Human Transit

Back in April, I recorded two hour-long courses for Planetizen’s library of courses on urban planning topics.  Planetizen has now polished these up with video effects and they’re ready for you to watch.

• Introduction to Transit Service Policy gives the tools you need to understand how public transit networks are designed and how this informs public policy.  I explain the geometric facts underlying how transit networks work and how these networks interact with the built environment to create ridership potential. This discussion includes a review of key principles and examples from various recent network designs.  You can watch this course for free until the end of January 2025.
• Planning Communities for Maximum Transit Access is geared more for people focused on city-building activities such as city planning, real estate and architecture, but advocates and elected officials will find it valuable as well.  In fact, it’s relevant for anyone making decisions about where to locate anything.  Here, I critique the assumption that rail service, but not bus service, is relevant to urban redevelopment.  Then, I offer an alternative approach to traditional transit-oriented land use planning, one where access to destinations via transit is the primary focus.  The key to this approach lies in locating and planning development to maximize access to opportunities using sustainable modes.  This course requires a regular Planetizen subscription, but I’m proud of it and I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

Both courses are relevant to audiences worldwide, although when dealing with the economic aspects of the topic I’m focused mostly on higher-wage countries (US, Canada, UK, EU, Japan, etc.)  The language is US English but any English speaker should have no trouble following it.

Here’s a clip to give you a sense of the feel of it.  The opening of the first course, and a unit on the geometric features of a city that make public transit efficient.

And here are some early reviews!

• “Mostly not new to me since I’ve followed Walker for a long time, but excellent and useful.”
• “I’m a big fan of JW. He understands and quickly cuts right to the heart of each issue. He offers better, shorter, clearer explanations of things I already understand but don’t explain to others as well. He explains clearly, logically, and dispassionately.”
• “A concisely detailed course about the Introduction to transit service policy. Well delivered by the Instructor.”
• “I am delighted with this course, It is short and effective in explaining about transit system and open my eyes and brain.”
• “The instructor Jarret Walker presented very well, and I was not bored during the full course, It improved my knowledge and thinking about transit.”
• “A great introductory to someone like myself who has little background in urban planning.”
• “He seemed very knowledgeable as well as personable and energetic. He was not boring to watch.”
• “Well thought out and presented
  Well balanced— detailed and informative but also excellent for an introduction”
• “I suggest he do more courses.”

I hope you enjoy these, and will share them with others who might be interested.

One of our firm’s biggest-ever transit planning projects, certainly in terms of land area, is unfolding at Pace, the agency that provides bus service for almost all of the suburbs of Chicago and a few corners of the city itself.  Pace is wrapped around all sides of the Chicago Transit Authority network, extending across an area roughly the size of Connecticut.   Here’s the current system map for a sense of scale:

The Pace network, with red denoting high frequency. (See legend.) Service is concentrated on the edges of Chicago and in the older satellite cities, leaving large developed areas, including much of DuPage County, unserved.

Right now, network alternatives are out for public review, so we need the input of people who live or work in the Pace service area.  If you know such a person, please share this with them, and point them to the project website here.

The Pace ReVision plan is happening in the context of a larger conversation about transit in the greater Chicago region, which I reviewed here.  All three of the region’s transit agencies are underfunded, especially as operating costs have risen post-Covid.  Pace, in particular, has never been funded to the degree needed to keep up with the vast growth of the Chicago suburbs over the last 70 years.  Even now, it’s service is heavily concentrated in the older areas that were built out over 70 years ago, both on the edges of Chicago and in the older satellite cities such as Elgin, Waukegan, Joliet and Aurora.  So any meaningful improvement in service needs to presume new resources, and make the case for them.

For that reason, the Pace ReVision project has put three alternatives before the public:

• Plus 10 – Limited Investment.  This shows what we could achieve with a return to 2019 service levels, which may be possible within existing funding.
• Plus 50 – Ridership Focus.  This shows what the network would look like if we could expand service 50%, to roughly per-capita service level of Connecticut Transit, and if the overriding goal were ridership.
• Plus 50 – Coverage Focus.  This shows the same 50% growth but with emphasis on the goal of coverage.

All this is explained in this graphically rich Executive Summary, which I hope you’ll peruse.  If you want to go into even more detail, there’s a full report explaining even more of the thinking.

Above all, we need people to engage!  This is the moment for people in the Chicago suburbs to think about what they want transit to be.  Tell us now for maximum impact!

Tomorrow’s US general election is a massive turning point in history, but on the same day, many cities are also making big decisions around transit and urbanism.  Here’s a rundown of all the main measures on the ballot across the country.  Meanwhile, I’d like to highlight one that I find especially interesting: the “Choose How You Move” proposal in Nashville.  It’s a smart combination of measures, including bus infrastructure, bus service, pedestrian infrastructure, and traffic signals, while the key word “choose” emphasizes that the point is to expand the freedom of people in the Nashville region.

In September I had the chance to spend a few days in Nashville, at the invitation of a group of civic leaders called Cumberland Region Tomorrow.  I did a keynote at their event and also had a chance to meet with staff at the transit agency, WeGo.

Like many sunbelt cities, Nashville has been growing in a car-dependent way for decades, but meanwhile, it has evolved a dense core that is just too dense for everyone to drive.  The city has three main functions concentrated downtown: State government, the usual mix of business office towers, and the country music industry’s main tourist attractions.

Just outside of downtown is Music Row, where the country music record labels have their offices, and Vanderbilt University with its large medical center.  This density is typical:

This is enough dense development to generate a lot of need for alternatives to private car travel, but the street network lags behind that demand.  Many main streets are state highways, managed for vehicle flow at the expense of nonmotorized human flourishing.  Many lower-income people live on or near these highways, which are often unsafe for pedestrians, lacking both adequate sidewalks and a reasonable spacing of safe places to cross.  Prevailing driving styles are aggressive even by US standards.

The transit network is far better than I’d been led to expect.  The buses are modern, and there is a downtown transit center that should be the envy of many nearby cities.

But its main issue is quantity — there just isn’t much service — and the tendency of buses to get stuck in traffic.

Nashville’s last transit adventure at the ballot box was in 2018, where a proposed ballot measure failed with 64% voting no.  TransitCenter reviewed the advocacy lessons here, but fundamentally, this was a plan for major light rail investment, including a tunnel under downtown, as well as a few Bus Rapid Transit lines.  That made it very expensive and at the same time very specialized.  The concentrated investment in a few corridors would leave much of the city feeling left out — a routine problem with infrastructure-heavy transit plans.  The plan was also all about transit, and didn’t connect the dots to how many Nashvilleans experienced their transportation problems, for example as traffic congestion or the danger to pedestrians.

The new measure is much more balanced.  It includes operating funds for expanded transit, infrastructure for bus priority, but it also includes sidewalks and traffic signals.  That means more money will go to making high-speed streets safer.  That’s all good for transit — in fact, it’s essential for a great transit experience — but it also has a large constituency of people who don’t necessarily care about transit all that much.  While I wish the website provided more technical detail to those who are interested, it does a good job of connecting the plan to issues that matter to people, including housing and even loneliness.

I’ll be rooting for transit measures all over the US tomorrow, but this one will be especially instructive, because if it succeeds, it could be a good model for the next generation of measures in car-oriented cities.

Update: It passed by a big margin!