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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
by frankus 8y ago
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.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoIsn't fixed rail a huge difference from flexible routing buses? How do transfers save time? By indirectly eliminating stops (two express routes)?
- frankus 8y agoIf you’ve built dedicated busways that portion of the route loses flexibility (presumably in exchange for speed and reliability). Transfers are explained here: http://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for-you-and-good-for-your-city.html http://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for...
- peatmoss 8y agoIn 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.
- peatmoss 8y agoFor 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.
- wool_gather 8y agoCould you share the titles of those other books? Searching for a "Vanderbilt transit book" only brings up pages of commuting advice from Vanderbilt University.
- peatmoss 8y agoSure, 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.
- wool_gather 8y agoAwesome, thank you for the recommendations!