Le Transportation Publique Francais…… Une observation…
Dear Readers, it may cause some interest to know that Quentin Cockburn has recently been commissioned by the State Government of Victoria, (Better Cities 2020) to investigate the public transport system in Paris. His account is as follows.
In Saint Germain, amidst the Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and Ferraris, a mixture of Parisian plutocracy and outsiders establish the highly visible “street-life”. We amused ourselves in identifying who amongst them may be; Russian oligarchs, Chinese nouveaux riches, crisply dressed, (but daggy) Americans, and the service retinue, of waiters, porters, and top hatted concierges.
Amidst it all, recumbent in a beautifully designed glass and aluminium phone booth lived a gypsy family. She may have been twenty five, (or sixty?), her sleeping son, (barely visible) was enclosed within a swirl of dirty sleeping bags, plastic sheeting and odd clothes. A debris trail of plastic bags spilled out from the concrete base to define a territory of sorts. People walked by, designer boots and handbags, manicured hands, the twinkling of Rolex, Tag Heuer, and Longines.
At the station, we watched as another gypsy, (could’ve been thirty or ninety), approached the automatic door, a cross between a sheep race and a cattle crush and expertly squeezed herself between the steel louvres. She emerged, and with practised hands leaned over and pulled bags, child and dog out. Along the subway others, sitting, a paper cup in hand, more rags and blankets implore donations. In Rue St Michel, the same bloke as yesterday, a tired Alsatian his constant companion sat right in the middle of the street. He was there every day, fixed as street furniture. No one seemed to notice, nor care. It’s the inconsequential universality of poverty, and perhaps like “back home” the special niche occupied by our homeless, the mentally unstable, the outcasts, the misfits.
But there was something else, (and this fascinates me), an acceptance of, or resignation to “humanity”. There was no sense of these people being ‘pushed on’, being ‘re-located’ to an outer suburb where they could ‘normalise’. No requirement to ‘lift’ them to another place. Perhaps they were ‘non-citizens’, like us, just passing through? Each one seemed to be more or less permanent, in a niche of sorts.
Perhaps it has something to do with the transport system. You see, you can get on at any station, and buy a full fare ticket to anywhere within their zone one, (it’s a really big zone) and it’ll cost you about $2.30. The trains are fast and very regular. On board, you will be entertained by another sub culture, the musicians, the pen sellers, the poets the orators. The trains are moving performance spaces devoted to the impromptu and the moment. They may be crowded, intensely functional and claustrophobic but they enshrine one basic principle, the dignity of humans, and the unprescribed “manners” that allow people of disparate backgrounds to get along. I wondered about this cast of thousands, the performers, the outcasts and the public, and reflected upon two things. I think, this (like London) is a city ‘in touch’ with itself. It is urbane. It lacks a basic suburban insecurity. Difference is just another backdrop, and within it all dignity is enshrined with, (even amongst the most destitute) a measure of respect.
In Melbourne, on trams and trains the loudspeakers enforce an Orwellian reality of the black clad, public transport, ‘Gestapo’. The grimly named, PSO’s. The insane, destitute and misfits, do not belong. The PSO are angry and loud.
It’s a system designed to punish the user, and establish that users are lesser beings. And just to ensure that public manners engage fear rather than dignity, we have a ticketing system which is largely obtuse, onerous, and designed by bureaucrats, for politicians who don’t use public transport.
What is the social cost? It may not be $2.30. More likely $1.5 billion and counting.