Know the Truth about Transit Labor


Book Description







Rights in Transit


Book Description

Is public transportation a right? Should it be? For those reliant on public transit, the answer is invariably “yes” to both. Indeed, when city officials propose slashing service or raising fares, it is these riders who are often the first to appear at that officials’ door demanding their “right” to more service. Rights in Transit starts from the presumption that such riders are justified. For those who lack other means of mobility, transit is a lifeline. It offers access to many of the entitlements we take as essential: food, employment, and democratic public life itself. While accepting transit as a right, this book also suggests that there remains a desperate need to think critically, both about what is meant by a right and about the types of rights at issue when public transportation is threatened. Drawing on a detailed case study of the various struggles that have come to define public transportation in California’s East Bay, Rights in Transit offers a direct challenge to contemporary scholarship on transportation equity. Rather than focusing on civil rights alone, Rights in Transit argues for engaging the more radical notion of the right to the city.




Transit Talk


Book Description

New York City may seem to be a place where everyone is a stranger, yet transit workers provide a human presence on a late-night bus or an empty subway platform. Few of us give any thought to these invisible workers-until something goes wrong. Transit Talk takes readers into the world of MTA New York City transit employees, as they describe their lives and work, from the most visible subway conductor to the seemingly invisible mechanic. There are nearly 44,000 transit workers like those you will meet in Transit Talk , and every day they help five million of us travel to work, to school, to weddings, to funerals, to hospitals, to vacations. These workers labor daily on subway tracks inches from high-voltage powerlines, risking their lives for passengers they'U never know. The city can feel large and fragmented, but the transportation system and its workers create common threads in the lives of all New Yorkers, threads we take for granted. Together, their stories create a human tableau of life and labor in the city within a city that is the MTA New York City Transit. Transit workers find satisfaction in fixing a damaged subway car, gain wisdom from mastering a dangerous workplace, nurse emotional wounds from tending to someone injured in an accident, battle frustration from difficulties with management, and express satisfaction when reflecting on a productive career. They tell of how years spent in the same shop create bonds between workers. They talk of the burden of laboring in a twenty-four-hour system with night shifts and weekend workdays that take them away from families. You'U hear painful tales of informing next-of-kin of a death on the tracks as well as joyous anecdotes of workers delivering a baby in a subway car.




Human Transit


Book Description

Public transit is a powerful tool for addressing a huge range of urban problems, including traffic congestion and economic development as well as climate change. But while many people support transit in the abstract, it's often hard to channel that support into good transit investments. Part of the problem is that transit debates attract many kinds of experts, who often talk past each other. Ordinary people listen to a little of this and decide that transit is impossible to figure out. Jarrett Walker believes that transit can be simple, if we focus first on the underlying geometry that all transit technologies share. In Human Transit, Walker supplies the basic tools, the critical questions, and the means to make smarter decisions about designing and implementing transit services. Human Transit explains the fundamental geometry of transit that shapes successful systems; the process for fitting technology to a particular community; and the local choices that lead to transit-friendly development. Whether you are in the field or simply a concerned citizen, here is an accessible guide to achieving successful public transit that will enrich any community.







The End of Driving


Book Description

While many transportation and city planners, researchers, students, practitioners, and political leaders are familiar with the technical nature and promise of vehicle automation, consensus is not yet often seen on the impact that will result, or the policies and actions that those responsible for transportation systems should take. The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles explores both the potential of vehicle automation technology and the barriers it faces when considering coherent urban deployment. The book evaluates the case for deliberate development of automated public transportation and mobility-as-a-service as paths towards sustainable mobility, describing critical approaches to the planning and management of vehicle automation technology. It serves as a reference for understanding the full life cycle of the multi-year transportation systems planning processes, including novel regulation, planning, and acquisition tools for regional transportation. Application-oriented, research-based, and solution-oriented rather than predict-and-warn, The End of Driving concludes with a detailed discussion of the systems design needed for accomplishing this shift. From the Foreword by Susan Shaheen: The authors ... extend potential solutions through a set of open-ended exercises after each chapter. Their approach is both strategic and deliberate. They lead the reader from definitions and context setting to the transition toward automation, employing a range of creative strategies and policies. While our quest to understand how to deploy automated vehicles is just beginning, this book provides a thoughtful introduction to inform this evolution. - Offers a workable public transit solution design melding the traditional "acquire-and-operate mode with the absorption of new technology - Provides a step-by-step discussion of digital systems designs and effective regulation-by-data approaches needed for a new urban mobility - Learning aids include case study scenarios, chapter objectives and discussion questions, sidebars and a glossary




Transit Life


Book Description

An exploration of the ways that everyday life in the city is defined by commuting. We spend much of our lives in transit to and from work. Although we might dismiss our daily commute as a wearying slog, we rarely stop to think about the significance of these daily journeys. In Transit Life, David Bissell explores how everyday life in cities is increasingly defined by commuting. Examining the overlooked events and encounters of the commute, Bissell shows that the material experiences of our daily journeys are transforming life in our cities. The commute is a time where some of the most pressing tensions of contemporary life play out, striking at the heart of such issues as our work-life balance; our relationships with others; our sense of place; and our understanding of who we are. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork with commuters, journalists, transit advocates, policymakers, and others in Sydney, Australia, Transit Life takes a holistic perspective to change how we think about commuting. Rather than arguing that transport infrastructure investment alone can solve our commuting problems, Bissell explores the more subtle but powerful forms of social change that commuting creates. He examines the complex politics of urban mobility through multiple dimensions, including the competencies that commuters develop over time; commuting dispositions and the social life of the commute; the multiple temporalities of commuting; the experience of commuting spaces, from footpath to on-ramp, both physical and digital; the voices of commuting, from private rants to drive-time radio; and the interplay of materialities, ideas, advocates, and organizations in commuting infrastructures.