Alon's one of the main research scholars in the phenomenal Transit cost's project (https://transitcosts.com/about/) so I really trust them to know their stuff relative to Noah and Ben who have a wider range of topics they tend to focus on. I'll also say that the comment's on Alon's blog are probably some of the best comment sections I've seen on my travels on the web. Thanks again for sharing this link page team!
Thank you! Love Alon's work (and have cited it here in the past). Think the Madrid critique is dead on.
But on the transit-disorder connection, I think Smith has more going for his argument than Alon acknowledges. In particular, crime/disorder on public transit is a serious issue in the US, to an extent that's really not the case in Europe or East Asia. That really negatively impacts the ridership experience, which reduces farebox recovery, political support, etc. There's been a bunch of local reporting on this issue on the CTA post-Covid, and I think we have to take this pretty seriously going forward.
And, of course, this is all discussed in the excellent comment section on Alon's blog.
Great list, although I have two rejoiners to the list from the same person.
The first one is a response to Noah Smith's "Good Cities can't exist without public order" piece that talks about the relationship between public transportation and crime that I think does a better job of framing the relevant actors (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/12/24/public-transportation-and-crime-are-not-about-each-other/)
and the second one is a more focused rebuttal of "How madrid built it's metro deeply" (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/12/07/low-spanish-costs-are-not-about-decentralization/).
Alon's one of the main research scholars in the phenomenal Transit cost's project (https://transitcosts.com/about/) so I really trust them to know their stuff relative to Noah and Ben who have a wider range of topics they tend to focus on. I'll also say that the comment's on Alon's blog are probably some of the best comment sections I've seen on my travels on the web. Thanks again for sharing this link page team!
Thank you! Love Alon's work (and have cited it here in the past). Think the Madrid critique is dead on.
But on the transit-disorder connection, I think Smith has more going for his argument than Alon acknowledges. In particular, crime/disorder on public transit is a serious issue in the US, to an extent that's really not the case in Europe or East Asia. That really negatively impacts the ridership experience, which reduces farebox recovery, political support, etc. There's been a bunch of local reporting on this issue on the CTA post-Covid, and I think we have to take this pretty seriously going forward.
And, of course, this is all discussed in the excellent comment section on Alon's blog.