Opinion: Mass transit creates opportunities for personal enrichment

By Scott Lucas

Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016 | 11:29 a.m.

The middle-aged woman squints at the two college students standing next to her. It’s the day of the LGBT pride march in San Francisco, and we are packed together hurtling west toward the city. The two young women wear plastic beads and rainbow-striped socks, party wear for the parade.

The train lurches, and the women bump into each other. They pass wary glares.

“Do you know what the march is about?” the older woman asks the younger ones. They shake their heads no.

“Stonewall? Harvey Milk?” No. No.

The older woman pauses then smiles. “Well, let me tell you,” she says, jumping into an impromptu seminar on the history of gay rights. Her lesson is informative, it’s personal, and it never would have happened if we were driving cars.

Mass transit is a funny thing. When driving, bumping into someone means a crash. On a train, it means a conversation.

I should know. Until moving to Las Vegas last year, I never owned a car for more than a few months, instead getting around by train, bus and Uber.

Light rail isn’t perfect. It doesn’t always function smoothly. There can be delays, crowding, transit strikes. For the most part, though, to ride the train is to encounter the ordinary transcendence of everyday life.

Light rail is like a combination coffee shop, sports stadium and Tinder app that also gets you to work on time. You can throw spare change to a punk rocker singing Johnny Cash or violinists playing hooky from the symphony, awkwardly dodge a person you broke up with six months ago, debug code on your laptop, furtively work up a buzz from mini bottles of booze, watch excited kids swing from the handholds on the way to a baseball game, gaze on old couples holding hands, spy future couples meeting, eavesdrop on important phone calls while pretending to take a nap or take a nap for real.

You’re also likely to miss the train, miss your stop, be jostled, get bumped. But so what? Most of the time, people are awesome, and it is nice to be with them.

Even more than change how people commute, a mass transit system in the valley would transform how people interact with one another. There’s no better chance to meet neighbors — or perfect strangers.

I’ll be there. Say hi if you see me.