Customer Reviews

My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation

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People in the public transport business care about unionized workers. They care about creating big projects to get interest from stakeholders. Who they don't care about is customers. Customers, after all, are mostly poor, dispossessed folks who should be glad they have public transport at all.

This book challenges this idea and looks at public transport from the perspective of customers. How can we really get people out of their cars? By making public transport accessible and fun to use. The author talks convincingly about what might make that happen, using a number of real world examples.

I am dubious that people could really be coaxed out of their car, since cars are so much more convenient than trains or busses. But the idea of making public transportation a social space instead of just a utilitarian way to get people from place to place is very appealing.

I somehow doubt that making public transport even slower than it is today is going to make things work for most. But I applaud the author in at least asking questions I have never seen asked before. This book is very much worth reading for the examples, and for people to really think about what could make public transport make sense for at least some people in our age of hustle and bustle.