To Örebro University

In this editorial, we will engage with the growing literature on public transport, predominantly in the social sciences, with a particular emphasis on research concerned with the bus and bus mobilities. We aim to provide a review of research on bus mobilities, but also to discuss some ways forward in studying bus mobilities. In our reading of the literature to date, we are particularly interested not only in the ways bus mobilities are conceptualized, but also what different theoretical and analytical framings do with the knowledge produced. First, we turn to address how diversity and difference in the context of the bus as a public space has been investigated. Second, we consider how bus mobilities are related to social inequalities. Third, we highlight scholarly work on the affective and material dimensions of bus mobilities. Following these lines of research and in order to make sense of the bus as a socio-material artifact, and the implications of bus mobilities in contemporary societies, we will center the discussion in relation to recent calls in mobilities research, in urban studies and in human geography at large, on care (Gabauer et al. Citation2021; Lawson Citation2007; Middleton and Samanani Citation2021; Power and Mee Citation2020; Power and Williams Citation2020). Before introducing the contributions to this special issue, we thus return to matters of care: whether or not bus mobilities might benefit from being considered an infrastructure of care; how approaches of social equality and justice can harness care; and what placing care at the center of mobility research and practice entails amid current times of crises.