Seeking transit

Taras Grescoe is a straphanger: he prefers and relies on public transportation for day-to-day travel. He’s not hesitant to use a car occasionally, but he’d rather be on a train, bicycle or just on foot. His passion for these modes of travel has taken him to cities around the world, where he test-rides their trains and investigates the relationship of the system to the city, its history and its plans for the future.

He begins his book with an overview of China, where sales of 14 million cars a year now exceed car sales in the U.S. At the same time, air pollution—already the worst in the world—is getting worse. In Shanghai’s car-choked metropolis, says Grescoe, “the air people breathe has officially become a health hazard.”

It’s important that we in the developed world, who are well into our infatuation with automobiles, inform ourselves more quickly about alternatives. The good news: although in the past public transportation has been scorned as necessary only for those who are too poor or too decrepit to drive a car, it is fast becoming the chosen alternative in U. S. urban areas.