Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile

Taras Grescoe

Language: English

Pages: 336

ISBN: 0805091734

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Taras Grescoe rides the rails all over the world and makes an elegant and impassioned case for the imminent end of car culture and the coming transportation revolution

"I am proud to call myself a straphanger," writes Taras Grescoe. The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering―a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way.

Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers―the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world―from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia―Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and create convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation―and better city living―for all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kind of body-to-body crowding has led to the recurring problem of the groper, or chikan. It is not new—there were women-only cars on the Chuo Line as early as 1947—nor is it confined to Japan: there are buses for mujeres, indicated by a pink circle, in Mexico City, and women-only cars on Mumbai’s trains, where “eve-teasing” is a problem. But with over 2,000 reported cases a year in Japan, this form of abuse remains common enough. Scott says when he rides in a car that has reached Crush Load, he

Communities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004. Goodstein, David. Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. “High Gas Prices Fuel Increased Public-Transit Ridership.” Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2011. Hessler, Peter. “Wheels of Fortune: The People’s Republic Learns to Drive.” The New Yorker, November 26, 2007. Ladd, Brian. Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automobile Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. “A Large Black Cloud.” The Economist, March 15,

Haussmann fancied himself a baker, opining that it was “easier to cut through a pie’s inside than to break into the crust.” 7 During the Nazi Occupation, when Jews were forced to wear yellow stars and ride in the last car, the métro became a meeting place for the Résistance, and was feared by German soldiers—especially after an officer was gunned down on the platform of the Barbès station in 1941. 8 Some commentators believe this privatization is in fact “corporatization.” Making a show of

were moving in with their relatives, walking away from mortgages, and renting when they used to own. Yet this is the city that Joel Kotkin argues will, thanks to its “low-density lifestyle, brilliant sunshine, its lack of social constraints,” become the archetype for a new kind of American city. Personally, I wouldn’t bet a plug nickel on Phoenix’s future. With a hundred thousand houses and a quarter of all commercial real estate sitting empty, it could well be the West’s next ghost town. I’m no

forget the vehicular cyclists.10 In Paris, they had no existing subculture of messengers or urban cycle gear, so, when Vélib’ came to town, there was no stigma attached to cycling. The people you see riding Vélib’, in their suits and skirts, are the same people you see riding the métro.” Though environmental consciousness runs high in Denmark, Colville-Andersen insisted that Copenhageners didn’t ride to be green. “When they survey Copenhageners, only three percent say they’re doing it to save the

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