The 10 best songs about public transit

It's not the year-end list you want. It's the year-end list you need.

The end of the year evokes many lists: best movies of the year. Best gifts for Dad. Best Christmas songs. Best old flames you promise yourself you won’t text over the holidays.

These lists leave me unfulfilled, though, and I realized why: there isn’t a fare box in sight. There is no hanging strap to grab. There is no vinyl and plastic seats to sit on. We love the holidays because it brings us together, but public transit does that every day. A big part of my life isn’t reflected in these year-end retrospectives. It is time we honor transit with a top-ten list.

The criteria for inclusion on this, the definitive list of songs about public transit, is as follows:

1. The organizing principle of the song must be public transit. There are many songs that mention transit, but that’s not good enough. “Downbound Train” is far superior to the Bruce Springsteen song that makes the cut here, but the point of “Downbound Train” is depression, not trains.

2. The song must not be a novelty. With apologies to “Wheels on the Bus,” transit is serious business.

I present to you the ten best songs about public transit.

10. “M.T.A.” - The Kingston Trio

Ok, I’m immediately violating criteria #2, but no list of transit songs is complete without “M.T.A.” Written in the late 1940s, “M.T.A.” is a story, inspired by a proposed fare hike and laid over a folk tune, about a man named Charlie who rides Boston’s transit system forever because he couldn’t afford the exit fare. (Why Charlie’s wife hands him a sandwich in the song and not five cents is unknown.) The Kingston Trio made it a hit in 1959, and the song became so popular and meaningful in Boston that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, MTA’s successor, named its fare pass the “CharlieCard.”

9. “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?” - Bruce Springsteen

Rolling Stone didn’t select “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?” as one of Bruce Springsteen’s 100 greatest songs. It’s probably wouldn’t crack the top-200. It’s barely even a song. It’s a rookie attempt at a vignette, a recollection of a bus trip in 1970s New York City, but it has two things going for it: telling a bus driver to keep the change, as the narrator confidently does, is hilarious, and the final 45 seconds slap.

8. “City of New Orleans” - Arlo Guthrie

I like the folk tradition more than folk music. Melodies and lyrics and sounds being passed down through the generations is a charming and important part of American culture, and folk music concerned itself with trains before it did with cars. What I love about “City of New Orleans” is that it takes on the perspective of the train, which embeds, or even thrusts, itself into the national character.

Good morning, America, how are you?

Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son

I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans

I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done

7. “Midnight Train to Georgia” - Gladys Knight and the Pips

Gladys Knight makes giving up on your dreams to support your partner, who has given up on their dreams, sound triumphant. The harmonies from the Pips is a warm hug. In this song, everything’s going to be all right, even if you have to sell your car.

6. ”Downtown Train” - Tom Waits

Christianity has it all wrong. The Trinity isn’t “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” It’s “Tom Waits, trains, and 1980s guitar.” (Although, I won’t put up a fight if one argues for Rod Stewart’s 1989 cover version.)

5. “Waiting For The Bus” - Violent Femmes

Take a standard folk tune, give it a punk veneer, and put it through the pressure cooker of modern American urbanism, and you have the Violent Femmes’ “Waiting For The Bus.” It is, undoubtedly, the greatest song about buses ever made. It might be one of the greatest songs about American cities ever made.

4. “Trans-Europe Express” - Kraftwerk

The title song of Kraftwerk’s sixth studio album is what public transit will sound like in the Andromeda Galaxy in Year 3026. “Trans-Europe Express” has also influenced music for decades, especially dance, electronic, and hip-hop. Released in 1977, the song embodies the enduring spirit of the train. All are welcome, and use it how you need to. To further the metaphor, “Trans-Europe Express” name-drops David Bowie and his Station to Station, which leads me to…

3. “Station to Station” - David Bowie

A promotional outfit called Part Time Punks staged “Bowie Nites” in Los Angeles twice a year at the Echoplex, whose sound system could slip the San Andreas Fault. On his Instagram, DJ Jose Maldonado often solicited song requests, and for one Bowie Nite I asked for “Station to Station,” the title track of Bowie’s classic 1976 album. When the DJ played it I thought the opening sounds of a train were going to split the earth. I felt like I was born again inside a steam engine. Part Time Punks and Bowie Nites were casualties of Covid, but trains are forever.

2. “Subway Train” - New York Dolls

The New York Dolls’ “Subway Train” is about love lost on, or made inaccessible by, the subway. It’s the funnest song about transit on this list. That jangly guitar makes heartbreak a blast. The song also contains one of my favorite lyrics ever: “And now your friends / They're fillin' up my car.” The narrator offers this as a lament, but there’s also something beautiful about the sentiment. A subway car is a place for people. Apply that lyric to an automobile and it elicits images of a clown car. Apply it to a train and it elicits images of a party, of love, of pain, of both solitude and togetherness.

Honorable mention: “Croyden Tram” - Eccentronic

I have no idea what “Croyden Tram” is. Apparently, it’s not an official promotion of South London’s preeminent tram system, but it’s also the best promotional video of all time? There’s absolutely no reason for a song about trams (or trolleys, as we call them in the States) to go this hard, but we’re a better species for its existence.

Honorable mention: ”Whatever” - Oasis

Now I’m violating the first criteria. “Whatever” isn’t remotely about public transit, but the pre-chorus contains the word “bus” and Oasis is one of my favorite bands. Sue me.

1. “C’mon N’ Ride It (The Train)” - Quad City DJs

Pure perfection. “C’mon N’ Ride It” is both a hip-hop and dance music classic, and whoever thought to build this masterpiece around a chorus of “Come on, ride the train, hey, ride it” deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.