Entr’acte: Mobile Choreography and Sydney Rail Commuters

Abstract

The significance of the journey as a component of travel has been overlooked. The mobility turn has remedied this. There is now intense interest in mobility practices, in life on the move, and the cultures generated in vehicular environments. Though commuting is one of the most mundane, popular and ubiquitous forms of mobility, it is only beginning to receive the attention that is its due. In this paper, a mobile ethnography of commuting in Sydney is undertaken. It focuses particularly on the corporeality of commuting, on the territorialising and de-territorialising that occurs within crowded spaces of trains and on platforms during peak hours. It argues that passengers engage in complex ‘choreographies’ to avoid contact with one another.

Key Words:

• Mobile choreography
• Commuting
• Railways
• Place ballet
• CityRail

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my ‘fellow travellers’ Kalervo Gulson, David Saltmarsh and Barbara Dawson for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. This was one of a series of wishes published in the Christmas edition of MX, a free afternoon newspaper, given to rail commuters (Happy mXmas”, MX, 22 December 2011, p. 1).

2. For CityRail map, see http://www.cityrail.info/stations/network_map.

3. They are promoted as being located in transport friendly locations (see http://mcapartments.com.au/.

4. The drift to public transport is still relatively small. Only one in five of work-related trips in Sydney is undertaken by rail (BTS 2011, p. 21).

5. For more details, see http://www.cityrail.info/about/fleet/.

6. See http://www.cityrail.info/travelling_with/trip_tips/customer_courtesy.

7. This is changing. ‘Quiet carriages’ on a trial basis have been added to some trains (Saulwick 2012). The following exchange was heard in one such carriage: but we are quiet, we are not screaming. (FN 24.02.2012).

8. CityRail is not incident free. ‘Personal offences’ do occur; but by world standards, these offences, at 0.08 per 100 km journeys, are low. Nor are they evenly spread across the network. The North Shore Line is safe compared to the Western Line, the scene of most incidents (Saulwick 2011b, p. 6).