Jarrett Walker

Does that name mean South North Holland or North South Holland?

Yes, I remember them everywhere in Moscow in 2016 when I last visited.

Those are considerably less of an obstruction than the rotating turnstile from Colombia.

Have you ever gone through a turnstile inside a city bus when you pay your fare?

It's unthinkable in the US and most of Europe, but routine in middle-wealth countries like Colombia.

To keep the service running, every peso matters.

Bogotá: ¿Es el TransMiApp capaz de planear un viaje por @TransMilenio usando las ubicaciones actuales de cada bus, y no solo el horario? Actualiza el plan durante el viaje? Y qué tan fiable es? Noté que Google depende del horario, pero no probé TransMiApp. Gracias.

Inventing the Renaissance - Ada Palmer In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating.

"Game of Thrones" feels like an early medieval world but its savagery may be more typical of the Renaissance. To challenge your assumptions about the "Dark Ages", see Ada Palmer's VERY fun book "Inventing the Renaissance." @adapalmer.bsky.social www.adapalmer.com/publication/...

cc: @bluejo.bsky.social @older.bsky.social @charliejane.bsky.social

Inventing the Renaissance - Ada Palmer In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating.

"Game of Thrones" feels like an early medieval world but its savagery may be more typical of the Renaissance. To challenge your assumptions about the "Dark Ages", see Ada Palmer's VERY fun book "Inventing the Renaissance." @adapalmer.bsky.social www.adapalmer.com/publication/...

Medellín: Mas allá del turismo del transporte — Human Transit (Read in English here.) Acabo de pasar una semana en Medellín, Colombia, una ciudad que cuenta con una de las redes de transporte público más reconocidas de América Latina. En este artículo, quiero ir...

Has escuchado a turistas elogiar el transporte público en Medellín, Colombia, pero ¿qué tan bien funciona para quienes viven allí? Mi análisis a fondo de una ciudad y una red fascinantes, disponible en inglés o español. humantransit.org/2026/03/mede...

Medellín: Beyond Transit Tourism — Human Transit (Español aquí.) I’ve just spent a week in Medellín, Colombia, which has one of Latin America’s more famous public transport networks.  In this post, I want to dig past much of the praise heaped on the...

You've heard tourists praise for the public transit in Medellín, Colombia, but how well does it work for the locals? My deep dive into a fascinating city and network, available in English and Spanish. humantransit.org/2026/03/mede...

I was on a panel last week where I was posed the question, "how are you going to get us out of our cars?" The audience was made up of several hundred developers and real estate brokers. I basically said, "I'm focused on the 80%, not you." 1/2

The Dangers of Elite Projection — Human Transit (Leer en español aquí.)   Elite projection is the belief, among relatively fortunate and influential people, that what those people find convenient or attractive is good for the society as a whole.  O...

For more on the problem of "elite projection" -- the tendency of elites to support transit plans that cater to their own tastes -- see here: humantransit.org/2017/07/the-...

From the last Gilded Age to the present one, elite disinterest remains one of the greatest barriers to great and inclusive public transit. This 1929 ad makes the same argument we must make today. 1/

Hustlers Will Hustle, Boosters Will Boost: High-Speed Rail and the Problem of Arithmetic You know when you want to say nice things about a project — when you wish it could be a good idea, and you know some of the people working on it, and not all of them are unencumbered by ethics — but y...

Professor David Levinson, unquestionably a public transport advocate, questions Australia's Sydney to Newcastle "high speed rail" project. It seems to be repeating California's mistakes, starting with a too-rigid travel time goal. www.transportist.net/p/hustlers-w...

Looking at it …

Strong Towns Victoria - Urbanist Book Club #2 - Human Transit in Victoria | McRae's Restaurant (1652 McRae Ave @ Shelbourne) The second edition of the Strong Towns Victoria Urbanist Book Club will take place on Friday April 10th at McRae's. This month we picked Human Transit by Jar...

New Urbanist Book Club just dropped! Reading Human Transit which I'd had on my 'to read' list for quite some time. Looking forward to talking buses, trains, trams, and maybe even urban gondolas with y'all next month.

www.lamppostsocial.com/events/stron...

Great new initiative to develop better messaging around the value of good urban planning, led by @brenttoderian.bsky.social, @grantennis.bsky.social and
@tomflood.bsky.social.

The City Where Free Buses Changed Everything New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he’ll make every bus free to ride. This French city did just that — and is reaping the rewards.

Come on, @planetizen.bsky.social!

Dunkerque, France is not a good model for free fares in New York City! The math is different in such small cities. When Paris or London do free fares citywide, that will really be news.

www.planetizen.com/features/136...

A bad but universal metric of public transit reliability is the % of a line that is in its own lane.

It is easy to create exclusive lanes where there is little delay, but not at the bottlenecks where they matter most.

So this metric says nothing about speed or reliability.

The Humanities Are About to Be Automated AI can now write convincing academic papers. There’s no more room for denial.

I want to believe that AI can't replace human philosophers, theorists, or historians.

But this scholarly paper about AI's distinctive threat to democracy is very good, and an AI wrote it with only minimal prompting ...

writing.yaschamounk.com/p/the-humani...

In the Colombian town of El Carmen de Viboral, where I seem to be the only tourist, evidence of Canadian soft power.

Zeno's paradox of editing: every time you proofread your work, you'll find half the remaining errors.

Woman accused of wiping out entire family in San Francisco crash likely won't get prison time An 80-year-old woman accused of driving at a high rate of speed and crashing into a family of four, killing them, at a San Francisco bus stop nearly two years ago, appeared in court on Friday. Mary Fo...

Do YOU have an aging friend/relative who should stop driving? Tell them this story from San Francisco. Ask how they will feel if they kill an entire family.

But don't tell them that even then, they'll be forgiven and be able to drive again.

This verdict is obscene.

www.ktvu.com/news/woman-a...

I am not following this at all. You're going to have to explain how the New York situation is relevant to Chicago.

Tallinn's free fares moved people from active modes to public transit, but didn't reduce car use. A few people got shorter walks in the snow, which is nice for them, but this was a very expensive way to deliver that.

No, this is not like the Chicago situation at all. New York MTA is all one agency and it doesn't matter much to them whether fares are collected on the subway or the bus. The problem is that pushing people from subway to bus encourages more wasteful network design.

Opinion | Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free

Sorry, but this @nytimes.com op-ed on free fares in New York City, by @galvinalmanza.bsky.social, is deeply ignorant of the issues.

It proposes that pretty social justice vibes and some careless citations will change facts of math. Thread: 1/

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...

I like Zohran Mamdani and wish him every success. I'm one of many transit experts who would have supported him despite this one bad idea. But the @nytimes.com needs to start listening to actual transit experts, instead of trying to shout us down with well-meaning social justice vibes. 8/8

When Buses Are Free but Trains Aren't — Human Transit I’m in Bloomberg CityLab with a piece on the dangers of applying free fares to buses but not to trains in the same city.  Key quote: When we encourage people to get off trains and onto parallel buses,...

Then there's the fact that free fares on buses but not the subway will move riders from the subway to the bus, as I argued back in 2022. This will be very, very bad for transit and its customers overall.

humantransit.org/2022/12/when... 7/

The only way to avoid that outcome is to imagine some new funding source that will appear in response to the beauty of the free fares vision, but any such funding source would be better spent on service, regardless of whether the goal is ridership or access to opportunity. 6/