One of this blog’s recurrent themes is that we need to notice when people are thinking about transit as though it worked just like roads and cars. Our transportation bureaucracies are full of people who’ve been trained to understand traffic, and who sometimes struggle to extend that mental framework to transit. One of the most important American “bibles” on public transit, the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, was explicitly designed to imitate the structure and style of the AASHTO Highway Capacity Manual, because it saw traffic experts as one of its key audiences. Continue Reading →
Honolulu: Grand Themes from the Rail Transit Wars
Eight months ago, a freelance reporter asked for my views on the emerging argument over Honolulu’s proposed rail transit line, which would stretch most of the length of the populated southern shore, from west of Pearl Harbor through downtown to Ala Moana Center on the edge of Waikiki. The Transport Politic has covered the background here and here and here. A good blog on the subject is here. Continue Reading →
Quote of the Week
An excellent article on the difficulties of managing transit in San Francisco comes back to the role of the public, and the dangers of seeing “transit riders” as an interest group: Continue Reading →
Can We Cycle the “Last Mile”?
Max Utility asks, in a comment:
I would be interested to see your take on how transit systems can better integrate bicycles into their plans to solve ‘last mile’ issues. Even on systems I’ve used that are relatively welcoming to bikes (see Berlin) it always appears to be something of an after thought and the awkwardness seems to discourage multi-modal riders.
Since I am primarily a bicycle advocate, I’m also interested to hear any thoughts on how the bicycle advocacy groups could work better with transit system operators to improve both sets of infrastructure since they do seem to be mutually supporting when properly integrated.
Human Transit: The First Year
Well, my Welcome and Manifesto post is dated 10 April 2009, so I’ve been doing this for a year.
I started this blog to provide a source of commentary about transit planning issues based on two decades of experience in that business. I had no idea whether the blogosphere wanted such a thing. I wasn’t sure where it would lead. I wasn’t sure who the audience would turn out to be. Continue Reading →
Australia: Pitfalls of Metro Envy
The Public Transport Users Association of Australia has a great press release and analysis on the need to re-think the ideal of a “metro,” and to question why Australians should wait decades for them. Continue Reading →
Portland: The Lure of the Unmeasurable
A while back, Aaron Renn at the Urbanophile did an interesting post on Portland. Anyone who loves the city will find it engaging and challenging, as I did, and I wanted to expand on a comment I made there at the time. (I lived there from 1969 to 1980 and was later based there as a transit planning consultant, 1994-2003.)
Comparing Portland to his hometown, Indianapolis, he notices that the two cities score about the same on many metrics — job growth, domestic in-migration, GDP, etc. — even though Portland is a nationally renowned achievement in urban planning and lifestyle while Indianapolis is a pretty ordinary Midwestern city surrounded by lots of sprawl. The core of his observation is in this quotation from Alissa Walker at Good: Continue Reading →
The Foreign Placename Problem in Transit Announcements
The bilingual blog Straight outta Suburbia / Saliendo de las Afueras is not just an interesting read on Los Angeles issues, but it’s also a good way to practice your Spanish comprehension while reading interesting things. Each post appears in both languages, so you can check the English to see if you understood the Spanish correctly. (And vice versa.) Continue Reading →
Los Angeles: The “Psychology of the Place”?
Responding to my post on Los Angeles as a transit metropolis, Atrios on the Eschaton blog speculates that the fate of transport in Los Angeles depends on three things, two of which are matters of “the psychology of the place.” Continue Reading →
Los Angeles: The Next Great Transit Metropolis?
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to accelerate the construction of rail transit in his city is deservedly in the news, not just for his own persistence but also for the excitement it’s generating in the Obama administration, in Congress, and in other cities who would love to see a precedent-setting response. But it’s also very useful and inspiring to transit planners working overseas, like me. Continue Reading →