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SLATE

Whats the Best Way To Get Users To

Embrace Mass Transit?

Make it pleasant? Or make it efficient?

By Tom Vanderbilt

Planned cities like Dubai (left) are considered high system/low empathy while places that grew more organically,

like the faelas of !io (right) are low system/high empathy

" few months ago, at an urban mobility conference in #rankfurt, the British consultant $harles

%eadbeater presented a sort of &'y matri& for thinking about how to manage and design cities The

chart was diided into uadrants of *system+ and *empathy,+ inspired by the psychologist imon

Baron'$ohen-s work with "sperger-s patients, who in some cases are uite good at *systemi.ing+

behaior (eg, attention to detail, patterns, organi.ation, etc), but less adept at empathic human

relationships

#or cities, *system+ implied things like infrastructure and institutions, while empathy implied the

cultural te&ture of a place (that ineffable uality that guidebooks sometimes call *soul+) " planned'

from'scratch place like Dubai, or %e $orbusier-s *!adiant $ity,+ %eadbeater argued, was *high

system/low empathy,+ while thefavelasof !io, which grew up organically and are sustained by a

web of informal networks, could be considered *low system/high empathy+ Then there are places

%agos, he suggestedwhere neither a&is is particularly optimi.ed 0ow, he wanted to know,

could you design for both1

2 am habitually doubtful of such sweeping constructsthe world e&plained in a Power Point slide

but 2 was piued by the concept, and 2 spent the rest of the presentation sketching out matri&es in

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my notebook Take 3 military strategy in "fghanistan Drones are high system/low empathy4 the

"rmy-s *0uman Terrain ystem,+ which has used anthropologists and other ciilian specialists to

meet with tribal elders, is *low system/high empathy+The High Linein 5ew 6ork1 %ow

system/high empathy ("lthough back when it was functioning transport infrastructure it was the

other way around) 7r think of "ma.oncom ersus your friendly local bookseller 6ou get the

picture

2 thought again of %eadbeater-s system/empathy argument in reading 8arrett 9alker-s new book,Human Transit.9alker, a Portland, 7re'based transit planner who writes a popular blog of the

same name, espouses a ery *system+'oriented iew of transit: 0e cares less what trains look like

or een that they-re trains to begin withthan that they simply run on time (and take people where

they want to go) 0e has been pitched as a sort of antagonist to another planner, Darrin 5ordahl,

whose ;

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same for buses, trains and ferries+ "nd yet people often become enchanted with transit for its own

sake Take, for e&ample, the proposed @A mile trolley loop (those loops again) in %os "ngeles

running from the Disney $oncert 0all to %" %ie "s the writer D 8 9aldie notes, *the point

doesnCt seem to be improed mobility Downtown already has the regionCs densest transit network:

etroCs local and rapid serices, other municipal commuter lines, the cityCs D"0 buses, Blue %ine

light rail, and the !ed and Purple subway lines+ o why add a trolley to this mi&1 *Tourists and

conentioneers,+ says 9aldie9hich brings us back to the idea of system and empathy, and the debate between the systems'

oriented 9alker and the empathic 5ordahl The latter argues that *if transit is to become an

attractie alternatie to the automobile, the ride itself must offer an e&perience to passengers that

they cannot get within the solitude of their cars+maybe it-s the genteel sociability of a 5ew

7rleans streetcar, maybe it-s the free wi9i'fi #i on an inter'urban bus.The former says we need

freuency, legibility, connections, proper stop spacingin short, all those things that don-t make

good news copy 2t-s no doubt easier to enchant the collectie imagination with a gaily painted

trolley Eauntily Eangling down the street than to crunch the numbers on the weekday boardings per

hour of an authentic %os "ngeles transit success story, the Wilshire Rapid bus line.

But if the uestion is what-s going to get the most people on transit in a city, what-s going to moethe most people, it seems to hae less to do with the uality of the e&perience than the quantity

studies routinely find increases in transit usage linked to things like metropolitan employment

numbers, fare costs, freuency of serice, and gas prices Trolling the 6elp reiews for an

#rancisco-s B"!T system, for e&ample, while one sees the occasional knock for cleanliness, most

people focus on things like ease of use (wayfinding and ticketing), connections, price, parking

Perhaps that-s because our e&pectations are so low4 one budget'strapped and beleaguered transit

planner countered 5ordahl-s ision of a *fun+ transit e&perience with this: *2-m Eust trying to gie

people a transite&perience+ 7r perhaps there-s an empathic component to a good system 9hat

warms a city dweller-s heart more, for e&ample, than a local train waiting across from an e&press

for a uick transfer1 7r transit that comes so often you rarely think about it1 $onersely, a trolley

car that comes once an hourand rarely on timeno matter how droll in appearance, hardly raisesthe uality of life of those waiting for it

9hich is not to say empathy doesn-t hae its place Fen if an #rancisco-s cable cars moed only

tourists, tourism represents that city-s largest sector of priate employmentso why shouldn-t the

city inest in a transit system that largely caters to them, as a kind of loss leader to bring people in

to the city1 "t a logistics conference in 7rlando 2 attended a few years ago, a Disney e&ecutie

made what 2 thought was a critical, and rather startling, point: #or many of the park-s isitors, their

e&perience of Disney-s massie fleet of buses and trains (taken together bigger than many 3

cities- fleets) represented those customers-firstencounter with *public+ transit Disney had, in

essence, to walk the customers through it, to make the e&perience pleasurable 2t was *high

system/high empathy+ $an we achiee the same in public transit, or is it doomed to a condition, toparaphrase the old Eoke about the $atskills hotel, of a place that has terrible food, and such small

portions1

Tom anderbiltis author of Traffic: 9hy 9e Drie the 9ay 9e Do! now available in paperba"#.

He is "ontributing editor to "rtforum! Print! and 2D$ "ontributing writer to Design 7bserer$ and

has written for many publi"ations! in"luding 9ired! the 9ilson Guarterly! the5ew 6ork Times

aga.ine! and the %ondon !eiew of Books. He blogs at howwedrive."omand lives in %roo#lyn!

&.'. 'ou "an follow him on Twitter at www.twitter."om(tomvanderbilt.

http://wwwslatecom/articles/life/transport/;