Growing up in a town on the small side, I didn’t have ready access to public transportation. On my first trip across the pond, when I was 12, I was experiencing a lot of things for the first time: subway systems, public buses, cabs, and trams. Not to mention the huge monuments scattered throughout the city. I loved to see the different types of people riding public transportation. These new experiences raised a lot of questions in my mind: where do these people come from; where are they going; and why do they choose public transportation over owning a car? On trips like this, I was in a city for a day or so, leaving no time to experience the public transportation system as it was meant to be experienced.

     My love of photography didn’t come until several years later. I was able to use my new found medium to document the new things I was seeing when I took a five-week long study abroad trip to Italy.  I stayed mostly in Rome, a very big city and I finally had enough time to photograph public transportation and the people who utilize it. In Rome, not only is the public transportation system used but I was surrounded by people using bicycles and scooters too, for daily activities.
     Some of the people I photographed were obviously tourists, while others were obviously locals. This project documents of how both Italians and tourists utilize the Metro, public buses and the ever-present scooters and bicycles to schlepp themselves around Rome.