Issue 511

Navigating a Better Future for Transit

Six Ideas for Saving Bay Area Transit

Improving transit by changing financing, fares, speeds, metrics, territory and maps. Excerpted from the discussion paper A Better Future for Bay Area Transit

The cost of running transit is rising faster than improvements in service. Drawing on the findings of the MTC’s Transit Sustainability Project, this article offers some actionable ideas to help make transit better.

Two Transit Maps: The Current Reality and a Possible Future

One mapmaker's vision for a single integrated Bay Area transit map. Plus, what a comprehensive regional transit system might look like.

Mapmaker Brian Stokle has created two visions of the Bay Area’s transit systems exclusively for The Urbanist . One is a map representing all of the transit routes in the Bay Area to illustrate the potential for connectivity between existing systems. The second is a somewhat utopian vision of what Bay Area transit could look like in the future.

Urban Field Notes: A Spectacle of Ravens

Sometimes, architecture really is for the birds.

I began looking up into the sky one day while passing Yerba Buena Gardens and was amazed by a swarm of starlings shifting through the air. Since then, strolling down every San Francisco street feels like a nature walk, and every building looks like a potential home for all manner of creatures. I really got hooked when I stopped along my commute one day to…