Category Archives: Transportation

Among all of what today are the largest cities of the United States, Phoenix was very nearly the smallest in the middle of the 20th century.1 In 1950 it had only 106,818 people—it was smaller than New Bedford!—and its metropolitan … Continue reading →

When I was in Los Angeles three weeks ago, I naturally rode the new Expo Line between Santa Monica and downtown a couple of times. I can confirm that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a hit on its … Continue reading →

I spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur last week. While travelling I was reading a terrific book, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya : negotiating urban space in Malaysia,1 by Ross King, a professorial fellow at Melbourne University. I had been in KL … Continue reading →

An important article by Mark R. Stevens in the January 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association1 suggests that an increase in population density leads only to a modest decrease in automobile use. The article is based … Continue reading →

Building urban rail lines has always been expensive, and one of the consequences of this is that many more lines have been proposed than built. The shelves of Northwestern University’s excellent Transportation Library, for example, contain approximately 75 books or reports … Continue reading →

Singapore is often described by urbanists as having gotten a great many things right. An explicit goal of Singapore’s planning is to have a “car-lite” society. Singapore’s government has taxed automobiles at a very high rate for many years. It also charges … Continue reading →

There has been an enormous increase in the amount of bus rapid transit (BRT) in the world over the last forty years. While there are substantial BRT lines in many cities in well-off countries (for example, in Ottawa and Los … Continue reading →

I was in Tashkent (Toshkent in Uzbek) for a few days in late October. I found it a rather uncomfortable place. Problems started at the airport, where it was necessary to negotiate an enormous undisciplined crowd to inch through passport … Continue reading →

Many of the world’s major urban building efforts have occurred as part of “megaprojects.” It would be very difficult to define “megaproject” in a way that everyone would agree to, but it’s probably fair to say that urban megaprojects are … Continue reading →

I was recently in Atlanta for the first time since the late 1980s. I had been struck then at how un-urban the place was, despite the impressive new subway. There were few pedestrians downtown, and, on a walk up Peachtree Street to … Continue reading →