“Wow, look at that guy!” “That guy” is me, while the doors of the DC metro hit me in the back. The car is packed with a weekend crowd and on the track a young man who has prudently decided to pass his turn and wait for the next train is amazed to see me being pushed in by the closing doors. He cannot help sharing his astonishment in a loud voice with his buddy. I am no less amazed at his remark and I realize he must not be a local. It is all a matter of perception: it would take a far frailer person than me to actually risk being hurt to any degree by the doors. But DC is a touristy city, and many Americans discover underground public transportation when they come over. They are easily surprised by the many events of public commuting life. Even if the transportation network cannot compete with one I am used to in the Parisian area, it is still a decent one, and entails the normal development of habits linked with mass transportation.
Communiting is a life experience, and after years in the suburbs of Paris, I have learned, often the hard way, the code of Suburbanity Rules that makes your life as a commuter more organized, more efficient. In DC, I go by them to their full extent. I do not wait for the next train in the hope that it might be less crowded (it will not be, what’you believe?). I am aware that trains stopping at the same track go in two different directions: the “every ten minutes metro” in the city center is in fact an “every twenty minutes” for the travelling suburban I am (by way of consequence, I do not eventually land in foreign territory by mistaking the blue and the yellow lines). I place myself in cars close to the exit of my destination station so that I can be the first to hit the escalators, saving me a painful waiting behind slow users, and, yes, I walk in the escalator. I have your favorite stations which positively contribute to my style of life, and avoid others (for some reason I do not like Metro center) etc. And you do no mind being kicked in the back by the door when you catch your train because the only thing that crosses your mind is your elated inner voice saying: “Yeah! Got it!”
However, the skills necessary to properly riding a metro are not as developed here than they are in Paris or Tokyo. People are relatively slow and tend to stay at a distance even in a crowded car. They do not rush to the exit, and force you to walk your way at a calmer pace. They just do not zigzag in a hurry between other passengers (so civilized!). And they have no idea of the existence in other places of the world of “pushers” in charge of compressing a human mass into a metro car at rush hours. For better or for worse, public commuting is still an art in development in this part of the world.
