Once an old guy asked me to hold the door for him when the train stops so he can stand up and get out. I did but he took very long to stand up so I instinctively went to help him, the door closed and the train went on. So we both excited at the next stop and wanted to get the train back. It was the worst possible stop because the walk was crazy long and the old guy crazy slow. Me being way too helpful, I walked with him and he told me about how his family never visits him anymore and all kinds of trouble in his life, while one train after the other passed by. Eventually we arrived on the other side, got back to the original stop and exited. I escorted him to a taxi. He was very thankful for the adventure and I was a few hours late to work.
A woman jumped while I was waiting for the train at my home station. It wasn’t pretty…
A singing and commentating bus driver! :-)
i had a dude walk up to me and say “never just take unsolicited advice”
possibly the best advice i ever got. total mindfuck though
A group of us in NYC and dude rolled up with a rope and declared, “Never leave the house without some rope” and then went on his way.
Waiting for a matatu and one dude starts beating the shit out of another. Two separate times.
Cool dude gets on near Bakersfield, sits next to me, drinks a 12 pack and tells me how he murdered people in prison.
Various people smoking crack, meth, and fety on trains and buses
Dude gets asked to turn his music down, goes on escalating and frankly impressive rant for 10 minutes about how he’s going to cut the guys head clean off with his machete
Various guys jacking off
Various rants against every race
Spent 90% of my life taking public transit and I love it. Big public transit fan and I wish people would intermingle more in general.
But, if you talk loudly or listen to music on the tinny speakers on your phone, you are the scum of the earth in my eyes. I’d rather have a dude strung out on heroin on the train than you, absolutely no hint of sarcasm.
You love it? God, I would become so depressed.
Bus driver driving new route didn’t know about a gate. Slammed brakes. Disabled person flew off their wheel chair and landed face first.
And also a lost elderly person wandered onto the bus one time. So I presume happy ending cause driver ended his route to make sure she would be driven back home.
Someone called the bus driver “woman” for being sensitive during an argument so he called the police on them.
Back when I was in college I road the bus every day. Nothing even remotely as crazy as most of the comments here describing happened that I witnessed on those hundreds of bus rides There was the dude wearing a parka when the heat index was over 100, or the guy weeping holding a bouquet while heading into a residential area and those are honestly not that interesting because shit happens but I do have one story:
One fairly quiet bus ride I was seated in some of the sideways seats near the front and a lady seated across from me was reading a newspaper. My eyes are drifting as I’m listening to a podcast and suddenly I realize on the front of the paper this lady is reading is a photo of my dad. I asked her “excuse me, could I look at that paper quickly? That’s a photo of my dad there and I want to see what he’s been up to to get in the paper but hasn’t told me” and it turns out he helped run a Wikipedia edit-a-thon event at a local library to help encourage new contributors.
Somebody jumped in front of the train. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye and I thought it was a suitcase at first. I couldn’t fathom that it could be a person. I actually got on the train but when it didn’t move it dawned on me what had happened and then someone else confirmed it. Everyone just stared at each other in disbelief and then we all silently excited and went on about our way. Fuck, I completely forgot about that.
Weirdly, when I finally got to my destination there was a nun on a stretcher being rolled out of the building by EMTs. Strange day.
hopped on the local metro transport at like 6am. I sit down and try to not make eye contact with anyone and the smell hits me first.
dude like two seats down is passed the fuck out, dick in hand, legs stretched out, and he’s just shitting all over himself and the seat.
security comes over and tries to wake him up. they get loud and kinda rough with the guy. no response. they check for pulse. he ded. he big ded.
dude must have died mid stroke at some point in the morning commute and his bowels released soon after.
drugs are bad m’kay.
On a trip to San Francisco, the quintessential “gay mecca” of the USA I was on a bus making my way over towards Haight area (then planning to go visit Castro street aka the actual gayest part of San Francisco) there were a group of men on the bus going on a bigoted rant specifically about homosexual men ruining the country and going to hell and all that fun stuff on the LGBTQ+ agenda.
Like, I’d expect to hear that kind of stuff in the middle of Oklahoma’s rural hellscape (sans the bus part). But in San Francisco of all places?
Those people purposefully bait confrontation. They go to where they know they are of the unpopular opinion, and loudly and obnoxiously escalate their bigotry until there’s confrontation.
Test this by calmly approaching them and asking what they feel they will accomplish with this- and see how quickly one of the “onlookers” whips out a recording device.
I think its probably just refusing to be quiet about their opinions. That comes off as being confrontative, simply because they dont self censor themselves around people they know will be upset.
Its simular to here on Lemmy when people get called trolls for stating an unpopular opinion. They just dont self censor.
One morning when I got on the Stockholm metro there was a guy, bombed out of his mind, he had tossed his jacket in the middle of the floor, and was messing about with bottle caps with water and syringes.
No one made a sound (this is normal in the Stockholm rush hour), and I reached out through the SL app chat feature to inform the security center about the situation
I told them that a poor guy on the train clearly needed help, didn’t speculate, but informed them about what I could see, told them what train it concerned and where on the train the guy was and gave a description of him.
Two stops later two security guards boarded the train and quickly lead him out, no screaming or disruption at all.
I don’t know what happened to the guy after that, but I was careful to stay neutral yet concerned for the guy’s health, and I hope he finally got the help he needed if not wanted at the time and is doing much better now.
Two things come to mind:
- Subway rolls up with an empty car and I was like, “these fools aren’t on this sweet-ass empty car???”… yeah, dude taking a shit.
- Another being on the A Train, express, and stuck with mariachi band at full-tilt in a convenient 10-15min gap between stops.
- And one time we were the entertainment! Had to get the tree back to the apt, dragged that shit onto the train.
Idk if this counts as crazy but one day a guy went up to me and said “hey I’m about to smoke meth. Its probably going to smell so you can change seats if you want to.” And then I did and that was basically it.
Very polite methhead.
Around here they don’t ask they just fucking light up. So I would actually appreciate that. Sounds like a decent person.
Nothing that crazy I guess, but two events I remember:
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A small fire broke out next to the tracks and the train driver actually stopped the train and got out to extinguish it
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A train busker played so loudly and terribly that a group of random passengers got together to shove him out of the train at the next station.
Someone playing an instrument inside of a train, Jesus that’s obnoxious
Yeah, I hadn’t heard any buskers on the Stockholm metro for years until a few weeks ago when a guy I had seen earlier busking, came onboard again with his weird wooden box with metal strings that is played with two hooked sticks and started playing.
Indeed. Busking on the street is fine, as you can just walk somewhere else if you don’t like it, but on a train you’re trapped with them. Pretty sure it’s illegal here as well.
Yeah, you haven’t lived until you’ve had to ride the express A going downtown with a mariachi band at full-tilt.
There are places where this is common. They hope to get paid (I assume to get them to leave). Sometimes they’re accompanied by pick-pockets who pray on the distracted.
Assholes, they’re basically extorting people to stop the annoying shit and to get them to fuck off
Not proper public transport, but my dad is an active member of a heritage railroad.
This railroad rund both steam and diesel trains.
When it is dry outside they will run a fire watch train after the steam train, basically a tank car with water and a petrol pump, pulled by a diesel locomotive.
But this day they didn’t run the fire watch train, and I was tagging along with dad as he drove the classic DMU trains.
We come around a corner and see smoke comming from a farmer’s field, it had caught on fire/smolder from the steam train…
We stop, obviously, bring our large water can and start working the fire, after a few min the fire department came and we could hand it over to them
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