Jarrett Walker

The odd thing about youth transit passes is that they cover people who are not yet financially separate from their parents. Would it be better to have passes for low-income people and families and charge rich kids full fare? Not a strong opinion, just a question. Not sure.

Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel in part for asking: Why did India avoid the mass famines that killed tens of millions in China? His answer: a free press. Journalists could expose suffering and shame governments into action. Silence and avoidance, by contrast, can be deadly.

When does the next bus come? GoTriangle reduces wait time on its busiest routes The regional agency joins GoDurham and GoRaleigh in offering bus service at 15-minute intervals between Durham and Chapel Hill.

Raleigh increased bus service from every 30 min to every 15 min on its route serving Glenwood Ave. Ridership then doubled in the year that followed.

Over last year, city’s high-frequency routes have had 89% ridership growth.

People will ride when you give them service that they can rely on!

Allow corner stores everywhere!

Nobody should have to get in the car and deal with a gigantic store because they suddenly need toothpaste.

Joni Mitchell was there first! See her song “Sex Kills”.

It's very inconvenient for giant corporations that human beings are different from each other. They'd sell to us more efficiently if we all wanted the same thing, talked the same way, thought the same thoughts. With AI they will have the ultimate tools to enforce that ideal.

9/9

The iPhone software is simply not listening to me very closely. It could, but it doesn't. Instead, it is training me to talk like everyone else. I have the will to fight back, but I'm sure many do not, and accept its corrections as "what they really meant to say". 8/

What's wrong with dictation software is what's wrong with the tech industry. It wants to impose its idea of the customer rather than serving the customers it has. It is fundamentally hostile to human beings who want to be different from each other. 7/

Dictation software is also very sure that I use contractions like "wanna" and that my business communications would be improved by random insertions of profanity.

6/

In the previous tweet, for example, it inserted a comma between "grammatically" and "correct". After all these years, dictation software still has no idea how to place a comma.

5/

Granted, I'm one of those people who tend to speak in grammatically correct sentences. But Apple dictation cannot even recognize us as a subculture and figure out that our speech does follow some learnable rules. 4/

From the very beginning, Apple told us: "Just talk like you normally talk. The software will learn how you talk and make fewer mistakes over time." This is a lie. 3/

I have big fingers and a lot to say, so dictation software dramatically increased my productivity, but it also demanded that I surrender an important part of my identity: my right to control how I talk. 2/

To understand public skepticism toward the tech oligarchs, consider the dictation software that comes loaded on our phones, an iPhone in my case.

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1/.

An infrastructure project can be a "planning disaster" and still be foundational to shaping its region. That, after all, is the political magic of infrastructure: once it's built, it no longer matters whether it was a good idea.

1/

Street running is an alignment, not a technology, and it has its uses. But it's true that in Portland, like many US cities, rail transit has been designed for overly short distances.

Single track + agreement agreement with freight operator = poor service.

These replies matter more than you might think.

An infrastructure project can be a "planning disaster" and still be foundational to shaping its region. That, after all, is the political magic of infrastructure: once it's built, it no longer matters whether it was a good idea.

1/

Did this once. Worthwhile but exhausting. Debating whether to do it again.

Since people are talking about the razor thin margins in the restaurant industry, I would like to remind everyone of my bête noir, which is parking minimums for bars and restaurants. Off street parking mandates for places that serve alcohol are basically a subsidy to drunk driving.

Elon Musk's Boring Company will apparently be building road tunnels under Nashville without the support of any Nashville elected officials.

Coming to the UK in September! — Human Transit My travel plans will have me in the UK for much of the month of September this year. This is a great opportunity for British friends to think about events they might want me to do. First, I can do spe...

UK readers! I'll be in the UK for most of September, researching and talking about public transport planning. Please suggest events! Details: humantransit.org/2025/06/comi...

I wish US leaders had the courage to talk to the country about what cities are, and why the problems that are most visible in cities are really the whole country's problems.

Billions are being spent to confuse Americans about this. And the result will be worse for everyone.

9/9

The lack of a safety net is OK with many US suburban and rural voters because they're told this is a big city problem that they can blame on mayors.

It's not an big city problem. It's a problem that's more *visible* in cities.

Because *everything* is more visible in cities.

8/

There are valid things to blame big city leaders for, but much of what is most horrible in US cities is the result of national policy.

In most other countries, there are fewer people suffering and dying in the streets because of the *national* safety net.

7/

In fact, virtually every bad thing that's happening in cities is also happening in suburbs and rural areas, but less visibly.

In cities, everything is easier to see, easier to photograph, because so many people are not in cars and so much more of life happens in public space. 6/

My theory: Cities are where the whole society is visible.

When suburban and rural Americans consume doom stories about cities, they are allowed to fantasize that the problems of American society are elsewhere, happening to different people, not affecting them ...

5/

There have *always* been "urban doom" narratives about US cities, even in the best of times for cities!

So the question is: Why do Americans want these narratives and reward them with clicks?

4/

When headline writers try to amplify "urban doom" vibes for clicks, they create factless news that their reporters will then write about.

See this great recent example from the @nytimes.com, where an "urban doom" headline is directly contradicted in paragraph 11 of the article. 3/