My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America

In America’s car-dominated landscape, public transit has long played second fiddle, but rising gasoline prices and the global warming crisis point to a need for alternative means of transportation. Darrin Nordahl sets the stage for these efforts by proposing that the experience of public transit and the quality of the ride are pivotal to the success of public transit.
My Kind of Transit explores America’s most beloved transit systems and how they work. From San Francisco’s cable cars to Pittsburgh’s funiculars to the streetcars of New Orleans, Nordahl recounts a transportation history of both short-sighted planning and visionary policies, and reveals that current American transit systems contain many key elements for successfully expanding public transport. My Kind of Transit explains the characteristics of ideal transit, or “passenger enrichment,” such as transit vehicles that offer views of the surrounding landscape and systems that enable diverse peoples to interact.
Successful public transport must be a uniquely enjoyable experience for riders, My Kind of Transit contends, and it offers a new vision of civic engagement that occurs when we step out of our cars and onto the train.

Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center, which was formed in 2003 as a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of Davenport, Iowa. He has taught in the planning program at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture (Island Press).