Elle Hunt 

‘I met my wife on a train platform’: Twitter responds to Elon Musk with positive public transport stories

Elon Musk’s dismissal of public transport as ‘painful’ prompted Twitter users to share their stories under the hashtag #GreatThingsThatHappenedonTransit
  
  

Tesla founder and ‘individualised transport’ supporter Elon Musk.
Tesla founder and ‘individualised transport’ supporter Elon Musk. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Elon Musk’s criticism of public transport has prompted an outpouring of stories of the connections and community formed in the midst of a “bunch of random strangers” on mass transit.

The billionaire entrepreneur had expressed disdain for the inconvenience and cramped confines of mass transit – along with the potential proximity to “serial killers” – in response to an audience member’s question about public transport and urban sprawl at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California, last week.

“I think public transport is painful. It sucks,” he said. “Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people, that doesn’t leave where you want it to leave, doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end? And it doesn’t go all the time ...

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Musk concluded. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer – OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualised transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

According to Wired’s report, Musk went on to dismiss the audience member’s response that public transportation apparently functioned effectively in Japan: “What, where they cram people in the subway? That doesn’t sound great.”

The man worth US $20.6bn may well have little in common with the average commuter. Even Musk’s ambitious venture to solve Los Angeles traffic with underground tunnels may prove to benefit no one more than himself: a Fast Company analysis of the proposed network found that it “conveniently” connects the SpaceX headquarters with his five homes in Bel Air.

On Twitter, Musk’s enthusiasm for Tesla electric cars “individualised transport” was widely condemned as evidence of his being out of touch. Jarrett Walker, a public transit policy consultant from Portland, tweeted: “[Musk’s] hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford. Letting him design cities is the essence of elite projection.”

Musk responded directly to Walker on Twitter: “You’re an idiot.” (He subsequently clarified: “Meant to say ‘sanctimonious idiot’.”)

The response prompted Brent Toderian, a Vancouver-based city planner and urbanist, to appeal for people’s stories of “great things that happened on transit” on Twitter – and Twitter came to transit’s defence.

“I expected a response, but the size and inspirational power of the response blew away my expectations,” Toderian told Guardian Cities.

People from around the world shared their stories of births and marriages, surprise reconnections, strangers’ kindnesses, and appropriately festive cheer that had occurred on public transport.

“It wasn’t about convincing Elon Musk, although that would be nice – a Christmas transit miracle, as it were,” said Toderian. “Rather, it was about everyone else. Musk has a big megaphone, but together we have a bigger one.”

Eric Rapaport said he had been using public transportation independently in New York City since he was 10 years old. “Transit is freedom,” he wrote. “It is one step in becoming an adult.”

Julian King, in Auckland, New Zealand, saw the positive story of public transport as a short and simple one: “I rode an electric train to the city. It was $3. And quicker than driving. And I didn’t have to park it. The end.”

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