Interviews on the move

The core method of semi-structured interviewing while accompanying the participant on their habitual journeys, sought to account for everyday mobilities and their entanglements with infrastructure, as both embodied and mindful. Interviewing outside the journeys’

timespace would have missed out on the minute socio-technical interactions which are performed by the commuting body. Corporeality is a significant aspect of everyday urban mobility, yet traditional empirical approaches often fail to capture embodied experiences (Bissell 2007:295; Fusco 2008:160). Many of these may be difficult to recall in conversation, or deemed too insignificant to mention (Bissell 2007). However, the small practices of buying a ticket, or glancing at a clock, were central to compiling an account of how travel time, cost, comfort and stress are accomplished in changing metro commutes.

On the other hand, an approach to data collection based only on close observation of commuters’ practices would have come with its own major limitations in terms of generating data which address the research questions. First, solitary observations of social practice may wholly misinterpret events by refracting them through the particular knowledge and experience of the researcher (Kusenbach 2003). As Bissell (2007) points out in relation to using video in ethnomethodology, the researcher can see only those gestures and experiences which involve physical movement. The second difficulty with observation stems from the fact that this project is mainly about the changes which occur in and through everyday practices. As I will argue in later chapters, change and sameness in everyday habits can be understood as on-going, asynchronous, minute, ambivalent and poly-directional. As a result, observing a sequence of instances and encounters, even if many and even over the course of several months, would not have revealed much about the unfolding of change. Some continuity of the passenger as a subject who injects meaning in the notions of sameness and change, was needed: in thinking about change, the traces of the commuter’s past and present commutes, folded into a present journey, were important (Pile and Thrift 1995). Change plays out in snapshots of situated interactions, but is revealed more fully in the personal histories of each participant, which exceed single moments and connect them across spaces and temporalities. The reflections of both researcher and participants on practices were therefore of critical importance, gathered on several different occasions, allowing the finer details to be gradually explored and follow-up themes to be pursued (Hitchings 2012:63). This is particularly pertinent in the case of a study with a practical concern at its heart: albeit porous and fluid, the socio-technical arrangement of the new Sofia metro line necessitates that some spatial and temporal outlines are drawn around the object being studied, if the question ‘What difference does the new infrastructure make to commuting?’ is to be meaningful.

It thus seemed that a combination of participant observation and in-depth interviewing would be most appropriate, so that both the participant and I could discuss and observe together the otherwise subtle, and often neglected through their triviality, interactions of human and non-human actors in everyday passengering. While the ride-along element ensures rich situated data can be generated, the interview aspect ensures that the focus on embodied presence does not result in neglecting the participant’s own reflections and subjectivity (Shoval et al. 2014).

The repeated ride-along interview method, inspired originally by the emphasis on developing a longer-term relationship with respondents in Latham’s diary-interview method (2003), involved a semi-structured interview while on the move. Mobile methods such as the ride-along interview have gained increasing popularity, amid calls that mobile practices are best studied by equally mobile research designs (Buscher and Urry 2009;

Spinney 2009; Latham and Wood 2015). As argued by Kusenbach (2003), go-along methodologies can help illuminate that which is taken for granted in everyday routines.

However, following a welcome intervention by Merriman (2014) in the expanding body of mobile-methods-based research, it is important also to recognise its limitations. Rather than a better version of the interview, a solution for gathering more, or more accurate, data, the ride-along interview is a particular type of research performance, with its utility as well as its limitations. I have adopted a mobile method in the knowledge that, as with any method, orientations towards some events and interactions will be prioritised at the expense of others. By also carrying out extensive observations, sitting still on trains and platforms, often for hours at a time (see section 4.6), I sought to ‘slow down’ the kind of research gaze generated within ride-along interviews, and notice some of the doings and sayings which would have otherwise been omitted.

One of the challenges I faced in doing ride-along interviews had to do with the different temporalities I referred to in my questions. I quickly realised that asking about the present journey – the trip we were doing together at the time of the conversation – would have been problematic. For example, querying the location on the platform which the respondent had just chosen would yield responses which directly reflected my own presence: “We’re standing here today because there’s two of us and there’s more space here.

