Jarrett Walker

Jarrett Walker (born 1962) is an American transit consultant and author. He has a consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon, that has worked on projects across North America, Europe, and Oceania.[1] Walker is the author of the blog Human Transit[2] and book[3] of the same name.

Jarrett Walker
Born1962 (age 60–61)
Alma materPomona College (BA)
Stanford University (PhD)
Occupation(s)Transit consultant and author
Years active1991–present
OrganizationJarrett Walker + Associates
Notable workHuman Transit

Career

In the 1970s, Walker became interested in transit issues while using Portland's TriMet bus system.[4] He later worked as a planning intern at TriMet.[5]

Walker is the president of Jarrett Walker + Associates, a consultancy that contracts with public transit agencies.[6] He and his firm have completed transit redesign projects in dozens of cities throughout the world, including Houston, Moscow, Auckland, and Dublin.[7]

The author has written several peer-reviewed papers, including "To Predict with Confidence", published in the Journal of Public Transportation in 2018,[8] and "Purpose-Driven Public Transport," published in the Journal of Transport Geography in 2008.[9] He has also been published in the peer-reviewed Shakespeare Quarterly.[10][11] He has also written for Bloomberg CityLab[12][13] and The Atlantic.[14]

In December 2017, Walker attracted media attention after publicly feuding with billionaire Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO expressed his disdain for public transit and reiterated his preference for individual transportation in response to a conference audience question.[15] Walker criticized him on Twitter, stating that "Musk's hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford."[16][15][17] Musk responded with "You're an idiot", before saying: "Sorry... meant to say 'sanctimonious idiot.'"[18][19][20][21] The dispute led to a broader debate about Musk's opinions on transit.[21]

Walker's planning philosophy

Walker frames discussions about public transportation in terms of an area's geometry and how it influences a transit network's ridership and coverage (also known as the "ridership-coverage trade-off").[22][23] He argued that an area's physical features (for example, the Bay Area's bay) significantly impact a transit network's ideal design and potential ridership.[24]

Walker has argued that transit agencies' focus on predictions and new technologies distracts from necessary improvements to existing transportation systems.[25][26] However, he has also stated that when working as a consulting planner, he views his role as "only stating geometric facts", or presenting potential designs for the agency employing him to consider. He typically presents a variety of designs, with some more heavily focused on increasing ridership and others more centered around increasing coverage.[27] In Houston, Walker proposed creating a grid of bus routes with frequent service instead of focusing on expanding physical coverage, and the city ultimately implemented his recommendations, reporting an 11% increase in ridership on weekdays and a 30% increase on weekends a year later.[28][29]

Walker has often asserted that "frequency is freedom" – frequent transit service helps people better access their communities,[30] and that buses are often the most affordable way to expand transit service.[31][32][33] To highlight the importance of service frequency, he said that a bus frequency of 15 minutes is as useless as a car that could only leave its home every 15 minutes.[34][35][36]

In his book Human Transit, he lists seven requirements for a good public transit network:[3]

  1. It takes me where I want to go – coverage
  2. It takes me when I want to go – span
  3. It's a good use of my time – frequency
  4. It's a good use of my money – price
  5. It respects me – cleanliness and safety
  6. I can trust it – reliability
  7. It gives me the freedom to change my plans – frequency again

Walker has criticized claims that modern ride-share services like Lyft and Uber are equivalent to or a potential replacement for public transit, arguing that rideshare services are much less efficient than even a relatively low-density bus service.[32][37] As lockdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic caused sharp reductions in ridership on transit, Walker was featured in a New York Times article as saying that transit is "not a business. And nowhere has that been more obvious than now. The sensible fiduciary thing to do would be to shut things down as quickly as possible, furlough the entire staff and wait. They’re not doing that because they’re expected to provide an essential service."[38]

Walker's proposed redesigns have sometimes faced criticism from city residents, advocacy groups, or news agencies. In Dublin, Walker proposed consolidating the complex bus network into central "spines" with more frequent bus service.[39] The public transit authority received over 72,000 comments from the public, of which a large portion criticized the proposal as service cuts, despite overall increases to both service frequency and geographic coverage.[40][41][42] In addition, libertarian Randal O'Toole, a noted transit skeptic, has been a vocal critic of the implications of Jarrett Walker's work.[43][44]

Personal life

Walker, who is gay, was raised in Portland, Oregon in the 1970s.[45] He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in 1980 and received his PhD in theater arts and humanities from Stanford University in 1996.[46]

Bibliography
  • Walker, Jarrett (2011). Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. Island Press. ISBN 9781597269728. OCLC 1023266302.

