For Dr. Amy Hanser, her academic path has seen her at a lot of crossroads.
Initially a chemistry undergraduate student at New Jersey’s Princeton University, Hanser thought her career path was set. That was until she took a Chinese history class early in her degree and her route took a detour.
From there, it didn’t take long for Hanser to switch faculties and become an Asian studies major. She spent two years living in China as an English teacher before finding work as a journalist in Hong Kong.
After a few years, Hanser was on the move again. Her next stop: the University of California, Berkeley, where she would receive both her Master’s and doctorate in sociology. Since then, she’s dedicated her research to a number of sociological topics in Chinese society. Recent years have seen her researching the consumption and inequality in urban Chinese markets.
Yet, a new project is dedicated to a space that is used both in and beyond China, one Hanser has wanted to look at for years — buses.
“I rode the bus in a lot of different places like Taiwan, Mainland China, southeast Asia and a lot in California, and had a lot of interesting experiences and observed how different it was in different places. And since I've moved to Vancouver, I've mostly commuted by bus.”
Apart from being one of her primary modes of transportation, public transit always fascinated Hanser as an interactive social space and it has always been something she’s wanted to research further.
“It was probably when I was in graduate school and also [when I was] living in Asia that I rode buses a lot [and] I actually decided I wanted to do a project on buses. I promised myself that I would do it once I got tenure,” Hanser recounted.
Now a tenured professor with UBC’s department of sociology, Hanser is finally acting out on her interest in transit by conducting an observational study on the interactions and behaviours of commuters on Vancouver buses.
“I observed a lot of interesting behaviour on the bus that made me think about how buses captured elements of city life and put it on display for everybody,” Hanser explained.
Hanser is still early on in her research but has still been able to notice certain particularities about bus commuter habits in the city and even differences between bus types and routes.
“[In a double-length bus], the back of the bus feels quite different than the front in terms of norms and how people interact and who even uses those spaces. Express buses often have very different culture of riding them [compared to] the trolley buses, [there are] people who are in a hurry more than people who are doing more local trips,” she said.
For now, Hanser has her hands full with Vancouver’s bus culture, including the data she gathered prior to the job action threatened by drivers, this past November.
“… In the lead up to the bus strike, I saw numerous instances … of people offering their support to the bus drivers, saying ‘You guys do a good job,’ [and being] really supportive. And I also saw cases where people asked bus drivers for information about what was going on.”
Ever since her research popped up on the CBC and other Vancouver media outlets, dozens of commuters have reached out to her willing to answer questions and further her work.
Apart from that, she’s spent a decent amount of time riding the bus.
“I ride from one end of a route to the other. And I'm riding routes that that really traverse the city. So mostly east-west, but routes that go through very different neighbourhoods. And you really see the bus transform as it moves through the city — who's on it and the atmosphere on the bus really changes as it moves.”
It was sitting on a route from an end-to-end that really allowed Hanser to notice even more about people’s bus habits but also about how much separation exists on some TransLink routes.
“Most folks who ride the bus eastward don't go past downtown. Their destination is somewhere between UBC and somewhere [along] Granville Street, it's almost like a form of segregation,” Hanser explained.
“I don't think most bus riders think about that very much. But it's interesting to see how the inequalities in the city manifest themselves and who rides the bus and who's not even on the bus,” she added.
An element that has come up in Hanser’s research is the use of cellphones, given that most people would assume that bus riders are absorbed by the small screens in front of them.
“I think that's why a lot of people actually use their phones is it gives them a comfortable place to put their attention and they don't have to, especially as the bus gets more crowded, worry about where to rest their eyes.
“There is a novelty about cellphones, which is that they don't just give us a place to put our attention, they actually hold our attention very effectively,” Hanser added.
But Hanser still believes that people’s attention, even if they are glued to their smartphones, still revolves around the confined space of the bus cabin. “I [think that] one of the fictions that we engage in on the bus is that we're not paying attention to each other, right? But in fact, we are,” she explained.
“… Part of what you look for when you're watching people's behaviour on the bus is how they manage their attention and if something's happening on the bus, it's very hard to ignore,” she added.
Hanser will continue on with this project over the next few months, her goals for the next while to interview commuters at bus stops and, of course, spend even more time on the bus.
“I hope to have finished data collection by next August and originally I thought this [as] kind of an academic project, but the public interest is really made me think that what I write should actually be something that is written for a more popular audience.”
“I also saw in the lead up to the bus strike, I saw numerous instances on my own rise of people offering their support to the bus drivers, saying "you guys do a good job" [and being] really supportive. And I also saw cases where people asked bus drivers for information about what was going on.”