Last month I did an event at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA (the University of California at Los Angeles), hosted by Jacob Wasserman. It was fun, with many excellent questions that made me think. The video is on Youtube here.
The first 30 minutes are my presentation, and the fun part, the questions, starts at 33:40. Some highlights:
- 35:50 Jacob asks “What did Covid change?” (“Covid liberated the transit industry.”)
- 39:00 Jacob asks “When should we start caring about ridership again?”
- 43:00 Jacob asks “How can you design microtransit well? Where can it work?” (Triggers my hardware store analogy.)
- 48:20 Jacob asks about the importance of pricing of parking and driving, which leads into a riff lanes on bus lanes and “Bus Rapid Transit.”
- 51:30 Jacob asks “What tips would you give for writing well in planning?” (“Write to your grandmother.”)
- 58:10 Juan Matute, Deputy Director of the Institute, asks about opportunites to make transit easier to understand, especially for a new rider.
- 1:02:44 Audience question: “Have transit agencies had success influencing land use?” “You can’t expect the transit agencies to do this.” Here I make a reference to the Irish Planning Guide, which you can read about here.
- 1:06:10 Jacob asks “What is the role of consultants? Justify yourself!”
- 1:14:15 Josh Stevens of the California Planning and Development Report asks “How will autonomous vehicles affect transit?”
- 1:17:20 Audience question “What kinds of incrementalism are most important to get us to the point where we can make a big push (toward sustainabile mobility)” Thus prodded, I managed to end the event on a note of optimism.
