In response to a The Daily Show – Behind the Scenes video that was released April 2022.
Since 2003, I have travelled the USA regularly, and on days off – not always, because I’d also be just happily working on spreadsheets with a bag of chips and a jug of OJ – I’d venture out.
Very rarely did I do so by taxi. I just don’t like the concept. Never did. I’d walk, or look for public transport.
Or, especially disc golf related, or when work and disc golf would succeed each other, I’d take interregional transport like Greyhound or Megabus to get to/from disc golf.
I never thought much of it at that time, but this one video highlights most of the observations I had made.
Being born and raised in The Netherlands, public transport is exactly what it is set out to be; mass transport between A and B; whether it is a bus, a tram, a street car, the underground, a train.
Here, I’d take public transport, and in the rare occasion, public transport fails (due to time or route), I’d opt to walk.
In the USA, it would be the other way around; I’ll need to walk, unless I happen to be lucky to see my intended route be anywhere near a public transport line, during their hours of operation.
In the USA public transport isn’t definitely at the service of the public, nor are – as the video highlights – highways and freeways.
How many times I’ve had to traverse freeways or highways to get to the mall or a particular shop, or instead walk for 10+ miles to get to a place I wanted to go to.
It never occurred to me that this scarcity of public transport, and the inconveniently placed highway was an intentional means of keeping segregation in place. Yes, the hotels we’d stay in were always in the “white” part of town, and then – as the video highlights – the freeway or highway was simply the “now, I am telling you, I am not a wall” wall.
I did always look at it from a logistics challenge point of view, but that’s mostly aimed at the decline of transregional or even national train routes. “Once you reach the end of the construction or maintenance routine of the line, where you started is already in decline again”.
Karin, remember where you picked up this merry-go-happy pedestrian?
Debbi, remember how you picked me up from York, PA, to drive to Philly, just so I could get on the megabus to NYC?
Or, Jesy, me trying to find out which buses – if any – I could take to get to Plato’s Closet locations in the area? Yes, in, and since 2016, I had a very particular interest for those shops@ 
Or Erick, you picking up/dropping off me at Tampa Downtown Greyhound in your sparkly hip car? It caused some rubbernecking and double takes.
On that 2016 fall tour with Blind Guardian (to date, the last time I toured the USA), I did a combined 90 miles of walking and public transport to get to/from 6 Plato’s Closet and 2 Beauty Supply Warehouse locations from where our bus/hotel/venue was at.
I always remember locals telling me things like “no, don’t take public transport, don’t get on Greyhound, it’s ‘dangerous'”.
It was never dangerous. It wasn’t even uncomfortable.
Even since 2016, when I started presenting female.
I never once felt even remotely unsafe or in danger.
I had a comfortable seat, free wifi, and I brought my own cookies, chocolate, and fruit. My destination was always “only X amount of movies or episodes ahead”, never once was it “oh, only X amount more hours of not getting stabbed or robbed ahead”.
The only times I felt in danger were when I had to walk from A to B with no sidewalk being present, or needing to traverse 2 x 6 rows of speeding traffic…
Or, I have this particular recollection from Orlando Greyhound terminal, where me and my luggage were under more scrutiny than at airports. Obviously, I was smuggling contraband, weapons, or people…. Right?
My fellow public transport travellers were – without fail – definitely “always limited to a certain crowd”. And I can tell you, it wasn’t by their free will.
And I’d be the one clean-clothed & white person sticking out like a sore thumb. I had double positive intersectionality there.
And I feel terribly sorry for my fellow travellers now, because it is finally dawning upon me why it was – and is – like that.