References
  1. Daniel, Vock (August 29, 2017). "Buses, Yes Buses, Are 'the Hottest Trend in Transit'". Governing. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
  2. Walker, Jarrett (2021). "Human Transit". Human Transit. Archived from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  3. Walker, Jarrett (2012). Human Transit : How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. Washington: Island Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-61091-174-0. OCLC 843011312.
  4. Green, Emily (December 6, 2011). "Hotseat: Jarrett Walker". Willamette Week. Archived from the original on August 10, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  5. Walker, Jarrett (May 11, 2012). "Portland: summer intern job at transit agency". Human Transit. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
  6. "Welcome". Jarrett Walker + Associates. Archived from the original on January 20, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  7. Jarrett Walker + Associates (2021). "Places". Jarrett Walker + Associates. Archived from the original on January 31, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  8. Walker, Jarrett (January 1, 2018). "To Predict with Confidence, Plan for Freedom". Journal of Public Transportation. 21 (1): 119–127. doi:10.5038/2375-0901.21.1.12. ISSN 1077-291X. Archived from the original on August 19, 2018. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  9. Walker, Jarrett (November 1, 2008). "Purpose-driven public transport: creating a clear conversation about public transport goals". Journal of Transport Geography. Growing Public Transport Patronage. 16 (6): 436–442. doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2008.06.005. hdl:2123/6057. ISSN 0966-6923. Archived from the original on January 29, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  10. "Guest Lecture: Jarrett Walker presents "Transit: Freedom through Geometry" - UCLA Luskin". UCLA Luskin. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2020. Born in 1962, he grew up in Portland, Oregon during the revolutionary 1970s, the era when Portland first made its decisive commitment to be a city for people rather than cars. He went on to complete a BA at Pomona College (Claremont, California) and a Ph.D. in theatre arts and humanities at Stanford University. Passionately interested in an impractical number of fields, he is probably the only person with peer-reviewed publications in both the Journal of Transport Geography and Shakespeare Quarterly.
  11. "Jarrett Walker on why transit advocates should study literature". January 7, 2019. Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  12. "In a Pandemic, We're All 'Transit Dependent'". Bloomberg.com. April 7, 2020. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  13. "Public Transit and the Postal Service Have the Same Problem". Bloomberg.com. August 31, 2020. Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  14. Walker, Jarrett (October 31, 2018). "The Bus Is Still Best". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on November 27, 2020. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  15. Marshall, Aarian (December 14, 2017). "Elon Musk Really Doesn't Like Mass Transit Systems He's Trying to Build". Wired. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  16. Jarrett Walker [@humantransit] (December 14, 2017). "In cities, @elonmusk's hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford. Letting him design cities is the essence of elite projection" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  17. Walker, Jarrett (July 31, 2017). "The Dangers of Elite Projection — Human Transit". Human Transit. Archived from the original on March 2, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2017.
  18. Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (December 14, 2017). "You're an idiot" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  19. Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (December 14, 2017). "Sorry" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  20. Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (December 14, 2017). "Meant to say "sanctimonious idiot"" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  21. Hunt, Elle (December 21, 2017). "'I met my wife on a train platform': Twitter responds to Elon Musk with positive public transport stories". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 19, 2018. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  22. "Here's what happens when Jarrett Walker takes over your Twitter account". November 25, 2019. Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  23. Higashide, Steven (2019). Better Buses, Better Cities. Washington DC: Island Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-64283-014-9.
  24. Patricia Leigh Brown (August 2, 2015). "Bay Area's Disjointed Public Transit Network Inspires a Call for Harmony". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. Part of the problem is geography. At the Bay Area's heart "is an obstacle — the bay," said Jarrett Walker, a transportation planning and policy consultant who edits the blog HumanTransit.org and has written a book of the same title (Island Press, 2011). "There are three cities that with some justification regard themselves as important centers in their own right," he said, referring to San Francisco itself, Oakland, and San Jose. "People live 'over the hill' or 'across the water.' There's a weaker sense of region."
  25. "Jarrett Walker: Planning Transit: Can We Live Without Predictions?". YouTube. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  26. "Jarrett Walker's philosophy of public transit as means to freedom". Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  27. "Facts and Values". YouTube. Archived from the original on April 15, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  28. "Here's how Houston boosted mass transit ridership by improving service without spending a dime". January 28, 2016.
  29. Jeremy Hobson (February 23, 2015). "Redesigning Houston's METRO System Without Breaking The Bank". wbur.org. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson speaks with one of the lead designers, Jarrett Walker, about what goes into redesigning a city's transit system.
