Choices In Public Transit

Public transit is a powerful tool for addressing a huge range of urban problems, including traffic congestion and economic development as well as climate change. But while many people support transit in the abstract, it's often hard to channel that support into good transit investments. Part of the problem is that transit debates attract many kinds of experts, who often talk past each other. Ordinary people listen to a little of this and decide that transit is impossible to figure out. Jarrett Walker believes that transit can be simple, if we focus first on the underlying geometry that all transit technologies share. In Human Transit, Walker supplies the basic tools, the critical questions, and the means to make smarter decisions about designing and implementing transit services. Human Transit explains the fundamental geometry of transit that shapes successful systems; the process for fitting technology to a particular community; and the local choices that lead to transit-friendly development. Whether you are in the field or simply a concerned citizen, here is an accessible guide to achieving successful public transit that will enrich any community.

TCRP Report 123: Understanding How Individuals Make Travel and Location Decisions: Implications for Public Transportation explores a broader social context for individual decision making related to residential location and travel behavior and consequently will be of interest to planners, researchers, transit managers, and decision makers. The findings from this research contribute to efforts to predict mode choice and how to influence it through better policies and design, education, and communication.

Describes exemplary transportation services and innovative transportation alternatives designed to enable older persons to maintain independence.

The familiar image of Los Angeles as a metropolis built for the automobile is crumbling. Traffic, air pollution, and sprawl motivated citizens to support urban rail as an alternative to driving, and the city has started to reinvent itself by developing compact neighborhoods adjacent to transit. As a result of pressure from local leaders, particularly with the election of Tom Bradley as mayor in 1973, the Los Angeles Metro Rail gradually took shape in the consummate car city. Railtown presents the history of this system by drawing on archival documents, contemporary news accounts, and interviews with many of the key players to provide critical behind-the-scenes accounts of the people and forces that shaped the system. Ethan Elkind brings this important story to life by showing how ambitious local leaders zealously advocated for rail transit and ultimately persuaded an ambivalent electorate and federal leaders to support their vision. Although Metro Rail is growing in ridership and political importance, with expansions in the pipeline, Elkind argues that local leaders will need to reform the rail planning and implementation process to avoid repeating past mistakes and to ensure that Metro Rail supports a burgeoning demand for transit-oriented neighborhoods in Los Angeles. This engaging history of Metro Rail provides lessons for how the American car-dominated cities of today can reinvent themselves as thriving railtowns of tomorrow.

What are the best transit cities in the US? The best Bus Rapid Transit lines? The most useless rail transit lines? The missed opportunities? In the US, the 25 largest metropolitan areas and many smaller cities have fixed guideway transit—rail or bus rapid transit. Nearly all of them are talking about expanding. Yet discussions about transit are still remarkably unsophisticated. To build good transit, the discussion needs to focus on what matters—quality of service (not the technology that delivers it), all kinds of transit riders, the role of buildings, streets and sidewalks, and, above all, getting transit in the right places. Christof Spieler has spent over a decade advocating for transit as a writer, community leader, urban planner, transit board member, and enthusiast. He strongly believes that just about anyone—regardless of training or experience—can identify what makes good transit with the right information. In the fun and accessible Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit, Spieler shows how cities can build successful transit. He profiles the 47 metropolitan areas in the US that have rail transit or BRT, using data, photos, and maps for easy comparison. The best and worst systems are ranked and Spieler offers analysis of how geography, politics, and history complicate transit planning. He shows how the unique circumstances of every city have resulted in very different transit systems. Using appealing visuals, Trains, Buses, People is intended for non-experts—it will help any citizen, professional, or policymaker with a vested interest evaluate a transit proposal and understand what makes transit effective. While the book is built on data, it has a strong point of view. Spieler takes an honest look at what makes good and bad transit and is not afraid to look at what went wrong. He explains broad concepts, but recognizes all of the technical, geographical, and political difficulties of building transit in the real world. In the end,Trains, Buses, People shows that it is possible with the right tools to build good transit.

In recent years, the environmental, social and economic concerns regarding laissez-faire retail decentralization policies have resulted in an emergence of a global trend towards the provision of wider choices of good quality public transport modes in suburban areas. Existing research on transport choices to shopping areas simply looks at travel time, travel cost or distance as a measure of the 'deterrence' of getting to a retail outlet and has concentrated on the attributes of the retail outlets, thus neglecting the transport attributes. Based on a substantial study incorporating both quantitative and qualitative research, this engaging volume takes a more balanced view of both retail outlet and transport attributes. It employs a multi-method, sequential design to examine the many dimensions salient to how people evaluate transport options for shopping purposes and unravels many important issues in transport mode and retail destination choices.

Just like we don't pay to use elevators, this book argues that we shouldn't pay to ride public transit. In an age of increasing inequalities and ecological crisis, movements advocating free public transit push us to rethink the status quo and consider urban transit as a fundamental human right. Editors Jason Prince and Judith Dellheim have collected a panorama of case studies from around the world: the United States, Canada, Estonia, Greece, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, China, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and more. These movements are spread across the world, and they aim to achieve two main outcomes-ecological good and fair wealth distribution. Free public transit-coupled with increased capacity and improving service of public transit-might well be the only viable strategy to eliminating car usage and achieving greenhouse gas targets in industrialized cities within a reasonable timeframe. Movements for free mass transit also aim to see public transit treated as a public good, like water and garbage service, that should be paid for out of general tax revenues or a fairer regional tax strategy. This book covers the rapidly changing transport options in cities today, including bike and car share options, Uber and Lyft, and the imminent arrival of driver-less vehicles. The first English-language book ever written on the subject, Free Public Transit is a ground breaking book for those concerned about the future of our cities and an essential resource for those who make, or try to change, urban planning and transport policies.

The report documents and presents how the image of transit can be strengthened by building on existing positive perceptions. The research provides a communications strategy to guide national, regional, and local efforts to enhance the image and visibility of transit in order to create a more positive and supportive environment.

First published in 1999, this book applies formal economic measures to the passenger and taxpayer benefits of public transit service in the United States under a public choice analytical framework. Approximately 400 local transit budgets have been renewed annually for more than 25 years. These budgets epitomize Braybrooke and Linblom’s concept of 'disjointed incrementalism' and Buchanan’s concept of 'Public Choice' since local legislators funded transit despite constant academic criticism of transit performance. On the other hand, Braybrooke and Lindblom and Buchanan show that local budgets capture benefits that traditional planning analysis does not grasp. This is borne out in analysis in the book. Indeed, far from draining society, transit returns five dollars in benefits for each one dollar of public subsidy. After explaining the analytical framework in Chapter 1, four chapters are devoted to measuring the value of transit benefits. The concluding chapter draws out the implications of this approach and of benefit measurement for policy and planning.