10 Years of Human Transit

This blog is 10 years old!  Please help celebrate by perusing the new Basics page!  There, you’ll find links to all the articles I’ve done that are likely to be most useful to people thinking about transit all over the world.  (If you think I’ve missed one, let me know!)

The blog was started by a frustrated American transit planner living in Australia.  Its first two years gestated the book Human Transit (introduction here) which in turn helped create our firm, Jarrett Walker & Associates, which provides transit planning and policy advice.

We’re 13 people now, with offices on both coasts of the US.  We’re proud of our recent track record of network redesigns.  Ridership is up as a result of plans we (or I) worked on in Houston, Auckland (NZ), Columbus and Richmond.  Our redesign for San Jose and Silicon Valley (VTA) goes live soon.  We’re currently doing similar work in Dublin (Ireland), Kansas City, Miami, Cleveland, and (just starting!) Dallas.  We’re also proud of our record in many smaller cities, from Anchorage to West Palm Beach.  And we’ve had some more distant adventures, including advising on the massive Magistral redesign of buses in central Moscow and a sojourn analyzing the network in chilly but friendly Reykjavik.

Some data for fun:  This is the 1225th post and the blog has gathered about 20,000 non-spam comments, many of which have started great conversations and generally made me smarter.  The top countries by readership over the last 3 years are, not surprisingly:

  1. USA
  2. Canada
  3. Australia
  4. UK
  5. India
  6. Ireland

But the top countries by readership per capita (readership divided by population) are

  1. Ireland
  2. New Zealand
  3. Canada
  4. Australia
  5. Iceland
  6. USA

… all places I’ve worked! Not all of this is honest curiosity, of course.  A few people have been looking for things to attack me for. But that’s fine.  No such thing as bad publicity.

You may have noticed the rate of new articles slowing down, and especially this year.   I will certainly never return to the rate of posting of the early days, when all of my surplus energy went into the blog, but I’ll keep writing useful things as long as enough people keep reading them.

How to keep up?

  • You can subscribe using FeedBurner.  (In the bar under the banner above, it’s the symbol to the left of the “search” (magnifying glass) symbol.)  If you’ll click that you’ll see an option to get every post emailed to you.
  • Follow me on Twitter, @humantransit!  There you’ll find every post announced there, and you’ll also get a lot of other commentary.

I can’t say how grateful I am for all of the feedback over the last 10 years.  I look forward to continuing the conversation.

 

 

13 Responses to 10 Years of Human Transit

  1. Ben G September 29, 2019 at 8:06 pm #

    It’s been a while since we’ve chatted, but my life has been forever positively changed due to discovering your blog those many years ago. I’ve recommended the book to so many people over the years… there really is nothing else like it. I really can’t imagine what I’d be doing or where I’d be living today had the road forked the other way. I’m sure our paths will cross again — shoot me a message if you’re ever in Japan (or nearby) 🙂

  2. Henry Miller September 30, 2019 at 4:03 am #

    Congratulations, I’ve gone back through the archives over the last few months, and learned a lot. The bus system in our town is good, but now I know what would make it better. What I don’t know is how to get traction to fix it.

  3. Kyle B. September 30, 2019 at 9:23 am #

    Thanks for what you do. I was starting out in the transit field at the time you were airing chapters of your book for comment. It was a big help to ponder these ideas about the philosophy of good transit that intuitively made sense. Hope our paths cross again in the future.

  4. Jeff Wegerson September 30, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

    I guess that Yekaterinburg didn’t mature into a major effort?

  5. Kushal Dagli September 30, 2019 at 3:03 pm #

    @Jarrett – I’m surprised China/ Japan are not on the list.

  6. Murray September 30, 2019 at 5:47 pm #

    Thanks for the blog Jarrett. It’s been really interesting and has helped me think differently about public transport.

  7. Jacob Manaker September 30, 2019 at 8:25 pm #

    Congratulations on reaching post #1225! (I’m not sure why that’s special. Do you use base 35? But, hey, getting over 1000 is an accomplishment.) This blog has been as educational for me as some of the textbooks I encountered in undergrad, so well done.

    The Basics page looks fine to me.

  8. Jonathan Hallam October 3, 2019 at 9:25 am #

    Congratulations!

  9. Alan Tanaman October 6, 2019 at 2:38 am #

    Congratulations, always a good source of info, as is your book.

  10. Rod Stevens October 7, 2019 at 6:44 am #

    I’d love to read what key insights you’ve learned over the last ten years. Looking over your past entries, I see a lot of discussion about the need for grids with high frequency service. I also see questions about balancing coverage and frequency. Could you summarize your approach down to four or five principles?

  11. Stefan Marks October 9, 2019 at 7:17 am #

    Best wishes Jarrett for important insights. We have had some interesting adventures in service planning and I continue to learn from you. Stefan.

  12. Daniel Sparing October 11, 2019 at 4:06 am #

    Congratulations Jarrett. I remember when your book came out, read it immediately, and you influenced a lot my PhD research — but did not realize it was so long ago, time flies!

    It is a pleasure to see you build up a successful new firm over the course of the blog, you should be proud, and I wish you a lot of success!

  13. Roberta Robles December 3, 2019 at 3:13 pm #

    I’ve always admired your work and style. Keeping it real in Portland!!! #nomorefreeways #harrietubman