General

On the personal blog, some reflections on Valparaíso, Chile from my 2003 visit there, in commemmoration of the terrible fires that have damaged its poor-and-poorly-planned-but-spectacular hillside districts.  

For the record, I did an interview with the local ABC (public radio) affiliate in Darwin last week, discussing the transit network planning we're doing for this fascinating high-rise tropical outpost.  Here's the audio link:

Jarrett walker

I also did one yesterday with the similar affiliate in Melbourne, but haven't received the audio yet.

Yesterday morning, the ABC (public radio) affiliate here in Darwin interviewed me on  the morning commute show.  Click my name on this link to download the mp3.

Jarrett walker

Thanks for the wonderful response to the New York offering of my  Interactive Course in Transit Network Design on February 6-7.   You still have time to register, but act very fast.  Early bird discounts end January 15, and we have only 8 spaces left.

We'll have an amazing group representing five countries, with a diverse range of professions and backgrounds.  

I'll also be giving a public talk and book signing at the New School for Design the evening of February 6.  RSVP for that here.

The course is designed to give you a felt understanding of the geometry of transit and the questions it requires us to think about.  It's ideal for anyone in the land use and development world, as well as people in transportation policy or advocacy — anyone who needs to understand how transit can help build the city they are seeking, and how to create urban structures in which transit can succeed. 

It's also, as one participant called it, "inexcusably fun."

Read all about the course here!  For a tabulaton of student feedback from a recent course, see here.  

Big news: Thanks to a sponsorship from the Transit Center, we're able to offer a significant discount for this session only.  The two-day course, which is a $500 value, will cost only $300 if you register before January 15, and $333 if you register later.  The tuition will likely never be this low again.

Still bigger news:  Starting in New York, we intend to offer American Planning Association (APA) Credit (15 credit hours for the two days). APA members can earn a big chunk of your 2014 AICP Certification Management credits early in the year.  We're excited about that, because the course is really for planners and city builders who need to understand how transit interacts with what they do, especially if they're not "transit geeks" themselves.

Hope to see you in New York!  And if you'd like the course offered in your city, see here! 

Richmond, Virginia's transit agency has done a beautiful set of portraits and testimonials about a number its bus drivers, designed to capture the diversity, humanity, and basic goodness of people who do some of the hardest jobs in the transit industry.  Browse it here.  

Below each beautiful portrait is a small narrative about how this person came to be there, and what their values are.

My favorite bit, by Sheronda Hill (pictured):

I’ve had people get on the bus and say, ‘you don’t look like a bus driver.’ I ask them, ‘What does a bus driver look like?’

More on the project from Eric Jaffe at Atlantic Cities.

Starting, perhaps, with the most vulnerable?

I used to ride a motorcycle to work. Cyclists and motorcyclists are extremely aware of driver behavior because we’re so much more vulnerable than drivers if we crash. I can tell you from personal experience that the amount of distracted driving going on now has just become too much; its gotten much worse in the past five years as mobile technology has become more advanced and more engaging. If I saw a distracted driver, 95% of the time if I would also see that little bright phone screen being held and read. I had one too many close calls even as a very defensive rider, so I just stopped and today I take the bus.

Amazon has chosen to continue the sale of my e-book of my book Human Transit at US$4.74.  Buy it here.  No knowing when that will end, so if you're a Kindle-user, best buy now!

And if anyone cares, I get the same cute little royalty regardless of sale price.

(Conventional e-book price is at or over $20 depending on vendor, so as usual, Amazon is taking a loss in return for global dominion over rival platforms.  On the bright side, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's disinterest in conventional profit perhaps augurs well for the Washington Post, which he bought yesterday.)

When highway capacity expansions move ahead in corridors with inadequate transit, there may be a legal basis for challenge on environmental grounds, at least in the US under Federal environmental law.  At least, one Federal judge in Wisconsin thinks so.

UPDATE:  More on the case in an excellent piece by Kaid Benfield here at Atlantic Cities.  

My thoughts on Ernest Callenbach's 1975 novel Ecotopia are up today at Atlantic Cities.

The Driving Boom is over.

So argues the U.S. PIRG's Frontier Group think tank in a report released this week entitled "A New Direction: Our Changing Relationship with Driving and the Implications for America's Future" (follow the link for a download of the full document). From the end of the Second World War until sometime around 2004, both in terms of the total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on US roads and in terms of VMT per capita, the distance driven by each person, increased every year by approximately 3%. The chart below displays this trend; the rapid increase beginning in 1946 peaks in 2004, and has begun to decline or level off.

US PIRG, A New Direction: Our Changing Relationship with Driving and the Implications for America's Future

The PIRG report suggests a number of reasons for this emerging trend. Most obviously, fuel costs have increased dramatically since 2002 (more than doubling), and the recession and continued lagging economy have taken their toll on the ability of people to afford to travel by car.
But perhaps even more importantly, the mobility patterns of young Americans within the Millennial generation, here classified as people born between 1983 and 2000, are also changing:

Millennials are demonstrating significantly different lifestyle and transportation preferences than older generations. They drive less on average than previous generations of young people. More of them say they wish to live in cities and walkable neighborhoods. And more of them are drawn to forms of transportation other than driving. Moreover, the Millennials are the first generation whose lifestyles are shaped by the availability of mobile, Internet-connected technologies, social media, and the innovative forms of social connection, commerce and mobility that those technologies are spawning.

Among people ages 16 to 34, VMT per capita declined some 23% between 20001 and 2009, while their transit passenger miles increased by an astounding 40%. Moreover, in 2011, fewer 16 to 24-year-olds even had a license to drive than any year since 1967. 

US PIRG, A New Direction: Our Changing Relationship with Driving and the Implications for America's Future

There are complex ripple effects of this trend: declining congestion and air pollution, but also reduced funds to pay for all sorts of transportation projects normally funded by gas tax revenues. Increasing fuel costs create an incentive for consumers to purchase more fuel efficient vehicles and for manufacturers to produce them, which reduces the size of this funding stream. Likewise, the mode shift powered by the increasing share of trips on transit, carsharing and cycling also contributes to an overall diminution of the gas tax.

The changes in travel behavior described in this study create both challenges and opportunities. The data now support a reconsideration of our priorities in transportation planning at all levels, but in the short term, funding to actually build the kind of infrastructure and operate the sorts of systems to capitalize on this trend is anything but secure.