The Boy Who Loves Transit

One of the many distinctive features that defines the modern city are the unique forms of public transporation an urban area has built to support the daily to-and-fro of it's denizens.  There is a certain beauty that is easy to appreciate in the complexity of a subway map, or a bus schedule.  But at what point does appreciation turn in to obsession?  For Darius McCollum it was at age three, the age he rode his first subway car.  By the time  he was 12 he driving them.  Nineteen arrests later, for impersonating transit officials and stealing transit vehicles (he always returned them and signed them in and out), it was clear he had a problem, something quite a bit more than mere "obsession".

The story of Darius McCollum isn't really about transit, per se, its about Asperger's Syndrome, a unique condition characterised by an intense interest, and an almost savant knowledge of a specific subject or interest. Harper's Magazine's feature story on Darius, The Boy who Loved Transit explores his unique obsession and the way the system failed to embrace someone who clearly could have been an asset, but was instead seen as a nuisance.