I think this construction of public space as dystopian zone of conflict gives us a way-in to talking about the political messages the film carries. Historically speaking, the view of public space as a potential killing fields is at odds with a traditional American myth of shared public space as a place where citizens of all classes and races could gather and recreate peaceably. This rhetoric points to nothing less than the existence of a new class war, one being conducted primarily at the level of the built environment, the chief strategy being the privatization and virtual elimination of public space. In some ways, Speed is an extended meditation on this very tendency. As opening credits roll, we begin a long descent, a tracking shot of the steel structures of an elevator shaft, somehow made sinister and menacing by the strains of the Mark Mancina score.
Terroristic extortion is politics by other means.
It turns out that what motivates our mad bomber is something akin to class rage. Now that same political and legal system for the elites has denied him his pension, his just reward. Howard makes his class rage explicit when he builds a triggering mechanism for one of his deadly bombs out of a cheap gold watch. Jack is thwarted in his efforts to dismantle the bomb underneath the speeding bus because he cant figure out if the watch is a decoy or a trigger. Jack senses that the watch is a symbol, meant as some kind of clue to the bombers identity.