Book Review : Transport for Suburbia - Beyond the Automobile Age

At nearly £40, the hardback edition is not cheap which unfortunately could limit its readership. This is a real shame as it deserves to be widely read – particularly by Government ministers and officials with responsibility for transport planning. But this is not to suggest that the book is a lifeless, academic or technical presentation of transport policies.

The book’s simple message is that with high levels of co-ordination, public transport can work even in low density suburban areas.

The book provides both anecdotal and detailed evidence of how the lack of co-ordination introduced by the ‘free-market’ approach to public transport (de-regulation) has resulted in falling passenger numbers and poorer services. In a lively and readable style, Mees illustrates how co-ordinated 'European-style' public transport provides a generalizable model of network planning that has worked in a wide range of places such as rural Switzerland, the Brazilian city of Curitiba and the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver. Mees argues that this model can be adapted to suburban, ex-urban and also rural areas to provide an alternative to the car.

The book also raises issues that some in the transport policy and cycling communities would do well to consider. Mees highlights how “some environmentalists are so certain that cycling is the answer to urban transport problem that they are not interested in hearing about public transport – or in many cases, walking.” The book also highlights how many local authorities cycling policies, because they do not form part of a co-ordinated effort to reduce car use, result in tokenistic cycling policies that are “usually poorly thought through, with a focus on stunts and satisfying the demands of the small, but vocal, group of existing cyclists – whose male, middle-class demographic profile mirrors that of transport planners. So measures that appeal to ‘racing’ cyclists, such as showers at work and high-security storage for expensive bikes, predominate at the expense of practical issues like safe cycle paths and reduced speed limits. Where bicycle routes are provided, this is often at the expense of pedestrians, rather than motorists.” (p190). Sound familiar?

Transport for Suburbia – Beyond the Automobile Age, Paul Mees, Earthscan, 2010.  Available from good bookshops and Amazon.