Public Transit Rider Hats

Transit agency merch has become a real category. The New York Transit Museum store passed $3 million in sales last year, and agencies in most major US cities now run online stores. SEPTA's store had its most profitable year in 2023 with more than $412,000 in sales, and it took over 1,000 orders in three days after a viral tweet from a bar in Tokyo. Advocates sell it too: FUND PUBLIC TRANSIT is a staple of the Transportation Choices Coalition store on Bonfire, and high-speed-rail tees are pitched as conversation starters. These public transit rider hats speak for the people who actually ride. The badges name the rider and the transit nerd. The advocacy lines ask for funded service, trains over traffic and high speed rail now. The jokes come from the rider's side of the platform: the chauffeur who drives a city bus, the driver whose star sign you know by heart, the train that would be taken if there were a train, the transit app that said two minutes back in May, and the one European train ride that ruined Amtrak for good. That app joke is real rider folklore. Complaints about a tracker that keeps saying "Due" while no bus appears are common enough that apps advertise alerts for ghost buses. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, made for the daily commuter and the person lobbying for a better one.