Status Report on Public Transport Closeness
The train is at capacity. Capacity means a specific number and also means several people are closer to the subject than the subject has agreed to.
STATUS REPORT Public Transport Closeness: Q3 2022 Assessment Prepared for internal review
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Public transportation ridership in the subject's commute corridor has returned to approximately 87% of pre-pandemic levels. The subject is present for this return. The return is progressing as expected. This report covers conditions observed during the period September 1 through September 20, 2022.
CURRENT CONDITIONS
The train contains people. The number of people on the train is consistent with the number of people who need to travel on the train at 8:22 AM on a weekday. These numbers are not new numbers. They existed before the subject was aware of them as numbers.
The person standing to the subject's left has a bag that makes contact with the subject's arm at irregular intervals on curves. The contact is brief and involuntary. The contact has occurred seven times between 72nd Street and 42nd Street. The subject has not indicated awareness of the contact. The contact continues.
PROXIMITY METRICS
The subject is currently within twelve inches of four people who have not been introduced. Three of these people are reading phones. One is looking at a middle distance that does not intersect with any surface currently on the train. All four are managing their presence with a competence that warrants no particular acknowledgment and receives none.
Physical proximity has resumed at the pre-pandemic rate. The rate was always this rate.
NOTABLE OBSERVATIONS
A period of approximately twenty-two months produced a recalibration of what constitutes normal spatial arrangement. The recalibration was not chosen. It occurred gradually and is now being reversed gradually. The reversal is also not chosen.
The subject understood, before re-entering the train system, that this situation would be the situation. Understanding it in advance did not change the experience of experiencing it.
OUTSTANDING ITEMS
The subject has not yet re-established the facial expression used in 2019 to indicate engaged neutrality in transit conditions. The expression occupied a middle register between friendly and closed. It required no active maintenance. It has not yet returned automatically.
Work on the expression is ongoing and is expected to resolve without intervention by Q4.
CONCLUSION
Conditions are within normal parameters. No action is required or available.