Jarrett Walker
@humantransit
Public transit planning and policy consultant (http://jarrettwalker.com), author of the book and blog Human Transit. Also literature and plants.
"American cities were built for cars." Actually, they were built for transit first, and then destroyed for cars.
What are you missing by not being on Bluesky? You could be listening to well intentioned New York City leftists haranguing me for not believing that free fares will increase public support for big city transit systems.
Why is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul likely to collapse an earthquake? Historic preservation rules! washingtonpost.com/world/interact…
Yes. Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking. Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.
Bank card fare collection is really a must for modern transit systems, it makes using the buses as a visitor so much easier
One of the most satisfying short fantasy books of recent years. Strongly recommend.
✨100 copies of Piranesi signed by Susanna Clarke have arrived! ✨This spellbinding Women’s Prize winner features illustrations by Julian de Narvaez and an afterword by Clarke. A summer favourite, available now. Order via the link before they vanish! foliosociety.com/piranesi-signe…
In the US, @DeptVetAffairs VA Hospitals are usually designed to be especially hostile fortresses to anyone not in a car. So bravo to this one in Asheville, NC. Only 700 feet from bus stops on the nearby road to the front door! Amazing by US standards.
Graffiti in the flood-damaged River Arts District, Asheville, North Carolina.
In Asheville, North Carolina, the Democratic Party appears to be at the end of the road.
Dearest @latimes. If your headline is a question that answers itself, I'm not going to read the story.
That feeling when your predecessor made a huge investment in building, so that you can take credit even as your boss is destroying the federal government's capacity to build.
The golden age of transportation is now and @USDOT is leaving no one behind!
Seen in a residential neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina. As a tourist attracted by forests I'm unsure if I'm welcome here.
The unspeakable pleasure of paying cash for a paper map of a town I'm about to explore, as though I were a young man in the 1980s again. Not the 1970s though. Back then you could get them free from gas stations.
When you build a major destination at the end of a cul-de-sac, you're saying that you don't want it to have transit service.
Dear billionaires, what's preventing you from commissioning buildings like this?
What does Starlink have in common with cars and car infrastructure? "It works great if hardly anyone uses it." washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
This is true of public transit service changes too. We do our best to reach out to everyone. Most people choose not to pay attention until their bus stop disappears or their bus starts going a different way. Then they're mad we didn't reach out. Not really much we can do.
Neighbors often tell you that if you had just notified them, they would have been nicer. In my experience that’s never the case. They’re almost always angry about change. (Photo of our 950 project in Santa Fe. Ask me about the neighbors!)
I do not thank someone for following the law and not hitting me with their car, the same way I do not thank passerby for not robbing me at an ATM.
If you're going across a crosswalk, you have a responsibility to do that hustle walk, which makes it seem like you're going faster than you are as thank message to the car who stopped for you to cross.
Urbanists and Ruralists have more in common than you realize.
If you want advice on windsurfing, ask someone with a body.
This is odd. Whenever I ask ChatGPT about Windsurf (or windsurfing) it gives me a network error. Not so with other topics.