The site seems to be down for me, but if it is a link to what I think it is (Jarret Walker's book), this is a great introduction to tradeoffs involved in transit planning.
But yeah, recently started reading this book and I think it's the one book that finally begins to codify my interest in transit infrastructure and urban form.
The book details a bunch of interesting things that aren't really apparent until you've taken the time to think them through, for example:
- There are very few inherent differences between buses and rail—most of what we think of as inherent differences are incidental (such as grade separation and offboard payment).
- Running a bus faster is cheaper than running it slowly.
- Introducing a transfer into someone's trip, all else equal, can make the trip faster.
In addition to busses being able to operate on less-flexible but faster infrastructure (EDIT: as well as on ordinary streets), express and non-express vehicles can integrate seemlessly at stations, which is a pretty cool benefit.
For me, hearing Jarrett’s perspective of technological agnosticism resonated strongly with me. Each transit technology comes with various tradeoffs that can sometimes be unbundled and sometimes cannot.
It’s hard for people to understand how good busses can be unless you’ve seen a system of the sort Jarrett would hold up as an example.
This is one of a handful of books that I like to recommend to erstwhile transportation geeks along with Vanderbilt’s, Downs’s, and Shoup’s. Disclosure: I had a minuscule role in helping review an early draft of Jarrett’s book.
Could you share the titles of those other books? Searching for a "Vanderbilt transit book" only brings up pages of commuting advice from Vanderbilt University.
Sure, sorry about that. To be clear these are mass-market books that I recommend to people wanting to get a deeper, but still high level understanding of transportation systems.
Tom Vanderbilt - Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do
Anthony Downs - Stuck in Traffic (and the follow-up, Still Stuck in Traffic)
Donald Shoup - The High Cost of Free Parking
And of course Jarrett Walker's Human Transit :-)
EDIT: The rationale is that all of these engagingly explain something interesting that isn't necessarily intuitive or apparent to regular everyday users of the transportation system.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 38.8 ms ] threadBut yeah, recently started reading this book and I think it's the one book that finally begins to codify my interest in transit infrastructure and urban form.
I'm not sure they've done any work in the SF bay area, but nearby I recently ran across a background analysis they did for Sacramento which I found really interesting http://www.sacrtforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SacRT...
- There are very few inherent differences between buses and rail—most of what we think of as inherent differences are incidental (such as grade separation and offboard payment).
- Running a bus faster is cheaper than running it slowly.
- Introducing a transfer into someone's trip, all else equal, can make the trip faster.
How do transfers save time? By indirectly eliminating stops (two express routes)?
Transfers are explained here: http://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for...
It’s hard for people to understand how good busses can be unless you’ve seen a system of the sort Jarrett would hold up as an example.
This is one of a handful of books that I like to recommend to erstwhile transportation geeks along with Vanderbilt’s, Downs’s, and Shoup’s. Disclosure: I had a minuscule role in helping review an early draft of Jarrett’s book.
Tom Vanderbilt - Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do
Anthony Downs - Stuck in Traffic (and the follow-up, Still Stuck in Traffic)
Donald Shoup - The High Cost of Free Parking
And of course Jarrett Walker's Human Transit :-)
EDIT: The rationale is that all of these engagingly explain something interesting that isn't necessarily intuitive or apparent to regular everyday users of the transportation system.