Book Review: Human Transit (Revised Edition)
For the past decade, Human Transit by Jarrett Walker has been the preeminent book for non-transit planners to understand transit planning. A revised edition of the book was released earlier this year which incorporates an additional decade of experience Jarrett has obtained as a practicing transit planner. Overall, Human Transit is the best example that I’ve found of books by consultants that walk the tightrope between advocacy and execution.
Overall, Jarrett’s framework for thinking about transit is that access is the key metric that transit agencies should be paying attention to. He defines access as “the freedom to do anything that requires leaving the home.” This focus on access, and the chapter dedicated to it, is new in the revised edition. While the rest of the book has not been substantially changed, this lens of access changes the understanding of the rest of the book even if the words did not change. It provides this idea that when designed and evaluating different transit options, transit agencies should be looking at how many people will have access to jobs and school and shopping and anything else that will take them out of the house via transit versus other modes of transportation. This is a significantly different way of evaluating transit than that which was presented in the first edition.
San Angeles’ Unique Built Environment
Whenever I leave the megacity of San Angeles, or better known as the Greater LA Area, I am struck by how unique it is. The unending expanse of built up city, from Camp Pendleton in the south up to the Angeles National Forest in the north, is unlike any human geography anywhere else in the world.
Taking the train out of Manhattan and up to Buffalo on Monday, I was amazed at how much time we spent rolling through forests and farmland. It took no time at all to get off the island and through Yonkers. From there, the landscape was dotted by towns and small cities, each one separate and distinct. These were not just distinctions based on subtle changes to the public rights of way, but true separation between where one town ends and the next begins. The same has been true in Florida and Oklahoma and Massachusetts and Washington and North Carolina. It’s even true in San Diego and the Bay Area. Southern California is the only place where every city abuts its neighbors without any separation.
So much of the discussion of urban planning, especially transportation planning, feels foreign and no applicable to San Angeles. The simple idea of connecting places with transit and high speed roads, while restricting speeds through places, makes sense in a place like upstate or western New York, but it feels completely nonsensical in Los Angeles. Any given arterial road or intersection in San Angeles is simultaneously a place and not a place. It’s a place to go, and a landscape to drive through.