abstract: While histories of technology have rarely considered workers and users together, this article shows how rationalization redistributed the labor of operating public transit between them. Examining Stockholm's fixed-conductor system in the 1940s reveals how these reforms intensified conductors' work while enrolling passengers in routinized practices of payment, boarding, and circulation. These expectations produced uneven access to mobility, privileging passengers able to comply with the prescribed travel routine and excluding those who could not. Drawing on the concept of infrastructural labor—the work required to build and operate infrastructures—the article reframes efficiency as a political process that reorganizes rights and responsibilities, embedding social differentiation into the everyday operation of mass transit.
Perrault et al. (Wed,) studied this question.