Top all-time · #882
Human Transit
Personal blog · humantransit.orgpoliticseconomics
Human Transit is a personal blog at humantransit.org about politics and economics. Since 2011, 77 different Hacker News readers have linked it 135 times, most often “The Dangers of Elite Projection”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- /2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almost-everything.html6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-05-08
- The Dangers of Elite Projection4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-12-16
- What Is “Microtransit” For?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-08-30
- Does Elon Musk Understand Urban Geometry?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-21
- The Transit Ridership Recipe (2015)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-24
- /2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almost-everything.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-17
- Elon Musk doesn't understand geometry3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-02
- /2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-03-05
- /2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-25
- The Dangers of Elite Projection (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-02
What Hacker News says?
Here's transit planner Jarrett Walker making the exact opposite argument: https://humantransit.org/2019/03/notes-on-simcity-at-30.html
Comment linking /2019/03/notes-on-simcity-at-30.html
on “CityBound – An open source city simulation game in Rust”Submitted Blaise Pascal invented fixed route public transport (2024) as a story · 308 points
HN discussionRelevant http://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-par... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/urban-p...
Comment linking /2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html
on “Magnasanti: Large and Terrifying SimCity (2010)”Submitted Uber's predatory pricing is undermining public transit and density as a story · 217 points
HN discussionOne of my favorite counter-intuitive things about mass transit is that well-designed transfers tend to reduce overall travel time for everyone, even without timed transfers: https://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-fo...
Comment linking /2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for-you-and-good-for-your-city.html
on “Real-Time Tokyo Subway Map”Submitted Lyft lobbying to prevent Portland from regulating impact of ride-sharing as a story · 195 points
HN discussionThe throughput will be tiny because cars take up so much space. http://humantransit.org/2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almo...
Comment linking /2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almost-everything.html
on “The Boring Company FAQ”Submitted Why the Media Fixation on “Transit Is Failing” Stories? as a story · 67 points
HN discussionThe issue is usually capacity management. Pre-covid most places with decent transit had crowding issues during rush hour. In 2010 Guangzhou made fares on its subway free to ease congestion during the Asian Games, and the result was a more than doubling of ridership. Users reported queue times of more than 20 minutes to enter stations, and eight busy stations had to be turned exit only as an emergency measure. https:…
Comment linking /2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html
on “Spain will introduce free train travel”Submitted The Dangers of Elite Projection (2017) as a story · 52 points
HN discussionThe issue is that a lot of transit planning is politically motivated and done to maximize "coverage" rather than more meaningful metrics like ridership, usefulness, and profitability. Planning for coverage allows you to tell individual taxpayers that they're "served" by the transit they help fund, but most will never use it because it's infrequent and the routes take forever to get anywhere. Optimizing for ridership…
Comment linking /basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe
on “Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US”Submitted Self-Driving Cars: A Coming Congestion Disaster? as a story · 31 points
HN discussion+10000000000 points for all this from a guy with a Masters in Urban Planning. Also, anyone interested in this should be reading the blog Human Transit. http://www.humantransit.org/ or buy his new book by the same name http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/1597269727 . He focuses less on the differences between bus and light rail (unimportant distinction) and more on what it means to actually provide mobility that people can…
Comment linking /
on “Cars kill cities”Submitted The Transit Ridership Recipe (2015) as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThis article is very broad and (probably because of this) doesnt really go in depth on many issues. If anyone is seriously interested in transportation, I highly reccommend the excellent blog http://www.humantransit.org/ I do take some issue with the title of this article however. Whilst agreeing with the general sentiment of the article (US cities need to generally focus on more accessible development), cars dont '…
Comment linking /
on “Cars kill cities”Submitted Human Transit (2011) as a story · 20 points
HN discussionNo, it is an example of why the idea is bad and always will be. Experts in transit have written extensively about this. https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit for example.
Comment linking /category/microtransit
on “Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes”Submitted Elon Musk doesn't understand geometry as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThat "What if" is a stupid idea that has been around for years. Professionals have written about this extensively - https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit for example. The fundamentals mean it can never work for anyone anywhere - including aliens with some arbitrary advanced technology. You cannot combine fast, predictable and reasonable journey times with reasonable costs unless you have a scheduled service…
Comment linking /category/microtransit
on “Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes”Submitted You Can Help Save Public Transit in Your City as a story · 6 points
HN discussionCars transport around ~1500 people per hour per lane, while 2 bike lanes taking up the same amount of space of a car lane is ~5200 people per hour. A proper train line does 32'000 people per hour. https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/05/26/the-supply-and-demand... A more visual demonstration: https://humantransit.org/2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-alm...
Comment linking /2012/09/the-photo-that-explains-almost-everything.html
on “We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes”Submitted Does Elon Musk Understand Urban Geometry? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIndeed, though in some cases it reveals that the problem is likely how we design actual cities. http://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-par...
Comment linking /2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html
on “Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be”Submitted How Sim City greenwashes parking as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSim City lies, too. Real American "cities" (to use the term generously) are basically a parking lot with a mayor. https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-pa...
Comment linking /2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html
on “Oregon Just Voted to Legalize Duplexes on Almost Every City Lot”Submitted Let's Quit Pretending About Uber as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFor people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett Walker's book "Human Transit". He really focuses the conversation around a few ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus & have productive conversations in transit agencies) https://humantransit.org/ Last night I watched his talk "Transit Truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc - which also summarizes the id…
Comment linking /
on “NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say”Submitted The Joy of Numbered Streets as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe general idea (open-access busway) works well, but guided buses specifically do not, since you combine all the disadvantages of rail (expensive, compatible vehicles) with the disadvantages of the bus (much lower capacity, much higher labor requirement, etc.) Brisbane is a much better example of this: http://humantransit.org/2009/05/brisbane-a-short-tour-of-the...
Comment linking /2009/05/brisbane-a-short-tour-of-the-south-east-busway.html
on “To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls”Submitted The Dangers of Elite Projection as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
