public transportation

Russia Russian Soviet Union Postage Stamps Block of 4 Public Transportation in the 19th - 20th Centuries, Issued 10 Dec 1980 MNH
$6.50
This block of 4 stamps is from the former Soviet Union. The writing on the stamps is Russian. Public Transportation in the 19th - 20th Centuries, Issued 10 Dec 1980 Sled 4k

My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America
$27.50
In America¡Çs 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¡Çs most beloved transit systems and how they work. From San Francisco¡Çs cable cars to Pittsburgh¡Çs 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 ¡Èpassenger enrichment,¡É 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.?

Public Transportation: On the Move 1
$59.95
First.. this book is wrongly credited to Roger Yee. The actual editor is Marc Wortman, PhD.

Are you in the market for a commuter bus?
Do you design, buy or influence decisions for municipal transit systems for a living?
Are you a transit equipment geek?

If so, you might like this coffee table book of U.S. light rail trains, busses & transit facility projects. It is organized alphabetically by vendor (e.g., Sasaki & Associates, Inc., Siemens Transportation Systems, Inc.,.. etc.,) and is filled with examples of mid late '90's/early 2000's transit stuff... but only in the United States (with only one exception that I saw, a train in the U.K.)

If you're looking for a more global assessment on transit or a book of urban transit theory or of contemporary transit case studies, you might look elsewhere, like Robert Cervero's The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry or Hank Dittmar's The New Transit Town: Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development. That is not to say the book does not have its place. It just was not exactly what I expected when ordering it.

"On the Move" is more like a big sales brochure for the companies included in the book, which makes sense since editor Marc Wortman is described on the dust jacket as marketing and communications consultant "for several leading architecture and planning firms."

Here's the breakdown of what's included::
-Early 21st century U.S. (not North American, just United States) transit equipment & vendors. Is this a full list? I don't know.
-Good general but brief descriptions of the features of the products/designs included.
-Fairly good color pictures throughout.. some obviously slick professional marketing shots (even one including John Madden in front of his MCI bus).. a few are grainy or amateurish and should have been replaced with better shots.
-There are some conceptual drawings, renderings and plan drawings from the design firms, but not a lot.
-A couple of odd additions are a description of a highway bridge and interior design of shops in a train station.

This is a book to be flipped through to see some interesting U.S. transit equipment and projects and read a bit about them, but because it is organized alphabetically by vendor, and not by topic, you jump from busses to light rail engineering firms to transit system designers, back to busses, etc.
It would have been better to organize by topic.

Public Transit Planning and Operation: Theory, Modeling and Practice
$68.95
Public transport operators are faced with ever-greater pressures. The need to monitor the performance of individual services, as well as the system as a whole, has increased. Operators are constantly looking for methods which can improve both the service to the passenger and the cost-effectiveness of their operation.

This new book offers the reader new solutions to deliver both better services and greater efficiency, solutions that have been developed and tested by the author in real-life situations for mass transit operators all over the world.

Based on a wealth of experience built up over 30 years working for and with public transport operators, Public Transit Planning and Operation offers a crucial insight into delivering a better service more effectively.

* Cost-effective planning for short range mass transit systems
* Practical approaches to reduce costs and increase efficiency
* Based on more than 30 years consultancy experience in the industry