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People often email or tweet to me asking me to "come help" their city.  I really appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not an action hero.  I'm a consultant, and consultants respond to some kind of invitation.

If your city or transit agency is undertaking a transit-related planning project and you'd like me to be involved, please:

• Tell me about it.  It is extremely difficult for three-person firms like mine to find out about planning projects that could be coming up, because they are advertised in more places than we can possibly keep track of.  Don't assume I know what's coming down the line in your city.  Tell me, using the email button at right.
• Consider inviting me to speak or run some kind of workshop.  Any organization can do this.  The cost is anywhere from $3000 to $9000 in North America, more overseas, depending mostly on your distance from Portland (Oregon) and what you want me to do.   (Our excellent Senior Associate, Michelle Poyourow, does them for somewhat less.)  This is especially helpful if a project is coming along later that you'd like us to have a shot at.  Many of our major projects, including those Auckland, Houston and Raleigh, were preceded by one or more events I did in that city.  

Our little firm is not networked through the usual industry channels.  We don't belong to the American Public Transit Association, for example, because its dues are simply prohibitive for firms our size.  So we rely on informal networks, social media, and word of mouth to connect us with people and places that could use our help.  So thank you, dear reader, for what you do!

TypePad, our host, has been undergoing Distributed Denial of Service attacks that have interrupted this blog and many others.  A particularly ghastly side-effect of these attacks is that all domain names using TypePad (such as humantransit.org) are leading to an "Unknown Domain Name" error, giving the false impression that we're out of business.  TypePad writes on their blog:

While most blogs are available and the application is up, some mapped domains are showing a message that the domain is "unknown", but there is no problem with the domain itself. We're working to correct the error on our end.

For the record, we still exist, and our domain name hosting is current.  If anyone tells you we're out of business, please correct them!

This blog's comments have always been hugely valuable, and some magnificent conversations have occurred in comment strings.  I hate having to restrict them in any way (apart from the comment policy).  

Sadly, this blog is now experiencing a comment-spam attack, and the "captcha" tool for verifying commenters appears to be useless.  Our host, TypePad, can offer little assistance, and now and then makes things worse.

So two changes:

• Comments have been closed on some older posts that were attracting heavy spam. 
• As of now you will have to register via any of a range of online identities, including Twitter, Facebook, and so on to comment.

If that doesn't work, we will probably begin (with regret) closing comments on all but the most recent posts.

Please keep commenting!  Your comments have always been at least half the value of this blog.

 We're pleased to introduce the new "look" for Human Transit, including a more readable serif font (Georgia) and I hope a cleaner, more legible feel.  Big thanks to my associate Evan Landman for building and sculpting the design.

As with any change to a transit system, most comments are from existing users disoriented by change of any kind.  So: Calm down, everything you love is still here.  It's just moved around like this:

• Most content that was in the right-hand columns of the old design is now in the new menu bar above.
• The Links menu has subcategories, which will open to the right when you click on a menu item.
• Categories referring to cities have now been separated from other categories.

One note: If you browse the category menu by just clicking and pulling your mouse down, the menu will seem to extend beyond the screen.  Instead, hold the menu by leaving your cursor on it, then use your arrow keys to move the scroll down in the window.   We're working on a better way to handle that.

Some older posts are likely to look messy for a while.  It will take Evan a few days to go through all 942 past posts and clean up anything that didn't translate cleanly.  Be patient and we'll get to them.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you to share your feedback, and any bugs, in the comments!  Please be constructive!

Here's one question that you can answer in comments.  Historically, this blog has used all-lower-case post titles, even for proper names.  Is this (a) a nicely distinguishing bit of "design" or (b) an irritating affectation or (c) you've never noticed or cared one way or the other.  Now everyone can make a one-letter comment!

I have every intention of returning to the major recent post driverless cars, which has a remarkably thoughtful comment thread, and to other deferred topics like the gondolas that are soon to liberate Austin.  Meanwhile, however, I have to make a living.  Consulting is always either slack or wildly-more-than-fulltime, and I'm now in one of the latter phases.  Please peruse the backlist, including the 2012 favorites.  There's something on this site that's as good as new.  

For the New Year weekend, here are the most "liked" posts of 2012 based on the Facebook like button.  (The button was only added recently, and not everyone likes Facebook, so actual positive feelings toward these posts are probably much higher.)  Not surprisingly, they are mostly substantial posts with some long-term relevance.  Did you miss any of them?

• The Silicon Valley Shuttles, Revealed.  240 likes
• Paris: The Bus Stop of the Future.  231 likes.
• On Cities, Conservatives, and Getting Past the Boredom.  99 likes.
• Auckland: How Network Redesign Can Transform a City's Possibilities.  66 likes.
• Portland: The Urban Grid is 30 Years Old; Thank a Planner!  65 likes.
• The Photo that Explains Almost Everything.  54 likes.
• Urban Designers Are from Mars, Transit Planners Are from Venus.  44 likes.
• The Atlantic Wonders if Transit is Failing White People.  40 likes, but more important, see my Atlantic Cities article that grew out of this post, here.
• How Auditors Get Transit Wrong: A Lesson from Vancouver.  31 likes.

But if enjoy philosophical conversation at all, the most fun post of the year is probably:

• Socrates Visits the Federal Transit Administration,  29 likes, but since when did philosophers care about likes?

Happy New Year.

Upcoming lectures are now in the far right column under my photo –>

Do you have a sponsoring organization that could handle the modest cost of bringing me to your city?  If so, click the email button (also under my photo) and let's talk!

My book may well be out in Australia/NZ even before it comes out in North America.  NewSouth Books, the book's Australia/NZ distributor, plans to print books in Sydney instead of waiting for them to make the long flight.  This saves carbon emissions while getting the books out faster, probably by mid-December at the latest.  They'll also be offering a 20% discount for Aus/NZ customers who order off their site.  You can pre-order now.  (It encourages them to print more!)

Here's New South's flyer promoting the book, which you're welcome to print, share with friends, and leave modestly lying about:  Download Human Transit flyer(2).

Back to usual programming soon!  (Finger is better, thanks.)