Navigating transit spaces: an assemblage approach to daily travel

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 (U.S.A.), we investigate a set of mechanisms by which transit riders organize, codify, and respond to diverse spatial encounters in their daily travel practices. We explore the ways that ad hoc spatial encounters determine how users navigate between their point of origin, the transit infrastructure they utilize, and the point of destination. We consider this relationship 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 interviews and employ 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 the relationship between riders and transit spaces might function as a dynamic assemblage that allows for creative encounters, ingenuity, and, ideally, alternative futures for public transport. 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.