Customer Reviews

Transportation for Livable Cities

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Professor Vuchic is the embodiment of clear thinking and common sense. His is a voice of reason in the midst of all the propaganda and ideology of the transportation wars that pop up in every city where people begin to question the dominance of the car culture. He's heard all the anti-rail arguments and debunks them one by one.

This is an eminently readable and well organized book by one of the foremost transportation authorities in America. He compares the US to our peer countries in Europe and Asia and shows how their policies have produced far more livable cities. Our present sorry state is largely due to massive government subsidies and policies favoring the car culture. These have the effect of discourging transit, walking, and bicycling.

Vuchic says change will only come through a combination of "transit incentives" and "auto disincentives", especially the latter. The biggest obstacles are political, not technological.

We must start by creating and promoting the "livable city" vision for our metropolitan regions, then planning an intermodal transportation system to fulfill this vision. Most US cities omit or neglect these steps, focusing primarily on road networks to meet car demand.

If you know that something is terribly wrong with your city and that cars have a lot to do with it, this book will tell you why and what you can do about it.

Overall an excellent book. Dr. Vuchic clearly explains the history behind urban transportation planning in the United States. He gives examples of cities in "peer" countries that have done an overall much better job of transportation planning than the vast majority of U.S. cities.

He clearly describes the advantages and disadvantages of virtually every mode of urban transportation; car, bus, light rail, metro, bicycle, etc. In this book Dr. Vuchic writes about the importance of integrated multi-modal transportation systems, as well as the critical need for metropolitan areas to integrate various aspects of urban planning; housing, environment and transportation.

A couple minor things in the book I did not entirely agree with. Some of his comparisons between cities, I did'nt feel were entirely accurate. He mentions Rome in the same sentence as Houston and Detroit when discussing cities with poor transit. Houston & Detroit have some of the worst transit in the developed world, but Rome's transit system, while not the best in Europe, is far ahead of Houston and Detroit. Dr Vuchic mentions Boston in the same sentence as Zurich when describing cities with good transit. Boston's transit system is quite poor by the standards of western Europe. When comparing major world cities Dr Vuchic tries to point to New York as having poor transit relative to London or Tokyo. While New York's transit system isn't as good as Tokyo or London, a much better example of poor transit among major world cities would have been Los Angeles.

Despite what I felt were at times somewhat poor comparisons between cities, I still give this book 5 stars and would highly recommend it.

I ordered this book for a colleague who wanted to read it. I can't say anything about the content but the book was in excellent condition and the shipping was much faster than anticipated. Overall extremely happy with this transaction - thank you!

I am also a college student writing my Honor's thesis on a similar topic. It is complete and well written.

I am a college student studying Transportation Engineering and was required to read this book for a class. I did not enjoy reading it. A quick summary of the book would be that the free market cannot decide what is best for us and that the government should tell us how we should travel. Raise taxes on cars and subsidize transit. His ideas are very socialistic.
The author compares the U.S. to many countries in Europe and without fail says they are better than us. The author is from Europe and I say if he likes Europe so much better why doesn't he go back?
I would not recomend this book unless you have socialist tendancies.