Who You’ll Bump into at a Hubway Station

In 2011, Boston became one of the first cities in the United States to launch a bike-sharing program. Because public transportation by bus and subway can be slow in Boston, and driving even worse at times, bikes were thought to be a good alternative. One of the fun parts about taking public transportation is seeing who will be riding with you. Oftentimes you’ll learn more about some topic just from overhearing a conversation about it, or from making small talk with those around you. Sometimes you might bump into someone fairly frequently on your rides, being able to identify them as “the guy with the moustache” or “the yoga girl”, or maybe you might bump into a familiar crowd, like “the freshmen at MIT” or “the young parents with their baby strollers”. In fact, some people (let’s call them A and B) have entirely different opinions about other riders simply because person A might always be stuck on busses with elderly people that take awhile to pay their far, whereas person B might always be riding with college kids. Is there really something to this idea – that a person might have a collection of people that they tend to bump into more than others? Or does it just seem that way, and despite the fact that you might be living, say, in an area with more college students, you actually are not more likely to bump into them than other types of people?