Monday, March 5, 2012

Making Public Transit Attractive

What’s the Best Way To Get Users To Embrace Mass Transit? Make it pleasant? Or make it efficient? (Tom Vanderbilt, Slate, Jan. 19, 2012)

Also discussed here: Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives (Jarrett Walker, Amazon)

Today, the focus is on a new book, “Human Transit” by Jarrett Walker which was reviewed by a leading transportation guru, Tom Vanderbilt, who sees transit in cities as either “System” or “Empathy” and delightfully gives examples of each perspective.



Key Quotes:

“how to manage and design cities… “system” implied things like infrastructure and institutions, while” empathy” implied the cultural texture of a place”

“ride experience” is crucial for getting Americans out of their cars and into public transit.”

“San Francisco’s cable cars: Walker (“system”) thinks they’re neither efficient nor cost-effective (each car requires two employees) nor very important to getting San Franciscans around; Nordahl (“empathy”) argues they’re a vital public space, an experience in themselves, part of what makes the city the city”

“In most debates about proposed rapid transit lines..the speed of the proposed service gets more political attention than how frequently it runs, even though frequency, which determines waiting time, often matters more than speed in determining how long your trip will take.”

“The prevailing habit of most transit systems is to advertise where they go but to treat when as though it were a detail.”

“Technology choices do matter..the fundamental geometry of transit is exactly the same for buses, trains and ferries.”

“if transit is to become an attractive alternative to the automobile, the ride itself must offer an experience to passengers that they cannot get within the solitude of their cars”
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