Human Transit: In Jarrett Walker We Trust

"How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives" is a necessary, vibrant, urgent update to Walker's seminal book.

»Buy Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives from Island Press directly and support your independent publisher! (Remember to use code “EXASPERATED” for 25% off your order!)«

---

I have this habit of reviewing books that aren’t written for me, exactly, but they’re written from such a deep well of expertise that I’m not quite the right person to write them either. In the case of Veronica O. Davis, PE’s book, Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities, I have neither the background nor the years of experience that make her words so incisive. I practice deep empathy and build empathy, justice, and dignity into my practice, and reading Veronica’s book helped to contextualize my ideas into a more careful dialect. The power of Inclusive Transportation was the ability to regift it to friends, family, younger planners, etc. The act of giving this book added an extra depth that I’m so thankful for.

I am not saying that I didn’t learn from Veronica’s book—I very much did and have incorporated many of these ideas into my practice. I am saying that the gap between interest and knowledge might be wider in the hands of a more capable but less practiced person. Veronica was able to give language to many an amorphous thought. The overall knowledge gap narrowed; we’re all very thankful for it.

---

I have found the same thoughts to be parallel to Jarrett Walker’s excellent update to Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. The book—first released in 2011—was the authority, and still is, on summarizing Jarrett’s long journey through transit planning into an approachable, and teachable context. Much like Veronica’s work, I was intimately familiar with most of Human Transit’s content. The broad strokes and subtleties present in the first edition are perhaps strikingly clearer in this update. In the Preface to the Revised Edition, Jarrett lets us know what’s changed in the last 13 years:

The new popularity of working from home, which began with the COVID-19 pandemic, has changed the patters of travel demand. The nuances are all here.

Check. Patterns have changed and continue to evolve, and so should our ability to problem ID.

Another big change since 2011 has been the flood of venture capital funding for companies attempting to “transform” or “disrupt” public transit in some way.

Check. Ride-hailing companies and transit tech companies are here to stay—and it’s important to acknowledge their existence and competition with transit as a traditional mass movement mode. We can’t ignore this competition, but we can contextualize it. That’s here.

…so I’ve added a new chapter on that [a bunch of random strangers], whose title comes from an instructive outburst by Elon Musk.

Dunking on Elon Musk is fun, but using his own words to promote the goodness of togetherness is welcome. Check.

Other thoughts rearranged and consolidated made Human Transit’s revised edition a welcome re-read and a great introduction to Jarrett’s work and thought process, which is authoritative and empathetic, much like Veronica’s. Now that I think about it, both of these books would be a great buy, together, for the transit and transportation nerd in your life.

                                         Use code “Exasperated” for 25% off your order!

What makes this book a great buy—seriously go get it—is how Jarrett organizes his experience into readable thoughts. The book is aimed at a non-technical reader but fires buckshot at readers of all skill and experience levels. I dare any reader to not find some tidbit or new perspective or anecdote that might help them rediscover an idea or learn a new best practice to fold into their practice. Not possible or befuddled by arrogance. Even I’m not that arrogant.

For instance, Chapter Seven—Peak or All Day?—aims at “peak” service. Any commuter understands this idea concerning their commute. More service, either denser (more options) or more frequent (more often) usually falls within a certain time of day. The most lay person would call this “rush hour,” and would likely describe it as 6-10 am and 4:30-8:30 pm, give or take half an hour in either direction. The question Jarrett asks here is: what is the benefit and value of designing a whole system, one that runs most of the day, most of the week, for just a few hours? Transit planners—all planners—grapple with this question, especially in the face of political and other external pressures. This is not a new concept by any means.

What Jarrett does, though, is give shape and credence to a two-way axis and asks us—planner and journeyperson—whether we’re thinking about service in “peak”—rush hours—versus “off-peak”—all other times of the day or whether the agency runs an “all-day” and plops extra hours of service during a typical rush?

Think for a minute about how your city runs its service. What’s the benefit and cost of running either, and is there an optimal way to plan, cost, and run a service that offers the most people—including operators and support staff and electeds—the most value for their dollar? My corollary, along with COVID-19 restructuring, is if transit agencies can even afford to have this debate at all in the face of dwindling funds, lackluster ridership recovery, and other factors that have put our agencies, with our smartest leaders (in some cases; looking at you Chicago) actively trying to quell fires with dynamite.

Human Transit offers 16 more chapters with equally insightful musings and data-driven outcomes. Where there’s no data, or the data conflicts with the theory, Jarrett offers his practice—over 30 years’ experience—as a suitable stand-in. And the way he writes, he is a PhD in drama, literature, and the humanities, after all, is so approachable, you, dear reader, can’t help but read it all. You’ll see your city in a new light.

Again, this book was not written necessarily for me, but I jumped at the chance to read it, nonetheless. You should, too.

---

I’ve interviewed Jarrett Walker before and before I even had my handle. Fun fact this blog used to be called “DOTs and State Level Steez”¹

1. Yikes.