What does it mean to dream about being late or missing transport?
Being late or missing transport usually tracks pressure around time, obligations, and missed opportunities.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud noted that missing a train can quietly console rather than alarm, the missed departure standing in reassuringly for finality or death. The dream may soften a fear by making the dreaded thing simply missed.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
For Jung being late or missing the train can image falling out of step with one's life-stage or with a collective course one feels bound to keep. It pictures a fear of not being where one ought to be by now.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Lateness and missed-transport dreams are common anxiety dreams tracking pressure around time, obligations, and missed opportunities. They tend to surface when the dreamer feels behind, overcommitted, or afraid of letting something pass.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Beneath the modern scene lies the old motif of the crossing one must not miss, the ferry of souls that comes but once, the appointed passage with its fixed hour. The fear of missing the boat is very old.
Bulfinch; Miller (1901).