Summary

The need for effective public transport is greater than ever in the twenty-first century. With countries like China and India moving towards mass-automobility, we face the prospects of an environmental and urban health disaster unless alternatives are found. It is time to move beyond the automobile age. But while public transport has worked well in the dense cores of some big cities, the problem is that most residents of developed countries now live in dispersed suburbs and smaller cities and towns. These places usually have little or no public transport, and most transport commentators have given up on the task of changing this: it all seems too hard.

Transport for Surburbia argues that the secret of 'European-style' public transport lies in a generalizable model of network planning that has worked in places as diverse as rural Switzerland, the Brazilian city of Curitiba and the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver. It shows how this model can be adapted to suburban, exurban and even rural areas to provide a genuine alternative to the car, and outlines the governance, funding and service planning policies that underpin the success of the world's best public transport systems.

Choice Review

The thesis of this book is that hub-and-spoke bus networks can serve suburbia and beyond because passenger resistance to transferring is outweighed by the attraction of the additional destinations that can be served. The explanation of this hypothesis only emerges three-quarters of the way through the volume. Otherwise, Mees (transport planning, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia) has written a book that is a bus transit buff's dream, analogous to the much more common railfan book containing lengthy descriptions of metropolitan bus systems around the world and the example of Switzerland serving remote rural communities of 300 people with Post buses and the suggestion that others should do the same. This book is completely nontechnical and displays some incorrect understanding of travel behavior and mode choice. The only numerical example of the author's network hypothesis assumes a seriously oversimplified dispersed travel pattern and minimal impacts of transfers. A brief technical appendix with realistic demand parameters testing the hypothesis would have been a welcome but possibly threatening addition. This book will appeal to a narrow audience of bus buffs and professional bus system operators and planners. The extensive references and index are excellent. Summing Up: Optional. General readers, graduate students, faculty, and professionals. D. Brand formerly, Harvard University