Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit

That said, not all bus systems are duds—far from it. The most remarkable one nationally may be Boulder’s, an inexpensive network that confounds conventional transit wisdom in a number of important ways. Thanks to its system of cleverly branded routes—including the Hop, Skip, and Jump, with each route getting its own color—the city is living up to i

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Transportation equity is not a discrete problem. It poses a barrier to accessing everything that constitutes a good quality of life; healthcare, fresh food, public Wi-Fi, friends, education, jobs, and voting. If everything is brought within a 15 minute radius, not only does car ownership become widely unnecessary, prompting the provision of a criti... See more

This is the part of the story that the train boosters don’t want you to hear: investments in transit may be investments in mobility or investments in real estate, but they are not investments in reduced traffic.■ The only way to reduce traffic is to reduce roads or to increase the cost of using them, and that is a bitter pill that few pro-transit c

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It feels nearly impossible to imagine what that might look like, but what we shouldn’t do is feel paralysed by FOBO (fear of better options). An emphasis on the local, on smaller, walkable neighbourhoods and more central job and amenity centres is a good place to start. It’s not just tiny villages that can reap the benefits of this spatial reconsid... See more

My vision for transit is not a reinterpretation of the automobile highway – corridors for commuters – but a return to traditional transit systems: investments in financially productive places. A successful transit trip begins in a financially-productive place and ends in a financially-productive place, connecting the two in a way that is scaled to

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If the metrics of Universal Basic Mobility are successful and felt equitably, then UBM should in theory stimulate cities to evolve around them in the same way they did for the car. Think tree canopied scooter and bike lanes on every block. Buses that are so perfectly synched with your cycle, you never clock waiting. Mini Buses that arrive at your d... See more