Writing the train, not riding it

I am spending my Saturday night becoming proficient in "Transit-Oriented Development". It's a fairly intuitive concept really; transport acts as a catalyst for social and economic development. More vroom-vroom, more ching-ching. More specifically, more feet on the ground in "corridors", more bums on seats on trains, and more wheels on the bus going round and round, translates to more ching-ching.

While wading through city policy is always a treat, I've quite appreciated the fact that some of the writers of the strategies and plans that get the CoCT stamp are mostly coherent and don't split too many infinitives. So it hasn't been wholly unpleasant. However, I am left with a troubling question as I gaze on the articles and budgets and maps lying next to me on my bed: do any of these writers actually put their own feet on the ground, their own bum on a train, their own packet of NikNaks on the bus seat next to them? Now, I'm not talking about doing fieldwork, because pretty much any old person can take a clipboard to Khayelitsha, talk to a bunch of people, count a few activities, and retreat to their office satisfied that they have a good picture of what's happening on the ground because hells they were just there. So no, I'm not talking about fieldwork. I'm talking about life.

See, there are things you notice as you go about your day to day, that you don't notice when you have a fieldwork mandate. You can go to the rank in town and ask commuters ten questions about their journey, and you'll probably get some juicy information. But what you might not hear is the resigned sigh of the woman in front of you walking up the stairs that take you from the bus terminus at the Grand Parade, over Strand Street and to the taxis on top of the station. You might not see as she lifts her ankle every few steps and shakes her foot gently, maybe even pulling her sandal away from her swollen ankle for a second or two.

You could set up camp with the Metro police block outside the Goodhope Centre and ask the taxi drivers questions as they come to a stop. But if you're not on the van you won't see how the drivers signal to one another as they drive, how they call and sms, how they send messages through the gaaitjies. You won't see how they know about that roadblock, how they swap drivers outside Dart Motors in Woodstock or even the BP after the bridge. You won't hear how the commuters complain when the taxi is redirected past Cape Tech and round past District Six to avoid the flashing lights.

You can ask someone about how hot the trains get, but if you don't sit there sweating and stuck to the seat you may not realise just how unpleasant it is. And you may not know that when people complain about getting wet it's because the road outside Retreat Station floods when it rains and there's a man standing near the taxis who talks about getting a license to sell Old Brown Sherry because he'll make his millions here, he promises you. If you've never felt the pang of panic when you're at Salt River Station running over the bridge to connect to the Ottery train, never felt the push and pull of the sometimes desperate bodies around you, you may not realise that the sequencing of the trains is just not right, and it means that the woman in front of me who sighs at all the stairs must now stop her sighing and run and push and do what she can to get to her train before it goes. The Metrorail trains never run on time, you may hear. But unless you're there, you may not understand the depth of what it might mean to be late. You might not get just how important it might be to bold that bit in your policy document.

Maybe anthropology rubbed off on me more than I wanted it to, but I just don't think that people who don't use public transport should be legislating about it. It's not that they don't come up with usable ideas, They do. They write lovely policies and strategies to help things go vroom. But I think they miss something. I read a stagnancy and staleness in these policies that show just how un-public the writers are. I guess you have to be well-educated to work for government. I guess that means you have a good job. I guess that means you have a nice car. But does your education give you the right to mandate policy for infrastructure that you will never use? That you will never experience? To be honest, I don't know. I have no education when it comes to Transit-Oriented Development and I respect the writers who do; they have some good ideas. It's just that those good ideas are not necessary complete ideas. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying.