners on the bike lane on Hoyt Street in Gowanus, I got into a brief discussion which led to man's getting abusive with me. I then tried out the line I've stored up for such situations, turned to the woman runner and said, "You know, the thing is you look like you could do much better than him."

      Next time, I'll have a rejoinder ready for the reply, "Actually, she's my sister".

      May your bike lanes be unobstructed.

      Invisible.

      Delete
  7. Although only indirectly linked to your post, I have often thought how much more civilised our streets would be if vehicle horns were legally required to sound as loudly inside the vehicle as outside. With such a simple change, much of the detached arrogance encouraged by tinted windscreens, multi-speaker sound systems, and metal bodywork would melt away.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. John,

      I half agree with you on this, particularly after I had a taxi driver honk at me pointlessly last night in Chinatown as I rode home.

      But I can't help feeling there would eventually be some unintended consequence.

      Future headline: "Driver failed to warn blind pedestrian 'for fear of waking baby', Court hears."

      There is no doubt, however, that it would be nice if drivers could learn to be aware of how futile an act of aggression honking normally is.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete

Please feel free to leave civilised comments - positive or negative - here. I'll try to reply too.

Abusive comments will be moderated out and won't appear.