But the heart of the group is street protest and deliberate decision-making. Tarifa Zero makes decisions “horizontally,” through consensus and without appointed leaders. In fact, when I contacted the group through its Facebook page, the page administrator told me that any questions I had would be submitted to the group at large, and should be attributed to the group.

The size of Tarifa Zero seems to depend on how you define “membership.” On the one hand, meetings typically consist of about a dozen activists, although as many as 100 people have attended, according to the group. On the other hand, Tarifa Zero regularly mobilizes rallies with 400–500 protesters or more. Over 21,000 people follow the group’s Facebook page. And the “bus without turnstiles” is financed through T-shirt sales and crowdfunding. What’s clear is that the group has had considerable impact, rolling back fare increases multiple times and winning substantial media coverage.

Of course, none of this has stopped the transit authorities from proposing new raises. The struggle seems perpetual, and yet there’s value in the struggle itself. Group members told me their newest initiative was helping residents of Aglomerado da Serra, a favela (informal settlement) advocate for bus service. “It’s a different type of interaction than the ones we had before,” Tarifa Zero members said, one that has the group in a support role and some of the city’s poorest residents out front.

Perhaps Tarifa Zero member André Veloso put it best in a blog post reflecting on the group’s first anniversary, where he wrote: “After all this, we transform ourselves and continue to transform ourselves always.”

Israel’s social divisions map directly onto its transportation network. The bus lines that connect Arab neighborhoods are often completely separate from those connecting Jewish areas. A second point of contention centers not around space, but time. Due to observance of the Sabbath, public transit in most Israeli cities stops on Friday and doesn’t resume until late Saturday.

Secular activists have cried foul on two grounds: first, as an intrusion of religion into an essential public service, and second, as backwards urban policy that compels people to purchase private cars, worsening the environment and social inequity.

Increased public transit was one demand of 2011 mass “social justice” protests calling attention to quality-of-life issues in Israel. But it’s a more recent campaign that has given the issue new life. In September 2014, Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath led to four straight days of transit closures. Naama Risa and Reshef Eisenberg, two Tel Aviv residents, took photos of themselves with signs declaring that urban residents were under curfew. Others followed, turning the effort into a viral protest that grabbed media attention.

Thirteen thousand people now follow a Facebook discussion page created by Eisenberg, which hosts a stream of videos, memes, and stories of people missing out on time with family and shelling out for exorbitant taxi rides. The “24/7 public transportation” activists have protested near metro stations and outside the house of a national lawmaker. Though the group was founded in Tel Aviv (which has the country’s most extensive transit network), members also come from Jerusalem and Haifa, according to Eisenberg.

Late last year, legislators rejected a bill that would have allowed the operation of public transit during the Sabbath. But local politicians are feeling the heat. In June, five local councils announced they would begin operating limited Sabbath transit in the form of shared taxis, minibuses, or free transit, which they say is allowed under existing law. And 24/7 public transportation has become a regular cause for Haaretz, the country’s major left-leaning paper.

Israeli citizens posting selfies criticizing the lack of public transit service during the Sabbath. Image credit: Reshef Eisenberg

Israeli blogger Shalom Boguslavsky has lamented that, in Jerusalem, the ostensibly “professional text” of urban planning is in fact a “political text.” But this is true of every country.

The Tarifa Zero activists are responding to transit politics that squeeze the working and middle classes. Similarly, rider-organizing groups in the United States exist as an attempt to bolster the weak political position of Americans who use transit. What these activists understand is that public transit is a space with a dual characteristic: It is a shared space, creating common experiences among its riders that can be leveraged for organizing politically. Simultaneously, it is a contested space that is the target of organizing from outside interests.

I never visited the “subway therapy” wall at Union Square. But the power of transit to become a space for civic engagement was still made unexpectedly vivid to me last November. Two days after the election ended, I got an email from John Raskin, as did every member of the Riders Alliance. The message, which was also posted as an open letter on the organization’s website, read:

“We are known as a transit organization; in reality, we are a democracy organization. Our mission is not only to win better trains and buses; it is to make our city more just, more inclusive, more compassionate, and more sustainable.”

In the end, a train won’t magically make us more tolerant, or more engaged with our neighbors. And yet public transportation can be a powerful platform for political action, and it can make our cities themselves stronger and more equal.

For it to serve those purposes, riders themselves must be involved in the fight for the transit they need. John’s letter reminded me, and my conversations with a world of activists showed me, that we have to work to get there together.