Bad manners on public transport - is Covid, social media and phone use to blame?

Are people ruder on public transport than they used to be? Have good manners been kicked to the curb on buses and trains? NZ Herald reporter Cameron Pitney hit the streets of Auckland for our NZ Unspoken video series to see what public transport users had to say.

It’s a widely held view these days that people have become more inconsiderate on public transport.

Anecdotal evidence suggests many are more likely to bother other passengers, play music or video off their phones out loud.

On the more serious end, we know from published figures that passengers are more likely to physically assault bus drivers.

So what could be causing this apparent loss of social skills? Is technology to blame? Or have the pandemic years made us distrustful and insular?

One young woman we spoke to near Auckland’s Britomart transport centre told us she was seeing more aggression from people on trains.

“It’s just people in the wrong mindset and they just don’t think properly.”

One man said; “People have stuck to social media so much that when they have someone talk to them in person, it’s usually because someone wants something.”

Another we spoke to blamed the pandemic for the change in people’s behaviour, saying he had experienced an increase in people trying to push their way on before letting others off.

“If I’m going to be a realist about it, there feels like there has been a decline in the general cohesion of society ever since the pandemic.”

But etiquette and manners can be subjective. Doyenne in etiquette Susie Wilson has made a career out of teaching others what it means to be civil.

“People have become disengaged,” she says. “They are less social, they’re less graceful, they’re more unmanaged.”

The etiquette expert blamed both new technology and the pandemic for the change.

“People just need to understand that a certain way of behaving isn’t necessarily the correct way.”

It’s not all doom and gloom though.

“If one person treats another person with respect and kindness and uses their manners it will be picked up. It is a ripple effect.”

This left the more serious end of the discussion; the rise in recent years of violence towards bus drivers. Executive general manager for public transport services at Auckland Transport, Stacey Van Der Putten confirmed that bus drivers were facing more abuse than in the past, and that 2022 was a particularly bad year for it.

She stressed that the last few years had seen a spike in violent behaviour from members of the public. She said things had improved over 2023 but that violent behaviour was “still way higher than we would like”.

So maybe after several years of disruptions we are slowly learning to be decent to each other again. Perhaps what Wilson supposes is true and that good manners breed good manners - that politeness has a ripple effect, and maybe that ripple needs to start with ourselves.

When we asked the public what we could do to make things better, one man told the Herald: “Slow down… we don’t have a world-class transport system. It’s 10 bus routes in a trench coat and one train line. Just be chill about it.”