PlanItMetro

On January 17th and 18th, two staffers from Metro’s Office of Planning attended a two day transit network design course, offered by long time transit planning consultant, transit blogger and now author, Jarrett Walker.  In transit planning circles, Walker’s recent efforts, culminating with “Human Transit,” have been very well regarded.  For many planners, his book has been a breath of fresh air in helping to demystify how complex transit offerings can be made more simple, customer focused, effective, and useful for everyday city life.  Many planners have an appreciation of the attention he has given to linguistics, and how word choice (i.e., the use of “transfer” vs. “connection” or “transit route” vs. “transit line”) can subtly reinforce or undermine certain collective beliefs about the usefulness of transit, or anything else for that matter.

The participants in the DC course were fairly diverse, although all of those in attendance had a vested interest in transit in some way.  Among these were urban planners, consultants, advocates, and transit planners, among others.  Care was taken to ensure that each working group had a included at least one transit professional mixed with other disciplines and backgrounds in order to facilitate a balanced discussion. Read more…