I wouldn’t be standing here if I was on my own.” Initially, I found myself asking hypothetical questions (“Would you have taken that empty seat if I wasn’t with you?”), but this was also unhelpful: it meant trying to research concrete, situated practices by asking the practitioners to speculate about hypothetical events. Another approach I experimented with and quickly dismissed as antithetical to the ideas which were at the very heart of the research, involved asking questions about their “typical” commute (“Where do you usually

sit?”) This seemed to foreclose rather than uncover the specific, pre-discursive, embodied configurations, and represented a return to an unfounded in experience average. Beige and Axhausen (2012) similarly recognised interview schedules designed around a “usual”

commute as problematic. Finally, I opted for asking participants about the commute of the day before. While the present provided the context and the memory aids, the questions themselves focused on what the respondent could recall about undertaking the commute on the previous day. Thus, I would ask questions like “Did you stand in the same place yesterday?” or “What did you carry with you yesterday?” At first this seemed confusing to some participants, but repeatedly emphasising my particular interest in ‘yesterday,’ rather than a generalised ‘usually’ improved the robustness and situated-ness of the data. It also generated interesting reflexive discussions about memory, what is memorable in daily life, and what we take for granted or compress into mental representations of a typical day.

I eventually came to use the differences between one’s ‘typical’ commute (see Marsden and Docherty 2013 for a further critique of the concept) and the particular experience of the ride-along as a research device. This involved specifically asking participants to reflect on what felt unusual or disruptive about me accompanying them. By making the ride-along itself part of the conversation, I sought to make explicit the fact that it wasn’t somehow ‘outside’ of the experience of commuting: it was a lived and embodied mode of inhabiting the metro, it happened, and thus had to be acknowledged (Hill 2013). As argued by Bissell (2014), the interview itself was a vivid encounter which heightened both researcher and respondent’s capacity to be attuned to the research topic. The approach generated some interesting conversations, as in the following example: “I would have taken a bigger bag, since I usually have to carry my book. But today I knew we would be travelling together, so I didn’t take my book, and so I only needed a small handbag” (Nevena, 15 May 2013 AM). However, this could only take place during later ride-alongs, when respondents felt more at ease to reflect upon our experience of travelling together.

A further methodological challenge of studying socio-technological change in relation to situated public transport use, is the danger of reducing the impact of new infrastructure to its spatiotemporal boundaries. Although the practices of metro commuters may seem like something that takes place within the boundaries of the metro, in fact the implications of these journeys extend out (as Laurier et al. 2008 point out in relation to car driving and passengering). Spatially, commuting reaches into the socialities of the city’s other public spaces; into the domestic life of households; and into the work activities of urban dwellers.

Temporally, the changes inside the metro in the present have an impact on the conceptualisation of the multiple pasts and futures of the city. In their research on household, income-earning and commuting arrangements in London, Jarvis, Pratt, and Wu

(2001) convincingly argue that everyday mobility practices should always be studied as part of a broad and complex interweaving of work, home and social reproduction. For Kusenbach (2003), research findings about situated practices need to be contextualised in the biographies and future plans of research participants. Similarly, time-geography research inspired by the work of Hagerstrand (1973), have repeatedly demonstrated the way journeys and activities work together to bring into being what can be thought of as the spatial and temporal dimensions of everyday life (Neutens, Schwanen, and Witlox 2011). These arguments were captured in the ride-along interview approach through two techniques. First, the interview guides for evening ride-alongs included questions concerning wider reflections on issues around household arrangements and re-arrangements, changes in the neighbourhood, and life in Sofia (the reasons why the evening commute was more accommodating to reflexive conversation form part of the discussion of findings in Chapter 7). Second, although the study focuses on metro infrastructure, all accompanied commutes started at the origin (home to study/workplace, or vice versa) and covered all the modes the commute involved. Commuters being picked up and dropped off, grocery shopping on the way home, fragments of phone conversations all offered a qualitative glimpse into the place of the commute, in its entirety, in the fabric of the everyday. Because of time constraints, it was not deemed feasible to also visit the participants’ homes and places of work, although these settings would have offered valuable insights into how commuting arrangements are shaped by, and in turn shape, the other spheres of the everyday.

