Navigating Transit Spaces: An Assemblage Approach to Daily Travel

Keywords: transportation, transit equity, assemblage theory, spatial assemblages, cities, commute, daily travel
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 19

Abstract

While the geography of commuting and daily travel is often quite fixed spatially and temporally, the processes by which users navigate commuting spaces can be more random and spontaneous. Using data collected from users of a new public bus added to the transit network in Philadelphia, PA (USA), we investigate a set of mechanisms by which transit riders organize, codify, and respond to diverse spatial encounters in their daily travel practices. In particular we explore the ways these more adhoc encounters function in the dynamic that users must navigate between the point of origin, transit infrastructure, and the point of destination. Together, we foreground this relation as a spatial assemblage and utilize assemblage thinking to understand how such diverse spaces act and are acted upon by transit riders. Our approach prioritizes the knowledge that comes from transit users; we analyze qualitative data from long-form interviews, and use an iterative methodology to yield themes regarding the interactions between riders and the transit spaces they navigate daily. We then place these themes in conversation with classic frameworks of assemblage thinking to better understand how these relations might function as a dynamic assemblage that allows for creative encounters, ingenuity, and alternative futures for transit space. We find that users develop new possibilities for transit spaces that complement, revise, or contest the formal geographies as conceived by public agencies and transit providers. Together, we seek to understand the foundational system of how transit users relate transit possibilities to their existing ways of travel.