Transport imaginations: Passenger experiences between freedom and constraint

Abstract

This paper highlights the openness and indeterminacy of passenger experiences by exploring the power of passengers' imaginations in the context of urban railway commuting in Tokyo, Japan. Contrasting with much existing research on the figure of the passenger which has often stressed its intensified management and securitisation through spaces of transit, this paper examines how imagination plays an important but under-acknowledged part in transforming passenger experiences. Drawing upon extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, it describes how the virtuality of these imagined spaces can work in different ways that can both enable and constrain passengers. Rather than seeing imagin..