Public Transit Means...You Are in Public

I was running late again. And it was snowing—lightly, but enough to make the bricks on the walkway outside Davis Square station slick and treacherous. So, despite not being as early as I had hoped, I walked slowly. I’m at that age where falling on brick might very well break a bone—not an expected break, I’m not that old. But the kind of a break—like a wrist or an elbow—that can make a person sit up and realize that time is passing, the body is not as resilient as it once was, that all that extra padding on hips and backside is in fact a disguise for the skeleton that withers within.

As I entered the station, I glanced at the electronic message board. It was 7:47 am, and the next train to Braintree was due to arrive in one minute. I have learned to not take the electronic message board too seriously; one minute has a way of turning into five or even ten minutes, and sometimes the designated train disappears altogether.

Down the stairs I went on autopilot. It was a Tuesday, the worst commute day of the week, for me anyway. Mondays are actually not that bad, it’s a popular vacation day or call-in-sick day. Fridays are not bad; lots of working from home happens on Fridays. Tuesday through Thursday are the truly difficult days, when the entire world seems to be trying to get to the same place as the exact same time.

I swiped my transit pass and descended into the circle of hell known as Boston’s Red Line. From the top of the last set of stairs, all those Tuesday commuters, stacked four or five deep on the platform, looked almost like dolls arranged at the edge of an assembly line where they would automatically drop into slots and be packaged for sale.

When I joined them on the platform at the bottom of the stairs, I checked the electronic board again—the Braintree train was now arriving, but an Ashmont train was only one minute away. I was planning to let the crowd pass by and get on the Ashmont train, but when the Braintree train arrived, it was surprisingly uncrowded. I got on, and planted myself in the last open seat, next to a guy with a ski mask and his legs spread so wide that I had to make a conscious effort to pull my right leg in so as not to brush against his left leg. He was reading messages on his phone, nothing unusual there, but he seemed to not register that a person—that I—had sat down next to him.

It was only after I was seated, after the train had pulled out of the station and into the blackness of the tunnel, that I began to wonder about the ski mask. Yes, it was a cold day, but it was warm on the train, especially for someone so bundled up. I removed my hat and loosened my scarf. The man next to me continued to read his phone, with only his eyes peering from behind the mask.  I noticed the slot for his nose, basically a slit with material molded above it to allow for comfort, I suppose. Why wouldn’t he take the mask off? Wasn’t he stifling?

I started to get nervous. What if he is a terrorist? Or just some kind of a nut with a gun who is going to begin shooting? Would I be spared, given that I’m right next to him? I mean, would he shoot straight ahead, or to his right, which is really further into the car, where most of the people were.

I glanced at his phone. I was trying to read his messages. TRYING TO READ HIS MESSAGES? What kind of nut am I? Do I think I work for the NSA or something? Of course, it was impossible for me to read his messages. So I acted casual. I unfolded my newspaper and then rearranged it in the commuter fold. Turning to the international section, I saw multiple stories of anguish: the Taliban gaining a foothold in a part of Afghanistan, another murder in Syria, al Qaeda still causing trouble in Iraq. How different would it be if I were on a train in one of those countries?

Shortly after that, I read about the MBTA installing cameras with real-time feeds on the buses. I have not seen any of these, personally, but the story said that monitors on the bus allow the riders to see everything that is being captured on the video. Someone, somewhere, in some MBTA Security office, is also presumably watching, so instead of an incident occurring, and authorities viewing the tape at some later time, now they can view as it happens, and summon help if needed. I am in favor of this, after a rash of attacks on bus drivers over the past year. These guys have a tough enough job without people spitting on them.

I wondered if that would eventually be the case for the trains as well, in which case, perhaps someone would have seen the masked man next to me and concluded that either he was suspicious or he was just another nut riding the Red Line.

I imagine some will protest and say this is a violation of our rights, this constant surveillance. There is a part of me that is concerned about privacy—I delayed in getting a Fast Lane pass for my car, because I found it unsettling to think someone could trace where I had traveled and when. But ultimately, it’s hard to argue with matters of public safety.

I’m glad the masked man next to me on the train turned out to be harmless. (He got off at Kendall, so he is probably an MIT student or professor.) Now the T needs cameras on the trains, so if he had committed some mayhem, it might have been discovered.