Most of the time, transit discussions are about TRAINS or BUSES: what technology is best?

...but transit is really about PEOPLE. Riders care about walkability, connectivity, frequency, travel time, reliability, capacity, and legibility much more than they care about steel wheels or overhead wires.

Most of all, people care about whether transit goes where they want to go.  The most important decision in transit is what places to connect.

That's actually pretty easy:

Find where the densest places are

(The more dense the area around a transit station is, the more people can use it)

Identify centers. 

(Major employment centers, hospitals, universities)

Connect the dots.

(One center to another, passing through those dense areas)

Unfortunately, we in the United States and Canada are often not very good at this. In city after city, major transit lines actually avoid dense areas — the places where the most people want to go.

That also hurts the people who need transit most. In many cities, the parts of the transit network that serve low income residents and Black and Hispanic neighborhoods is nothing more than local buses stuck in traffic while much lower ridership lines to suburban areas have rail or express us with better infrastructure and more reliable service. Many systems are optimized to serve white collar commuters at the expense of service workers and people who rely on transit for all their trips. And some of the highest ridership systems are not fully accessible to people in wheelchairs.

“Trains, Buses, People” focuses on how these decisions get made, and why. Through maps, data, photos, diagrams, descriptions, and analysis, looks at57 metro areas in the United States and Canada — the ones that have rail or bus rapid transit — and considers why they built the transit that they did and how well it is working. It lays out what makes transit successful — and the political issues, misconceptions, and policy limitations that hold it back. 

PART 1: THE ROLE OF TRANSIT IN THE US AND CANADA

The History of Transit

Drawing a Line

Networks

Modes

Guideways

Stations

Fares

Governance 

Funding

Riders and Destinations

Hopes and Fears

NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: Fares, Funding, Networks, Guideways, Stations, and Riders and Destinations, and expanded content in other sections.

Transit in the US exists in a very particular context that's different from Europe, Asia, or Latin America. Our history (like the postwar suburban boom), our politics (like the complicated issues of race), and our legal structure (like the difference between Amtrak and commuter rail) shape what we build.  And while Canada is similar in some ways, it has fundamental differences that show up in the structure of systems and ridership. This section discusses the context of transit. its purpose, how it has developed over time, the common types of transit, that basic technologies it uses, the political discussions around it, and how transit is funded and built.

PART 2: BASICS OF SUCCESSFUL TRANSIT

Density

Activity

Walkability

Connectivity

Frequency

Travel Time

Reliability

Capacity

Legibility

Inclusivity

Good Ideas from Abroad

NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: Inclusivity

Regardless of politics, governance, and local context, the fundamental keys to making transit useful -- and thus attracting riders -- are universal. This section goes through what makes transit work well, with lots of examples, good and bad.

PART 3: METRO AREAS

The Best and the Worst

The 57 Metro Areas

Conclusion: A Transit Agenda for the Future of our Cities

NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: 8 Canadian metro areas, San Juan, and Indianapolis, and updates to the other metro areas to reflect new extensions and add more photos and content.

57 metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada have rail transit or bus rapid transit. This section profiles all of them, and the 130 individual systems within them.

For each metropolitan area the book shows 2 maps. The first shows the physical form of the transit, showing different modes and whether they are within a street, at grade, elevated, in a subway, or in a freeway. The second shows how well the systems serve people and jobs, with the area within walking distance of frequent transit overlaid on population and employment density (see samples here.) All 94 of these maps are at the same scale, making it easy to compare one city to another.

For each system, the book has a profile with key information: size, ridership, age, and level of service. Large, small, high performing, and low performing systems are specifically called out, making it easy to make comparisons and find good examples.

In addition to the data, each metro area has descriptions, photos, analysis, and diagrams pointing our what's unique about that city, whats working and what isn't, and why that city made the decisions it did. There are a lot of thing other cities should emulate, and some cautionary tales as well.

At the beginning of this section, there's a list of similar systems -- to help find good useful comparisons -- and best and worst systems. At the end there's a sample of projects that should be built around the United States.

Here’s a sample Metro Area section, for a city’s that’s not in the book, Munich Germany: pdf file.

"Trains, Buses, People" measures success not by how much transit a city has built, but by how useful the transit is.

And, in every city, it finds opportunities to improve transit.

If we have more intelligent conversations about transit we will build better, more equitable, transit, and we can make millions of people’s lives better every day.