Yeah don't let anyone fool you, Glasgow is promoted as a tourist destination but it's full of whack jobs and crazies lol. Not that it isn't worth visiting, it's just worth knowing what you might encounter. I once had a woman on my bus in her late 20's and she looked like she was a drug user (a junkie) she just had the look about her. She went up the back of my bus and I watched her in my interior mirror, pick up a purse from the seat which someone must have left, turn her back and empty the contents, then bring it down to say she'd found it and it was already empty. As if her obvious lying wasn't bad enough, she came back down a few minutes later (and this one is hard to believe) asked me for a PAPER CUP, so she could have a pee up the back of the bus. Oh yes, she's a keeper alright.
Yeah that's just some of the fun lol. It's not so bad now that Rangers went bust and got demoted to the 3rd Division, so there aren't any Old Firm matches to worry about. But back when the Old Firm matches were on, you'd get thousands of them pouring out onto the streets after a game, drunk as hell and fighting etc. I once had a bus full of Rangers supporters and some Celtic supporters tried to flag my bus down, hell no I just kept on driving lol.
Omds at that first story. Yeah. There are ridiculous numbers of videos of all sorts going on. [YOUTUBE]gHRI8PnDqAA[/YOUTUBE] What are the drivers even meant to do when stuff like this happens?! [YOUTUBE]1h9mJQM8-zc[/YOUTUBE] I've just realised that North Americans might not understand half of what everyone's saying, but yeah.
No, we don't understand any of it (other than perceiving utter chaos)!...I think I shall never complain again, I have seen the heart of transit darkness, and it's Glaswegian!
Yeah Harve that's pretty standard stuff for a Glasgow bus lol. I used to drive the night bus from Glasgow city centre and around 2-4am, it was absolute chaos. All the people coming out of night clubs completely wrecked and just causing mayhem. Fighting, drinking, smoking etc. And you get the odd person saying "the driver should do something", yeah that's not gonna happen lol that's how you end up getting beaten up or worse. ---------- Post added 18th Nov 2013 at 01:43 AM ---------- Haha yeah, reading the stories above before I posted I was thinking "hey their transport system isn't bad" lol.
Yeah you'll always find a weegie willing to step in an sort a wee idiot out lol. Unfortunately he got charged with assault for that cause the boy scraped his face when he fell off the train lol it never came to anything though I don't think.
Oh, the fun stories of people on public transportation. The CTA will always have you with people constantly breaking whatever rule, whether it be soliciting (seen an increasing amount of that, lately), eating/drinking or playing music at an abnormal volume. Usually it's not that bad, though. There was also one guy on more than one occasion I saw demand a seat in the priority seating area. I could see why he might be eligible for that, as he clearly had some sort of mental disability (Possibly autistic or something similar), but as far as I could see, he could walk and stand perfectly fine. There was also a really sad time when I saw a couple people who obviously weren't the wealthiest of people get on: A man possibly in his 30's and what looked like to be his mother. His mother was quite disfigured and the man reeked of something I'd never smelled before, but I didn't mind, really. It was obvious those two people were truly in some sort of financial debt or were close to it. I could tell this because the man had a ring that said "peace" on it and some other small piece of jewelry that had a message of peace and love on it. He didn't beg. He didn't even ask for anything. The older woman ate some Popeyes, but honestly I didn't care. There was also one time I believe someone kept looking at me because I was white, when I stepped on the brown line and sat down (the train was nearly empty with available seats everywhere). Kind of odd to see that, really. Unless I did something else while stepping on the train? Yeah. Fun times.
In Australia, the passengers who use our transport system are mostly sane - most of our crazy transport shenanigans are racially-motivated.
There are quite a lot of homeless people who use public transportation in my city. Just yesterday, a young lady (probably a college student) was sitting opposite me on the train. Later, a man with a single crutch sat next to her even though there were open seats elsewhere. He said he was "a recovering zombie" with a straight face, and this started a very weird scenario were he was hitting on her but using zombie terminology, like saying the only reason he was "behaving himself" because there was a camera in the train car. It was very awkward, and she and I looked at each other and could hardly stifle our laughter; though, I knew deep down she was kind of scared of him and probably glad I was sitting opposite them to keep him from getting overbearing.
ACTION (the bus service in the ACT) is actually pretty good. It's punctual, gets to most parts of the city, and violence/other bad behaviour is rare because only 4% of Canberrans use public transport. It's different in Brisbane or Sydney.
The only PT i use is Metrolink down here in socal, The only thing i've seen happen was a few drunk people started yelling at each other, They got kicked off soon after, The crews don't mess around when it comes down to crazy people.
Yes, it is. Sadly, many are society's marginalized. You have a few examples. I can write a book. And somebody on here would find some of the experiences "offensive," because they would involve some type of profiling. I have been accustomed to just drive my car up to some office parking lot, either stacked or adjacent to the office. I enjoyed that time to myself in my car. When put in a downtown situation where parking costs were prohibitive and transit was encouraged through an incentive, I took the train. I found that it ratcheted up my depression because there was some drama created by either the mentally ill or thug types at least every other day. I will say this, though. It largely depends on the routing. If you look at the Bay Area, a transit ride from some more upscale suburbs across the bay and right into the Financial District (the first 2 stops in the city of SF), without going any further than that, is usually a tame experience during the peak usage period. ---------- Post added 18th Nov 2013 at 02:00 PM ---------- Metrolink are suburban trains that didn't exist in Southern California until the recent past, and are much like the trains de banlieue in our OP's metro area, and they use existing train tracks with the freight lines. Sheez, do they ever feel suburban. Some of them go toward really nice areas, so altercations would be rare. Also, their funky 2-story set-up is kind of cool.
I'm ok with buses, but.. Friday and Saturday nights omg.. drunks, screaming their heads off on the bus.. And the other night, when people were getting off including me the drunks were shouting " Get offers!" Booing at us.. :lol:
When I lived in NYC, I used to take the subway frequently. Nothing really attention-grabbing happened on the subway. There were people who asked for money, while others were selling candy bars, toys, necklaces, etc.
There's a great news segment from San Francisco called "People Behaving Badly" and the reporter who rides around with the San Francisco police puts all the clips on his personal YouTube channel. One of them was a man who was arrested for masturbating on a BART train while sitting right next to a woman. That was disgusting.
That is gross. It would be interesting to see which line that occurred on. I mean, it could happen on any line, but I could believe some more than others.
Ah, yes! I've ran into him a few times. A lot of diverse people on the train, that's for sure. Just the other day, there was a dude drinking a jug of milk right then and there, and you could tell he just didn't care about anything in the world. It was kinda funny. I've also witnessed some characters at Flinders. My friend who works for Metro down the Belgrave line could tell you some stories too. I also catch the Lilydale line often, and something scummy is almost always happening, whether it be just the people hanging around, or the trains getting stopped because of people with weapons. Same goes with Frankston and Sydenham -- it's best to avoid that lines alone at night (or any time, really). I remember on Frankston, in the middle of the day, some guy pulled out a knife. I remember also two guys brought a 'disguised' corpse of a girl on once.
here's another one... This older guy in the subway with a large backpack and wearing some kind of Stetson decides he needs to change his shirt, right there while sitting in the crowded subway car, he proceeds to remove his shirt revealing his leathery hairy skin and a paunch, and then he pulls out a shirt from his pack and gets dressed, completely oblivious to the stares...
