New Huffington Post Blogger

Take a look at this short piece by yours truly in the Huffington Post today. Looking at the comments, it strikes me that we're still very much stuck in old patterns of understanding transportation, and especially mass transit. Mass transit systems have never stood alone as successful self-supporting enteprises. During their private heyday, they were almost invariably linked with real estate development or electric utility ventures. They are too closely integrated with places, development patterns, economic activity to be analyzed as independent systems today, as well. But nevertheless, they are. One of the points I was trying to make with that post was is that it's probably more important to recognize that mass transit creates places--dense, urban places like Manhattan and SF--than it is to observe that dense places are a prerequisite for "successful" transit. Transportation is about connections--and their success depends on institutional connections that reflect the significance of the physical connections.
I develop these themes much more in a piece that will be coming out in the July issue of Technology and Culture. Don't miss it.