Human Transit

Downtown Des Moines viewed from the Robert D Ray Asian garden, which celebrates the contributions of Asian immigrant groups to the region. Iowa’s capital and largest city, a place I knew well in my childhood, now has a new bus network, the result of our firm’s network design work with the Des Moines Area Regional Transit authority (DART). The new network started operating yesterday so today is its first weekday. You can find our full report explaining the plan here.

The Atlanta area transit agency MARTA finally implemented its bus network redesign, called NextGen, on April 18, 2026. We led the network design and analysis tasks for the consulting team, and although it was a long and difficult journey, we’re proud of the results. Now that the new service is running, I want to give a quick overview of what the redesign did, and the new opportunities it creates.

Oregon Public Broadcasting Interview of Me Just did a fun 20-minute segment on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud program, talking about: my journey as a transit planner, starting with growing up in Portland what people most get wrong about transit the budget crisis facing public transit in the Portland area. At the end, he also drew me out on a local street-naming debate. Anyway, the whole thing is here.

We’re delighted to announce two new sessions of our “inexcusably fun” two-day intensive course in public transit network design. This course, which we at Jarrett Walker + Associates have been teaching since 2011, is a chance to work intensively with me and our team to explore the challenges of designing transit networks in various geographies and situations.

Posted on in Events My book Human Transit, revised in 2024, is your friendly, readable guide to how public transit planning works, and the choices that communities have to think about. Whether you’re an advocate, a transit professional, or someone working in an adjacent field like urban development, this book will make you confident in your decisions and conversations about public transit in your community.

[Read in English] {En 2016 visité Barcelona por primera vez. Esta es una traducción española del artículo que escribí entonces.

Posted on in Elite Projection, Language You can’t go far in transit conversations without hearing the terms “choice rider” and “captive rider.”  The first refers to someone who has a car available and chooses transit instead, while the second refers to someone who has no choice but to use transit. Anytime you hear someone using these terms, please point them to this post. For more detail, please see the full argument in my book Human Transit (revised edition of 2024). It’s at the end of Chapter 4.

Posted on in Bogotá (Read in English here.) Mi reciente artículo sobre el sistema de Bus Rápido de Bogotá, TransMilenio, terminó con un texto sobre la extrema complejidad de los patrones de servicio, y el papel que esta complejidad juega en los muchos problemas de los que la gente se queja. Resulta que existe un diagrama elaborado con mucho cariño y detalle de todos los patrones de servicio de TransMilenio.

Posted on in Bogotá My recent writing on Bogotá’s Bus Rapid Transit system, TransMilenio, ended with an article on the extreme complexity of the service patterns, and the role this complexity plays in the many problems that people complain about. It turns out that there is a lovingly detailed diagram of all of TransMilenio’s service patterns.

Posted on in Chicago, Events, Portland Have you heard about our “inexcusably fun” two-day courses in transit network design? We have two sessions coming up this year: 1. July 30-31 in Portland, Oregon 2. October 1-2 in Chicago, Illinois (just before the APTA Transform conference) You can read about the courses here. Keep an eye on this blog (you can subscribe using the button at right)for registration and cost info, which will be coming in the next week or two.