Jarrett Walker
Jarrett Walker (born 1962) is an American transit consultant and author. He has a consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon, that has worked on projects across North America, Europe, and Oceania. Walker is the author of the book "Human Transit". Early life and education. Walker was raised in Portland, Oregon, in the 1970s, where he became interested in transit issues while using the TriMet bus system. He later worked as a planning intern at TriMet. Walker graduated with a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in 1980, and received his PhD in theater arts and humanities from Stanford  University in 1996. Career. Walker is the president of Jarrett Walker + Associates, a consultancy that contracts with public transit agencies. He and his firm have completed transit redesign projects in over 25 cities throughout the world, including Houston, Auckland, and Dublin. He has written a blog and a book, both titled "Human Transit". He has also written for Bloomberg CityLab and The Atlantic. Walker has also written several peer-reviewed papers, including "To Predict with Confidence", published in the Journal of Public Transportation in 2018, and "Purpose-Driven Public Transport," published in the Journal of Transport Geography in 2008 . He has also been published in the peer-reviewed Shakespeare Quarterly. Walker has spoken at the Rail-Volution conference and the Congress for the New Urbanism. As part of the COVID-19 pandemic, his consultancy received between $150,000 and $1 million in federally-backed small business loans from Umpqua Bank as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The company stated it would allow them to retain 14 jobs. Walker's planning philosophy. Walker frames discussions about public transportation in terms of an area's geometry and how it influences a transit network's ridership and coverage (also known as  the "ridership-coverage trade-off"). He argued that an area's physical features (for example, the Bay Area's bay) significantly impact a transit network's ideal design and potential ridership. Walker has argued that transit agencies' focus on predictions and new technologies distracts from necessary improvements to existing transportation systems. However, he has also stated that when working as a consulting planner, he views his role as "only stating geometric facts", or presenting potential designs for the agency employing him to consider. He typically presents a variety of designs, with some more heavily focused on increasing ridership and others  more centered around increasing coverage. In Houston, Walker proposed creating a grid of bus routes with frequent service instead of focusing on expanding physical coverage, and the city ultimately implemented his recommendations, reporting an 11% increase in ridership on weekdays and a 30% increase on weekends a year later. Walker has often asserted that "frequency is freedom" – frequent transit service helps people better access their communities, and that buses are often the most affordable way to expand transit service. To highlight the importance of service frequency, he said that a bus frequency of 15 minutes is as useless as a  car that could only leave its home every 15 minutes. In his book "Human Transit," he lists seven requirements for a good public transit network: Walker advocated for an "urbanist tea party" in 2013, arguing that cities were playing an increased role in daily life and that political systems should be updated to reflect that trend. He has argued that the modern streetcars fail to live up to expectations, as their drawbacks and costs distract from affordable improvements to existing transit networks. He has stated that "billions are thrown at light rail while the overlooked bus is [ignored]". Walker has  also criticized claims that modern ride-share services like Lyft and Uber are equivalent to or a potential replacement for public transit, arguing that rideshare services are much less efficient than even a relatively low-density bus service. As lockdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic caused sharp reductions in ridership on transit, Walker was featured in a New York Times article as saying that transit is "not a business. And nowhere has that been more obvious than now. The sensible fiduciary thing to do would be to shut things down as quickly as possible, furlough the entire staff and wait . They’re not doing that because they’re expected to provide an essential service." Twitter feud with Elon Musk. Walker gained significant media attention from a dispute he had with Elon Musk. In December 2017, Musk expressed his disdain for public transit and reiterated his preference for individual transportation in response to an audience question during the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. Walker criticized him on Twitter, stating that "Musk's hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford." Musk responded with "You're an idiot", before saying: "Sorry [...] Meant to  say 'sanctimonious idiot.'" The dispute led to a broader debate about Musk's opinions on transit, including during a segment on Fox Business Network in which Walker spoke with Stuart Varney and prompted an outpouring of people sharing their stories of the connections and community formed on transit, using the hashtag #GreatThingsThatHappenedonTransit. Walker also appeared as a character in the neo-Shakespearean play "Trapped in Elon's Mansion" by Joe Bagel, where he criticizes Musk's plans to build underground tunnels for cars, in a town hall with Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti. Public criticism of Walker's proposals. Walker 's proposed redesigns have sometimes faced criticism from city residents, advocacy groups, or news agencies. In Dublin, Walker proposed consolidating the complex bus network into central "spines" with more frequent bus service. The public transit authority received over 72,000 comments from the public, of which a large portion criticized the proposal as service cuts. In Houston, transit advocacy groups and news organizations argued that the transit network still failed to meet ridership and financial targets, despite the 2015 bus redesign, . In addition, Randal O'Toole, a noted transit skeptic, has been a vocal critic of the implications of Jarrett Walker's  work.