Changing geographies of the passenger: Heterogeneous subjects on the move

Abstract

At the intersection of transport geography and mobilities studies, scholars have paid increasing attention to passengering as a key characteristic in transport systems and a window through which one can understand how transport unfolds on the ground. In this editorial to the virtual special issue, we contribute to these debates by thinking through how passengers and passenger groups are deeply heterogeneous in nature, being far from singular or discrete, and escaping easy definitions of what passengering is or does. We discuss such variability in passenger formations and roles in three ways. First, we consider how passengering is a nonreplicable process involving different compositions of people each time. Then, we highlight passengers' inconstant roles and subjectivities while on the move. And finally, we delineate how the act/art of passengering can be extended across multiple time-spaces involving and exceeding immediate transport environments. We show that these three prompts have important implications for transport infrastructures and services, as well as for fotransport design and planning. By tackling these ideas, the papers in this issue offer new insights on the spatialities of transport and on the site-specific productions of passengering.