Human Transit

my network design course in portland: is it really worth $395?

It looks like most everyone had a great time at my Interactive Course in Transit Network Design in Washington DC last Friday and Saturday.  The feedback might help you decide if it's worth the money to sign up for my next session, in Portland, on April 4-5, or to bring the course to your own city.

Specifically:

 

"uncaptive rider": download my chat with colin marshall ...

If you'd be interested in the sound of my voice, ruminating broadly about transit and cities in the serenity of my own livingroom, there's now quite a good podcast by Colin Marshall in the Notebook on Cities and Culture series.  You can download an mp3 from Colin's site here, or get it from iTunes here.

Colin's a brilliant interviewer, asking great and often surprising questions.  He draws me out on my own living arrangements, my complex relationships with Portland and with Los Angeles, some notes on my global transit travels, and finally onto really substantive topics about what transit is and how it relates to the larger question of what cities are.  It's all feels very public-radio ...

Colin's whole series of downloadable podcasts looks like it's worth a look, as he's put me in some impressive company ... 

congress for the new urbanism: my spark of fire and brimstone

Erin Chantry, of Tindale Oliver urban designers, wrote a nice little piece about the Congress for the New Urbanism panel where I spoke alongside G.B. Arrington of Parsons Brinckeroff.  I promised a little fire and brimstone, but apparently I came off as way too reasonable. 

seattle media cover last night's event

My fun faux-debate with Darrin Nordahl last night, sponsored by Town Hall and Transportation Choices, has been covered by both the Seattle Times and the online journal Publicola.  Both summarize the question as something like:  "Should transit be useful or fun?"  Put that way, it's easy to say yes to both, but there really are some choices to be made, because often we're asked to sacrifice the useful for the fun.  As I said in the debate, I support all of Darrin's recommendations for a more joyous transit experience, except where the abundance and usefulness of service must be sacrificed to achieve them. 

sydney: in the herald today, on talk-radio tomorrow

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a great article on my book by Jacob Saulwick.  

Tomorrow morning (Jan 5 in Sydney) it appears I'll be interviewed on 2GB 873 AM -- Sydney's largest talk radio station and the home of the notorious Alan Jones -- at 8:10 AM.  It looks like it will be streamed live here.

So far, Sydney media are reacting only to one chapter, where I compare Sydney and San Francisco on the basis of network complexity (extreme in Sydney, far less in San Francisco).  My point is that Sydney's network is built on a fear of every asking anyone to change buses, and this results in a massively complex network where many infrequent lines overlap on each major street, each doing something just slightly different.  Chapter 12 of my book compares a typical set of transit directions from inner city Sydney with those from the rational grid network of San Francisco, to some comic effect.  I'll probably read that bit on the air.

Also, bravo to Kerrie Leishman from the Sydney Morning Herald for this great graphic which nicely captures my point!

grant opportunity for transport journalists

Somebody wants to pay you to attend the International Transport Forum annual meeting (ITF) in Leipzig this May:

The ITF is an intergovernmental organization within the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development] with an annual meeting which draws transport secretaries from countries all over the world as well as top CEOs from fortune 500s. 

This year we have set up a media travel grant to sponsor international journalists.  The grant will reimburse travel costs including the roundtrip flight to Germany this May.   

Details here.

san francisco: transit and endangered species

San Francisco artist Todd Gilens has four major works now on display in that city.  To find them, though, you'll need a special bus tracker:

From the Muni Diaries:

Instead of thinking about buses an advertising space, Gilens wondered if buses can be a vehicle for visual impact. “We use buses without thinking, like using a paper towel, but what if we used images to transform the bus, to give an emotive quality to buses?”

Gilens raised money to wrap four buses in photographs of the Brown Pelicans, Coho Salmon, Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse and Mission Blue Butterfly.

They're quite beautiful:

Images of all four buses are here.  Just click the little forward and back buttons.

Todd lays out the background for his work in a short statement here, and in a longer article in Antennae (PDF here).  Here's his conceptual bridge from transit to endangered species, by way of urban form:

A way to think of settlement patterns would be: how can mutual needs or living space be courteously accommodated?  Just as we do when crowded around other humans (as on a bus for example) being close enough to all fit while everyone gets at least somewhat of the space they need.  In the framework of regional settlement, this means checking to see if the streams, the coyotes, the polliwogs or ferns are not getting trampled, and if they are, maybe shifting over a bit to give them some room.

It was courageous of Todd to even tell me about this project, given what I've written elsewhere about advertising wraps.  I also long to see bus exteriors used for the primary mission of helping people figure out the bus system.  I especially like simple color-coding schemes that distinguish fundamentally different kinds of service, such as the simple Los Angeles paint scheme where red means Rapid and orange means Local.

