Human transit
"Public transit is a powerful tool for addressing a huge range of urban problems, including traffic congestion and economic development as well as climate change. But while many people support transit in the abstract, it's often hard to channel that support into good transit investments. Part of the problem is that transit debates attract many kinds of experts, who often talk past each other. Ordinary people listen to a little of this and decide that transit is impossible to figure out. Jarrett Walker believes that transit can be simple, if we focus first on the underlying geometry that all transit technologies share. In Human Transit, Walker supplies the basic tools, the critical questions, and the means to make smarter decisions about designing and implementing transit services. Human Transit explains the fundamental geometry of transit that shapes successful systems; the process for fitting technology to a particular community; and the local choices that lead to transit-friendly development. Whether you are in the field or simply a concerned citizen, here is an accessible guide to achieving successful public transit that will enrich any community."--Publisher's description.
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What Hacker News says
- For people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett Walker's book "Human Transit". He really focuses the conversation around a few ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus & have productive conversations in transit agencies) https://humantransit.org/
Last night I watched his talk "Transit Truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc - which also summarizes the ideas in his book well.
- Sure, 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.
- My pleasure. I think a lot of people end up doing transportation-related things as the result of this kind of curiosity. In my case, I got serious about bicycle and pedestrian advocacy as an undergrad after a beloved professor was killed crossing a street by hit-and-run driver. It took me nearly a decade after that to decide to do a masters in planning. Then the research bug bit!
Planning is belligerently multi-disciplinary. Provided you can spin a good yarn in your entrance statements, and your CS GPA wasn't in the toilet, having a CS degree is a fine asset.
One thing to think about (beyond "do I want to enter a field in which I will earn less than what I'd make with a CS degree alone?") is how you want to come at transportation. For example, sometimes people ask what the difference between a planner and a civil engineer is. I usually reply something along the lines of "if you want you build a bridge, call a civil engineer; if you want to know where to build a bridge, call a planner."
Planning, civil engineering, and public affairs all have their fingers in the transportation pie. If you're a planner, a masters program will try to prepare you for a pretty broad range of tasks that include knowing something about your problem domain, how to communicate with political types, and how to communicate to angry citizens with pitchforks.
Civil engineering tends to focus more on nuts and bolts kinds of problems in transportation. Oddly, I feel like civil engineering is more solidly represented in statistical modeling functions within planning agencies. I.e. civil engineers tend to be more quantitative. That said, I always had the option of taking courses cross-listed with statistics--the same coursework that is now making my brain bleed in the PhD program.
Planning tends to be more systems-oriented at the technical side, and more human-oriented at the drum circle side. The differences between public affairs and urban planning can get pretty minor at times--my masters program offered concurrent MUP with public affairs (and maybe civil?) options. I knew a number of students who did public affairs and planning.
My feeling (perhaps erroneous) is that planning masters students get a little more latitude to play than do civil engineering masters students. There are planners that do lots of different kinds of stuff--even just within transportation planning, never mind land use (more important than transportation), electric, sewer, water, etc. As a result of needing to do lots of stuff, you get more freedom to scratch your own itch. That said, getting a job with your masters in civil and PE is likely a bit easier than as a planner. But, you've already got a job-friendly degree ;-) For the record, I had an easy time getting work as a planner after my MUP, but I did have classmates who took a little longer to find relevant work.
My recommendation before going and upending your life for another degree would be to go read some good mass-market books that explore basic concepts and contemporary issues in transportation planning. In order, I'd suggest Traffic by Vanderbilt, The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup, and Human Transit by Jarrett Walker (disclaimer, I had a minor role in reviewing the latter). All three are written with a minimum of jargon, and all three will give you a flavor for the kinds of things planners think about. You might then find out if your city has some sort of group that meets to hack for civic purposes. These are cheap ways of scratching the itch...
- +10000000000 points for all this from a guy with a Masters in Urban Planning. Also, anyone interested in this should be reading the blog Human Transit. http://www.humantransit.org/ or buy his new book by the same name http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/1597269727.
He focuses less on the differences between bus and light rail (unimportant distinction) and more on what it means to actually provide mobility that people can use. Rail vs bus is about as useful as emacs vs vi - fun for practitioners, useless for users that care about code or getting places in their life.