  30. "Freedom and Liberty through Public Transit". Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  31. "Get Onboard: It's Time To Stop Hating The Bus". wbur.org. March 29, 2012. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. There's a transit consultant named Jarrett Walker who likes to tell drivers about the importance of frequency by saying imagine if you had a gate at the end of your driveway that only open every 15 minutes.
  32. Walker, Jarrett (October 31, 2018). "The Bus Is Still Best". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. Visualize a low-density suburb, with requests scattered over a wide area. How many people's doors can a driver get to in an hour, including the minute or two that the customer spends grabbing their things and boarding? The intuitively obvious answer is the right one: not very many. An Eno Foundation report promoting microtransit could not cite a case study doing better than four boardings an hour of service. John Urgo, the planner of demand-responsive service for AC Transit in Oakland, California, has said that seven boardings an hour is "the best we hope to achieve." Few fixed-route buses perform that poorly. Across sprawling Silicon Valley, for example, fixed-route buses carried 12 to 45 people an hour in 2015. In a dense city such as Philadelphia, the number can exceed 80. I've found similar figures in all of the 50 or so transit agencies that I've studied over the years.
  33. Will Doig (March 3, 2012). "It's time to love the bus". Salon. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. And yet we rarely do. Streetcars are replacing bus routes in cities across the country, and billions are thrown at light rail while the overlooked bus is left to scream "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!" "If you decide that buses don't merit investment, you're going to miss a lot of opportunities to help people get where they're going, and to expand their sense of freedom of movement, just because you don't like the vehicle they're riding," says transit consultant Jarrett Walker.
  34. Semuels, Alana (October 28, 2015). "Why People Don't Ride Public Transit in Small Cities". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. In the 1970s, Portland was much like Nashville, Walker said, with parking lots and cars everywhere. But after the region introduced new laws preserving existing land, which limited road construction, Portland had to reassess. In the 1980s, the city redesigned its bus system, establishing lines along a grid that made service more frequent and widespread. After bus ridership increased, the region was able to muster the political will to put in light rail.
  35. Yonah Freemark (August 20, 2014). "A Call for Minimum Service Standards". The Transport Politic. Archived from the original on April 14, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. As Jarrett Walker has noted many times, frequency of service can be just as important as speed since the frequency at which a vehicle on a line arrives determines how long most people have to wait — especially when they're transferring between services, an essential element of any big-city transit network and one that cannot be significantly improved with real-time data.
  36. Yonah Freemark (July 11, 2011). "Reorganizing the Bus System within the Network Hierarchy". The Transport Politic. Retrieved June 4, 2020. As Jarrett Walker noted, the poor frequencies offered by bus service on the cancelled route meant it was only quicker if the bus was there exactly when you needed it; more frequent services built on transfers will bring better transit for more people at all times of the day. And they mean better access to parts of the city not directly along the route of the local bus.
  37. E. Tammy Kim (May 30, 2019). "Opinion | How Uber Hopes to Profit From Public Transit". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 30, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. Jarrett Walker, a transit-design consultant, recently noted on the "Rideshare Guy" podcast that when Uber and Lyft divert relatively affluent riders from public transit, there's a damaging effect on "elite opinion." He added: "The notion among elites that, 'Well, Uber is the thing, because it's so convenient to me. Therefore, public transit should somehow become more like Uber.'"
  38. Emily Badger (April 9, 2020). "Transit Has Been Battered by Coronavirus. What's Ahead May Be Worse". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020. "It's not a business," said Jarrett Walker, a transit consultant. "And nowhere has that been more obvious than now. The sensible fiduciary thing to do would be to shut things down as quickly as possible, furlough the entire staff and wait. They're not doing that because they're expected to provide an essential service."
  39. Burns, Sarah. "Dublin Bus plan: Designer surprised by 'very aggressive' criticism". The Irish Times. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  40. Burns, Sarah; Kelly, Olivia. "Final redesign of Dublin's bus network to see services rise 23%". The Irish Times. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  41. "NTA rows back on cuts to direct Dublin city bus routes". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on October 24, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  42. Begley, Dug (December 18, 2016). "Metro ridership in reverse after transit officials boasted bus system revamp would add many riders". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  43. "Redesigned Bus Routes Won't Save Transit". Archived from the original on February 17, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  44. "Is Transit Doomed in the U.S.? Discuss". Bloomberg. October 12, 2018. Archived from the original on February 21, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
  45. "Portland's design helps make it a protest-friendly city". opb. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  46. Walker, Jarrett. "About". Human Transit. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
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