There should be no question that oil-based car-centric cultures are unsustainable for the environment, and in some extremes like the US simply result in terrible city layout. No disagreements here, I hope.

But there’s something I’ve never seen addressed, and it’s how fucking miserable having to use public transport can get if the people you’re sharing it with are simply rude.

You’ve just finished your 8,5 hours workday. Work was extremely dull, but even if it wasn’t you could have barely got anything done anyway because there was were construction works right outside the office, and the hammering and drilling is still echoing in your ears. You need to get home at the other side of the city, and you don’t have a car nor the money to take a taxi, so you take a bus. Can you finally relax away from that disgusting noise? Well, there should be no reason for anything being excessively loud, other than perhaps some vehicle’s motor. Except that fuck you.

It’s the year 2023 of the current era, someone has put 300€ into buying a last gen Xiaomi - but apparently they didn’t budget appropriately, because rather than buying earbuds, that someone has decided to share with everyone else the sound of non-stop Youtube shorts. Apparently everyone else seems to have had a more sensible shopping list, because they start taking out their earbuds or headphones. Rather than, you know, have the person being annoying silence their phone.

On a different day, you sigh in relief when you find the bus near empty. Less numbers means less chances for disturbances, of course, you can even go at the very end of the bus to be alone. Someone enters the bus, talking through her phone. She stays near the entrance. There shouldn’t be issues here, right? Normal people normally talk through their normal phones all the time. But does she need to SHOUT when she does it? Does someone in the literal opposite end of the bus need to hear all about her annoying kids and her annoying husband and her annoying life? Wouldn’t she rather save herself the pain of a sore throat the next morning?

You take the bus again next week. There’s a tough looking guy a seat in front of you. He is actually a polite person though, because he is using headphones. Not everyone seems to share the same impression, because two old women have clearly decided not sitting immediately near to him, to the point that one of them will take the seat next to you and the other one will stay up, just so that she doesn’t have to share a seat with the other guy. No problem with their dumb prejudices yet. You do have a problem, however, when they start increasing their tone of voice further and further, as if you weren’t right next to them, nor trying to read, nor blasting your headphones in a vane attempt to not to hear their rambling. Suddenly, two seats are freed up up ahead, directly facing the tough looking guy. You’re finally about to find bliss, you think, as this lady who saw Tutankhamun be born surely needs a seat for her frail, old legs. But no. Their fear of young, fit men with cheap shirts is stronger than their desire to actually sit together, to the point that when you suggest to them to take the seats up ahead so that they don’t have to shout to your ear they get offended.

I lived for some years in a city with great bus and subway infrastructure, but very early on I had to stop taking the bus because the people using it were indifferent to the fact that they were sharing a public space, that they don’t have the right to make it as miserable for everyone else as they see fit. Do not dare to try and make them behave with some consciousness either, because it’ll be a toss up between them actually recognizing the issue and doing better or actively turning into willing assholes.

Almost never had this issue in the subway, though, and I don’t know why despite it being far more packed. Only exception was one night when an English football team was at the city, and so were its hooligans. I’ve used train far less, but I don’t remember it being a problem either. People being annoying is obviously a cultural issue, we aren’t naturally wired to always strive to be little shits. But when being little shits is the norm, having to share a space with everyone else becomes misery.

What would you do to incentivize good public manners, and to prevent antisocial behavior, at any level or scale?