In conducting the repeated ride-along interviews, I found it useful to revisit and refine both the timetable and the interview guide repeatedly. Thus, my initial plan was for the outbound and inbound journeys (which mostly, but not always, corresponded to a morning and evening journey) to take place on the same day. However, this was not practical for two reasons. First, participants often had other commitments later in the same day, such as meeting friends or shopping. They did not always want to be accompanied on these journeys, although I was able to join several participants on such occasions. It sometimes seemed that participants were reluctant to be interviewed twice in the same day, and since I was weary of research fatigue in a repeated interviewing research design, I did not insist. The second reason was that travelling together once a week for two weeks, instead of twice on the same day, turned out to be an opportunity to gather data on a greater number of journeys.

As a rule, the first ride-along used more broadly defined themes, and was intended to establish rapport as much as gather data. The themes for the first interview included:

 Your commute before the metro

 Your commute immediately after the opening of Line 2

 Changes to your commute since, focusing on times, routes, stops, and tickets

 What else has changed in your own daily routine, and in your neighbourhood, since the opening of Line 2?

 What you wear and carry during your commute (bags, clothes, electronic devices, umbrellas, food and drink, shopping)

 Interactions with others (travelling with others; meeting people you know;

interacting with strangers; the behaviour of other passengers)

 What makes you stressed in relation to your commute? What makes you comfortable?

 Yesterday’s commute in all the detail you can remember

In preparation for the first ride-along, I found out the origin, destination, and all the transport modes to be used. I asked the participant if they would be alone, and if they would be under pressure to arrive at a specific time. I reassured them we would move at the pace they would have set for themselves if alone, and explained their schedule was the top priority.

Subsequent ride-alongs covered the same broad topics, but focused specifically on following-up key themes identified in previous interviews. An indication of how each broad theme was broken down into specific questions is given in Appendix 1. However, not all were covered, or covered in detail, with every participant. Before a second or later ride-along, I reviewed my notes from the previous ones, so that I could build on them, fill gaps, and follow-up on interesting points already discussed (“Are you still finding it difficult to make it to work on time?”). Thus, participants who had previously spoken at length about their choice of travelcard were asked what, if anything, had changed in respect of their ticketing practices since. When additional themes emerged in others’ interviews, these became part of the interview guide for this participant’s later ride-alongs. Some of these proved fruitful, and even central, to refining the overall interview guide (e.g., the theme of e-readers versus paper books), while others yielded interesting data only with a limited number of participants (coordinating schedules with other members of the household).

On a few occasions, arranged ride-alongs were cancelled when participants switched, permanently or temporarily, to modes of transport such as bicycles and motorcycles. On three occasions, on the request of participants, ride-alongs were replaced by sit-down interviews. These began with me asking the participants to retell in as much detail as

possible their last morning and evening commutes. This approach helped with recall of the specifics of the journey, and grounded the further discussion, but the immediacy of the ride-along interviews could not be reproduced.

Like any research method, ride-along interviewing has numerous limitations. Many of them concerned practical issues. A number of ride-along interviews were conducted in extremely busy spaces, with the respondent and myself packed tightly into a train carriage with dozens of other passengers. On such occasions, both respondents and I were conscious that some people around us could hear our conversation. It is safe to speculate that this limited and shaped what respondents were willing to discuss. My only strategy for managing this was to time questions so that the potential more sensitive ones (like the behaviour of other passengers, or one’s morning routine at home) were discussed on the way to and from the metro stations, and on the platform. Relatively more innocuous topics, such as luggage, or broader changes in the built environment of the local area, were preferred for the time on the train. I also sometimes responded to participants’ answers to my questions by briefly talking about my own commuting experiences. In doing this, I aimed to create a more equal atmosphere, where they were not the only ones discussing their private lives amid the relative quiet of the morning commute. I aimed to put something of myself ‘out there,’ while ensuring my experiences did not become the focus of the discussion (Rubin and Rubin 2012).

All interviews were recorded using a digital voice recorder, and transcribed within a few days after the encounter.