New York
Pyongyang
London
Abidjan
Lisbon
Moscow
Kolkata
Montgomery
Paris
Tokyo
Bécon-les-bruyères
Fr : version française / En: english version
Passengers
or users?
City dwellers are traveling increasingly long distances: the average person living in the Paris area traveled 13km a day in 1975 and 16.5 in 2001 (source: EGT/insee).Therefore the quality of a large city's transit system (layout, speed, frequency, fares, comfort, etc.) contributes greatly to its economic development and also to the quality of life of its inhabitants, including motorists. The French have an expression métro-boulot-dodo (literally "metro, work, sleep") to describe the dull, repetitive commuter lifestyle, and indeed quality of service is a major concern of public transit users who, depending on whether they are being courted, reprimanded or pitied, are variously referred to as customers, passengers, season ticket holders, freeloaders, or even victims in case of a strike or breakdown.
" 'Unkoo,' she yells,'are we going by metro?'
'No'.
'What d'you mean, no?'
She has come to a full stop. Gabriel likewise halts, turns round, puts the suitcase down and starts to iksplain.
'Well yes: no. Today, can't be done. Za strike.'
'Za strike?'
'Well yes: za strike. The metro, that eminently parisian means of transport, has fallen asleep under the ground, for the employees with their perforating punches have ceased to work.'
'Oo the bastards,' cries Zazie,'oo the swine. To do that to me'.
'Snot only you they're doing it to,' says Gabriel, perfectly objective.
'Don't give a damn. Doesn't alter the fact that it's happening to me, me that was so happy, so pleased and everything to be going to be conveyed by metro. Blast, bloody hell.'
'Have to make the best of it, have to be reasonable,' said Gabriel whose remarks were sometimes tinged with a slightly Kantian Thomism."
Zazie dans le métro, Raymond Queneau, 1959
(translated into English as Zazie in the Metro by Barbara Wright)
View all works
Title : The Bayswater Omnibus
Author : George Joy
Date : 1895
Technique : huile sur toile
Dimensions : 172 x 120 cm
Location : Museum of London, UK
Photo credit: Museum of London, UK / Bridgeman Giraudon
Title : Nord-Sud
Author : Gino Severini
Date : 1912
Technique : huile sur toile
Dimensions : 64 x 49 cm
Location : Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy
Photo credit: © Alinari archives
Title : Un soir sur les escalators du métro de Paris
Author : Boris Taslitzky
Date : 1935
Technique : huile sur toile
Dimensions : 96 x 129 cm
Location : musée Pouchkine, Moscou
Photo credit: © Artothek
Title : Untitled (subway)
Author : Mark Rothko
Date : 1937
Technique : huile sur toile
Dimensions : 86 x 61 cm
Location : National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Photo credit: © Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel
Title : Le couple de la série : Le Métro
Author : Jean Dubuffet
Date : 1943
Technique : gouache
Dimensions : 86 x 61 cm
Location : MNAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Photo credit: ©ADAGP / Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN / Philippe Migeat
Title : Le train « tube »
Author : Cyril Power
Date : 1934
Technique : linogravure
Dimensions : 31 x 31 cm
Location : collection privée
Photo credit: © Osborne Samuel Ltd, London / Bridgeman Giraudon