If you like, skip to the end of this post to answer the favourite train poll.

Last week’s survey: what do you read when you ride transit?

Last week the New York Times asked people what they read on the subway, so I thought it would be fun to run the same survey here.

So, see the full Times results here; the full Buzzer results are in this Excel spreadsheet.

Here’s a summary though!

While 8,000 people answered the Times survey, a modest 48 put their answers into the Buzzer poll :)

In the comments it seemed that some didn’t really read on transit: Steven caught up with news on his BlackBerry/iPhone, and some couldn’t read on the bus without feeling sick (Sally, I feel for you)!

Just like the Times, I asked about the last book, magazine, and newspaper everyone read — however I didn’t analyze by bus routes/train lines since there was such a wide variety.

The only category with some clear results were the newspapers:

(Seems likely that the Times would come out tops in its own poll, no? Free papers did definitely dominate in both surveys though. And four kind people listed the Buzzer as their newspaper reading.)

Books and magazines were much harder to report on, since every single person surveyed was reading something different. The Times survey seemed to show this too: while 8,000 did the survey, the top books have just 58 readers each (there was a tie for first).

Our survey reported 31 different books, and here’s some commonalities:
– Three books were sci-fi (Traitor’s Sun, Lord of the Rings, Handmaid’s Tale)
– One person was reading Pride and Prejudice, and another was reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
– Two books were by Margaret Atwood (Negotiating with the Dead, Handmaid’s Tale)
– Several were nonfiction or educational (Shock Doctrine, Post America World, Bottom Billion, or training manuals or textbooks)
– The rest were a wide range of novels!

We also had 20 different magazines. Observations:
– A lot had to do with hobbies, arts and/or crafts (Photo Life, What’s Cooking, Somerset Studio and Altered Arts, MARK Magazine, Room Magazine)
– Sports and cycling had fans (Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, Canucks Yearbook)
– General interest popped up (Time, The Walrus, Economist)
– And someone was reading the H&M Magazine!

Last notes here. Devin, I didn’t include your answers because you mostly ride in L.A. :) And Cliff had a reading experiment to conduct:

I’m awfully tempted to bring a hidden camera and record people’s reactions to my reading the Kama Sutra on transit.

This week: which type of train do you like best?

Last time I asked about your favourite train car, the new Mark IIs and the Canada Line trains weren’t on the system. So now let’s throw them into the mix!

The Mark I photo is courtesy ms_cwang at Flickr btw. OK, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments!