Ultimately, in an attempt to regain control over the situation, the municipality of Åtvidaberg opted to cease providing the local community with free bus services and replaced them with fee-based services. But the complaints and criticisms coming out of Åtvidaberg remind us of the degree to which routines, such as the particular practices associated with regularly performed commutes, can come to have such meaning to people that they are willing to fight over them when those routines become disrupted, and the identities associated with them are thereby brought into question.<sup>6</sup> Beyond this, the example from Åtvidaberg also points to the fact that commutes are embedded in a wealth of ritualized activities that we normally take for granted (concerning such practices as boarding buses, finding seats, maintaining social distance, etc.) that need to be maintained even in shifting conditions, such as those caused by overcrowding. Without them, even the most routinized forms of travel quickly degenerate into chaos. The question is: how is all of this structured, and how can any semblance of order be maintained in light of the fact that no two commutes can ever be exactly the same? In order to approach this question, let me turn to the specifics of the train ride between Lund and Helsingborg.
My Soul for a Seat
Taking the train to work every day takes an enormous amount of energy. Two hours of glum faces, crowdedness and sweat, and on top of it all, a lot of worry – you sit there like a sardine in a can, if something should ever happen . . .!
Anna
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Tom O’Dell