Michael Lewyn

<p class="EC_MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman">Because of President-elect Obama’s plans to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure, some recent discussion of smart growth has focused on proposals for huge projects, such as rebuilding America’s rail network.</span> </p> <p class="EC_MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman">But walkability often depends on much smaller steps, steps that require changes in tiny increments of space.</span> </p>

<p> Due to the collapse of local tax revenues caused by the national economic downturn, many transit systems may face shortages of money over the next year or two. Assuming this is the case, transit providers will have to either raise fares or reduce services by eliminating bus routes or otherwise reducing transit service. </p> <p> It seems to me that raising fares is generally the lesser evil, both from the standpoint of an individual rider and from the standpoint of the transit agency itself. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal"> Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I thought I would ask myself: what I am thankful for that is related to urbanism? </p>

<p> Occasionally, someone familiar with my scholarship asks me: why do you care about walkability and sprawl and cities? Why is this cause more important to you than twenty other worthy causes you might be involved in? </p> <p> The answer: Freedom. I grew up in a part of Atlanta that, for a carless teenager, was essentially a minimum-security prison. There were no buses or sidewalks, as in many of Atlanta’s suburbs and pseudo-suburbs.  But in my parents&#39; non-neighborhood, unlike in most American suburbs, there were also no lawns to walk on, so if you wanted to walk, you had to walk in the street - not a particularly safe experience in 40 mph traffic. </p>

<p> &#160; </p> <p> A few days ago, I was looking at a regional planning document and saw something startling: an assertion that transit ridership in my region has been going down. Since transit ridership has been going up nationwide, I smelled a rat. </p> <p> After digging around through a big pile of statistics, I realized that there are so many different ways of measuring transit ridership that one can easily prove either that ridership is going up or that ridership is going down. Some possible measurements include: </p>