[johndotsun]

I think part of the issue is that in areas where there's not super abundant public transit that the majority of the population uses instead of cars, the likelihood of having a negative encounter with the type of people that are so unpleasant that you'd normally do anything possible to avoid them goes up significantly. My personal anecdote: when I lived in DC I never had any problems with the Metro buses or trains even in the poorer areas. When I lived in a coastal county in the panhandle of Florida I would sometimes take a bus on one of the very few lines that existed, serviced exclusively by very small buses and only a few times a day. During one of my trips I had to step in to stop this older man in his late 30's from physically harassing underage girls which led to police involvement. Turns out that he had been a problem for the bus line for a while but they couldn't ban him from the system because he was threatening to involve some civil liberties group in a discrimination case. I stopped taking the bus after that.

[pm90]

Yes this is unfortunately a problem everywhere, and I've seen this situation sometimes in Austin, Texas. In addition to untoward incidents like you mention, there are often homeless people taking the bus in the summers, I beleive simply to get a respite from the heat in the air conditioned buses. And while this might sound incredibly elitist, their stench is so bad I would frequently have to try for another bus.