Best mass transit books according to redditors

We found 15 Reddit comments discussing the best mass transit books. We ranked the 6 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Mass Transit:

u/Xelif · 6 pointsr/Frugal

Travel writer Carl Hoffman wrote The Lunatic Express about a round-the-world journey using only the most dangerous and least reliable forms of transport - Cubana Airlines, a bus on that ultra-dangerous cliff-side road through the Andes in Bolivia, intercity buses in Africa, ramshackle boats down the Amazon, those ferries in the Philippines that seemingly capsize once a month...

...the only time his transport ever broke down? A Greyhound bus.

u/elbac14 · 4 pointsr/books
  1. Straphanger - Taras Grescoe
  2. 9.5/10
  3. Non-Fiction, Mass transit, urban planning, travel writing
  4. Canadian author travels around the world to experience some of the best (and worst) public transit systems. Each chapter is a new major city. Includes some of the best ones you'd want to learn about like Tokyo and Paris, and some lacking ones like Phoenix, AZ. Along the way he interviews urban planners, advocates, politicians, and transit workers. It's a great primer to basic urban planning and how to improve our cities from gridlock from cars.
  5. Amazon.com, Amazon.ca. I believe the Canadian version has an extra chapter on Toronto.
u/road_to_nowhere · 2 pointsr/washingtondc

Yeah, I've been trying to find one as well and the only thing I could find was a shitty t-shirt on the WMATA site in google's cache. Alternatively, this is kind of cool as a coffee table book. One of the additional images shows it has DC in it. I do quite a bit of international traveling so maybe it's just interesting to me but I thought it was a pretty cool idea for a book. I think I may get it pretty soon.

u/General_Awesome · 2 pointsr/oldmaps

Hi, great that you're taking an interest to get him a book on cartography. I've recently began doing the same, and books are definitely superior over wikipedia etc.

  • 'Great Maps' by Jerry Brotton: Very accessible, kind of a coffee table book that you can look into when you have some minutes to spend.

  • 'A history of the world in 12 maps' by Jerry Brotton: Bought this one together with 'Great Maps'. Gives a more academic point of view on maps and on their origins/purposes. Haven't finished it yet though. Kind of unaccessible because there aren't really maps included (some maps, but pictures are way too small). Definitely recommend it, in combo with 'Great Maps'.

  • As /u/churizurd mentioned, Atlas of Remote Islands is pretty fun too. Pricing seems kind of strange on Amazon (1130$ for paperback lolwat)

  • Transit maps of the world is on my wishlist, looks cool
u/mickcube · 1 pointr/transit

is this book common knowledge on r/transit? it's your tumblr in print form.

u/ConfitOfDuck · 1 pointr/Maps

That was a cool slideshow. Did anyone see the pictures of the Swedish subway system that were on Reddit a month or two ago? Also, has anyone else checked this book out? I snagged a cheap used copy. It definitely focuses on the design aspect of the map, rather than tons of info about the subway, but it'll make any transit geek happy.

u/homeworld · 1 pointr/travel

Good idea. I wish I kept more of my transit passes. I'll have to dig up the ones I've saved. BTW, this is an interesting book to accompany your collection.

u/aligearhead · 1 pointr/leicester
u/Nav_Panel · 1 pointr/AskNYC

So, speaking of the west side highway, I did read a book you might find interesting, although it doesn't have many photos, called Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars -- it was written by NYC's 1980s traffic commissioner. Here's a relevant quote from the summary:

> On a Saturday morning in December 1973, a section of New York’s West Side Highway collapsed under the weight of a truck full of asphalt. The road was closed, seemingly for good, and the 80,000 cars that traveled it each day had to find a new way to their destinations. It ought to have produced traffic chaos, but it didn’t. The cars simply vanished. It was a moment of revelation: the highway had induced the demand for car travel. It was a classic case of “build it and they will come,” but for the first time the opposite had been shown to be true: knock it down and they will go away.

u/watchesamericanntflx · 1 pointr/askTO

If you're interested in the urban development/design side, "The New Urban Agenda" is a fantastic read which highlights a lot of different issues and provides various solutions to said issues. It's a pretty quick read, a little dry, but not like a textbook.

"Straphanger" also has a large chapter on Toronto, though not TO specific.

Edit: Formatting

u/ennead · 0 pointsr/funny

If you like these, you should probably have a look at Transit Maps of the World which contains a wealth of information on how these maps were designed and evolved.