Trains are a Decivilising Influence

I don't think I'm alone in travelling an hour to work on the train. In fact, I know I'm not alone, because the damn train is overflowing with like-minded people. And it's bad for our culture.

At first, one might enjoy a certain sense of community on the train. We're all in it together! We can pull through this latest delay. One might share a conspiratorial dig with another commuter, at how the latest unforeseen problem is somehow exactly the same as the unforeseen problem that happened yesterday. Shared discomfort, shared experience, shared bond.

However, in the long run, trains break civilisation.

As trains get more and more crowded, the competition for seats grows heated. The frequency of cancellations, breakdowns and delays grows, because the system can't cope with the numbers of people using it. And the people that subject themselves to the system are driven insane.

In the back of my mind, I know that I endure the crowded trains of my own free will. I know that if I just got a job closer to home, or moved closer to work, or something, then I wouldn't need to catch a train. And so I put up with the privations of the public transport system, because I have failed to make a better solution elsewhere.

But, that fact doesn't stop me hating it. It merely helps me tolerate putting myself into a situation that I despise. And I'm sure that's true for a large number of people that catch the train daily. In short, everyone hates the trains, yet catches them anyway, because it seems preferable to the other alternatives.

So of a morning, or afternoon, too many people get together in too small a space to do something that they all hate. Frankly, it's a wonder that more things don't happen.

What does happen is that regard for one's neighbour vanishes. When a seasoned traveller enters the door of a peak hour train, humanity is left on the platform. If a seat is available, first through the blocks claims it. On my line, it is almost unheard of for a seat to be given up for someone in more need.

I gave my seat up this morning, but not because I wanted to, or even because I thought it was the right thing to do. I gave my seat up to a middle-aged woman who was of the opinion that my four year-old daughter (whose ticket I paid for, and who sometimes attends a kinder near my work) did not deserve a seat when full-fare paying passengers, such as her good self, did not have that luxury. So I stood to defuse an argument.

If people were as consistently rude through their daily lives as they are on the train, civilisation would cease to exist.

At least we would all be savages together.