Portland State University
Center for Transportation Studies
Spring 2012 Transportation Seminar Series

Speaker: Jarrett Walker
Topic: Human Transit: Old Principles, New Choices, New Opportunities
Abstract: http://www.cts.pdx.edu/abstracts/walker_abstract.php

When: Friday, May 18th, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204

International transit consultant and author Jarrett Walker (Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives) is the 2012 Expert in Residence for the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative. In partnership with OTREC, Walker will give a series of presentations across several days:

• Wednesday, May 16, 6:00 to 7:45 p.m. in Eugene at the University of Oregon, Lillis Hall, Room 182. Social Hour and lecture (watch the webcast live)
• Thursday, May 17, 7:00 p.m. in Portland at Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 338. Public lecture.
• Friday, May 18, 12:00 p.m. in Portland at Portland State University, Urban Center Distance Learning Annex, Room 204. Public lecture (watch the webcast live or archived)

About the talk: The historic divide between spacial planning and transport planning has caused many crucial insights to remain stuck on one side of the divide. When dealing with public transit, Jarrett Walker argues that planners urgently need a clearer view of transit’s fundamentals. These are often lost track of amid the excitement of a particular project, resulting in development where efficient (and therefore abundant) transit is impossible. This talk reviews the much-ignored principles of efficient transit networks, bus or rail, and argues that true “transit-oriented development” must be consist with those principles. These principles yield surprising conclusions both about many New Urbanist projects, and also about the potential of 82nd Avenue and similar “sprawl arterials.”

Speaker Bio: Jarrett Walker is an international consultant in public transit network design and policy. He has been a full-time consultant since 1991 and has led numerous major planning projects in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. He currently serves as a Principal Consultant with MRCagney based in Australia. He provides expert advice to clients worldwide

Born in 1962, he grew up in Portland, Oregon during the revolutionary 1970s, the era when Portland first made its decisive commitment to be a city for people rather than cars. He went on to complete a BA at Pomona College (Claremont, California) and a Ph.D. in theatre arts and humanities at Stanford University. Passionately interested in an impractical number of fields, he is probably the only person with peer-reviewed publications in both the Journal of Transport Geography and Shakespeare Quarterly. In addition to Human Transit, he also writes on botany, creative writing, performing arts, and a range of other interests on his personal blog, Creature of the Shade.