But as a temporary exhibit, which is what this is, I'm all for it.  These buses operate through surprise. (True beauty is always surprising, which is why it can be hard to appreciate in a museum.)   So even if the bus wraps were permanent, their beauty would diminish as people got used to them.

The four buses will be wrapped through the end of March and a bit into April.

in los angeles this week, speaking thursday

I've just arrived back in Los Angeles for the first time in several years. 

When I left LA at the end of my undergraduate years in 1984, I thought I'd never come back.  For four years I'd been trapped in the eastern suburb of Claremont with no car, no serious transit options, and often horrific smog. 

But now the smog has largely cleared, the transit projects are coming on fast, the city remains a site of intense creativity, and the multi-centered urban structure really does offer the potential to create a Paris of the Pacific. I still think, as I wrote here, that Los Angeles is the next great transit metropolis of North America.  I also think it has a key role to play in making sustainable transport cool, especially in the eyes of television and film audiences around the world. 

Now that I've flattered everyone, I should mention that if you represent an organization that might be interested in my help -- either as a consultant or as an employee -- please get in touch today so that I can book time for us to meet this week.  Use the email button under my photo -->

Meanwhile, I also have two public appearances booked, both on Thursday, November 4:

• Thursday afternoon, 2:00-3:15 pm, I'll be doing a guest lecture at UCLA.  It's at the School of Public Affairs Building, room 2238, it's open to the public, and no reservation is required.  I'll be doing a talk called "Transit: Freedom through Geometry."   Here's the summary:
  
  "Much of the public debate about public transit is about technology.  Should we build cheap functional things or expensive sexy ones, and if the latter, which are the sexiest?  Jarrett Walker proposes that we shift our focus to the underlying geometry of transit, especially when thinking about how to design transit-oriented communities.  A clearer focus on transit's intrinsic geometry helps us diagnose some spectacular recent failures, and identify more reliable foundations for both transit and community planning."
  
  (It contains a bit of my "Field Guide to Transit Quarrels" (text here, video here) but also includes some material on urban form from my RailVolution presentation last month, and some new material.)
  
  UPDATE:  You can find directions to the Public Affairs building here: Download Directions-complimentary (PDF).  It's close to the Hilgard Avenue bus stops served by Routes 2/302 (Sunset), Route 760 (Sepulveda Rapid) and Santa Monica Big Blue Bus lines 1, 2, 3, 8, and 12.
  
  
• Thursday night I'll be attending the Sierra Club's monthly meeting.  I'm not giving a formal talk but we'll have some kind of free-ranging discussion.  They assure me that the public is welcome there as well.  UPDATE:  Sierra Club has commented with the following details:
  
  The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Transportation Committee will be in the meeting room on the Lower Plaza (LP) level, 3435 Wilshire Boulevard (the tall building with "Equitable" on its top, across from the late Ambassador Hotel).
  
  On the parking entrance level, walk south toward Wilshire past the elevators, then turn left and go to the end of the hall. Note that this is NOT our regular meeting place in the chapter office, suite 320.
  
  Please arrive at 7:00 p.m. so we can start promptly, Park free on the street (6th Street beginning at 7:00 works well), or ride the Wilshire Purple Line subway or Metro Rapid bus #720 to Wilshire / Normandie).

Finally, if anyone can slip me into a really cool election night party, let me know!

weekend reading

Doing a public talk in Fresno on Wednesday night the 27th.  Please come!  Meanwhile:

• Jonna McKone at the City Fix reviews time-based vs distance-based fares.
• Paul Barter finds some Dutch opposition to the movement for shared space in street design.
• A real-time information display in your kitchen. 

 

next california trip planned

[NOTE: This post will be on top for a few days.  New material appears below it.]

When I moved from North America to Australia four years ago, many of my North American clients reacted as though I'd moved to the moon.  I was just gone from their world, and no longer came to mind as a possible resource.

This year and next, I'm putting a lot of energy into changing that perception.  I've always come to North America at least once a year and want to start coming more frequently.

Right now, I'm negotiating with a California regional government for me to visit and do a presentation for them at the end of October.  I will almost certainly visit the Pacific Northwest on the same trip.

Governments or organisations who might like me to do a presentation for them, or consult with them in person, are in encouraged to get in touch!  In addition to the "Field Guide for Transit Quarrels" (video here, Powerpoint and PDF here), I also do presentations on the "Be on the Way" principle of transit-oriented land use planning, and can easily throw one together on almost any topic that's been discussed on this blog.

I can't do them for free this time, but it's an opportunity for me to do small things without having to charge the client for the entire flight across the Pacific.

(Yes, this post is advertising.  You get Human Transit for free, so there have to be some ads, just like on Google.)