Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit
by Steven Higashide
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Description
Buses can and should be the cornerstone of urban transportation. They offer affordable mobility and can connect citizens with every aspect of their lives. But in the US, they have long been an afterthought in budgeting and planning. Transit expert Steven Higashide uses real?world stories of reform to show us what a successful bus system looks like. Higashide explains how to marshal the public in support of better buses and argues that better bus systems will create better cities for all show more citizens. With a compelling narrative and actionable steps, Better Buses, Better Cities describes how decision?makers, philanthropists, activists, and public agency leaders can work together to make the bus a win in any city. . show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
SamWhited One component of social infrastructure and civic engagement is how we actually get to the places that bring us together. Our buses are a key component of our social infrastructure. If you liked Klinenberg's chapter on buses and public transit, you can dig in further with Higashide's book. If you liked Higashide's book on buses, you can get a better sense for how they fit into our broader social infrastructure with Klinenberg's work.
Member Reviews
I began reading this in early 2019 was interrupted and finished reading it in 2021. The intervening events of the COVID pandemic and its effect on my home city showed how prophetic the different examples in the book could be:
* Temporary use of traffic cones & signage allowed the city to re-purpose streets for pedestrians, bicycles, etc rather than for cars in order to experiment with different ways to meet changing demands. Some of those changes became permanent, others did not.
* Light rail, which the transit district has been in love with, massively over-budget and decades behind schedule, was completely unable to adapt to rapid changes in ridership. Built to bring people into the downtown area from suburbs in the morning and return show more them in the evening, ridership plummeted. Buses that served other communities that still needed to get around and go to work were able to shift schedules, consolidate routes and adapt to the new needs
* attention is being paid to pedestrian and bicycle use of streets
Using examples from a number of cities around the US Higashide looks at how transportation districts have often failed, and sometimes succeeded to serve their communities. Particularly how a fascination with one size fits all fixes and the latest sexy transportation technology often fail to solve any actual problems, develop inflexible solutions with decades of high costs, and prevent public transport from being able to experiment and adapt quickly. He points out how successful transit systems have actually met their main customers where they are and worked to solve their problems rather than the problems of the city council, the transit lobbyists, or well-meaning activists who don't work to understand the system before trying to change it. show less
* Temporary use of traffic cones & signage allowed the city to re-purpose streets for pedestrians, bicycles, etc rather than for cars in order to experiment with different ways to meet changing demands. Some of those changes became permanent, others did not.
* Light rail, which the transit district has been in love with, massively over-budget and decades behind schedule, was completely unable to adapt to rapid changes in ridership. Built to bring people into the downtown area from suburbs in the morning and return show more them in the evening, ridership plummeted. Buses that served other communities that still needed to get around and go to work were able to shift schedules, consolidate routes and adapt to the new needs
* attention is being paid to pedestrian and bicycle use of streets
Using examples from a number of cities around the US Higashide looks at how transportation districts have often failed, and sometimes succeeded to serve their communities. Particularly how a fascination with one size fits all fixes and the latest sexy transportation technology often fail to solve any actual problems, develop inflexible solutions with decades of high costs, and prevent public transport from being able to experiment and adapt quickly. He points out how successful transit systems have actually met their main customers where they are and worked to solve their problems rather than the problems of the city council, the transit lobbyists, or well-meaning activists who don't work to understand the system before trying to change it. show less
Informative read. A little U.S. focused and mostly focused on examples of successful and unsuccessful transit projects, but some key information and perspective is given in each of the chapters. In an ideal world, I would have gotten some more data, and more international data or systems.
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Art & Design
- DDC/MDS
- 388.34233 — Society, government, & culture Commerce, communications & transportation regulations Transportation Vehicular transportation
- LCC
- HE308 .H45 — Social sciences Transportation and communications Transportation and communications Urban transportation
- BISAC
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- Members
- 77
- Popularity
- 397,844
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.60)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
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