If you recently joined us thanks to Elon Musk, you may not know all about what I’m up to here. There’s an “about” page for that, and over at the right you’ll find links to my book and consulting firm But there’s also a lot of good material here that doesn’t go out of date. Start with the Basics collection!
Last year at this time, I reviewed the 10 posts that got the most views in 2016 and was happy to find that only four of the ten were written in that year. The pattern continues: only three of 2017’s most-read articles were written in 2017.
- The Dangers of Elite Projection (July 2017). This is one of my most useful posts ever, about a basic mistake that’s everywhere in city planning. It’s an example of my attempt to talk very patiently and inclusively about a difficult topic that makes people very emotional.
- Does Elon Musk Understand Urban Geometry? (2016) My first effort at laying out what’s wrong with Elon Musk’s attempts to make cars go faster through cities, and to provide “service to your door.” Written several months before I got Musk’s attention.
- Elon Musk Responds! (December 2017) Some drama around my December 14 exchange with Musk. No enduring content.
- Basics: Walking Distance to Transit (2010). An explainer.
- Basics: The Spacing of Stops and Stations. (2010). This turned into Chapter 4 of my book.
- The Receding Fantasy of Affordable Urban Transit “To Your Door” (May 2017). A first attempt to lay out why demand-responsive services do not scale as any sort of substitute for fixed transit in dense cities. However, the post will probably be superseded by this expanded one written just this week.
- That Photo That Explains Almost Everything (2011). You’ve seen the photo. I notice a few things in it beyond its first impression.
- Keys to Great Airport Transit (2016, but new on the list in ’17) A pretty useful explainer about the common challenges and mistakes in airport rail lines.
- Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth. (2009) My first controversial post, still starting arguments seven years later.
- Learning from “Mini Metro”. (2014) Geeking out on the best public transit planning game I’ve seen.
But the Musk drama nudged some other keepers just out of the top 10.
- Explainer: The Transit Ridership Recipe (2015). Perhaps my single most essential explainer.
- Core vs Edge Debates in Public Transit. (2016) An eternal issue.
Happy reading! And if you’d like to see some of this material in more organized form, there’s a book, whose introduction you can read online.
Happy New Year.
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