Description

While much of the transportation systems in Europe and the United States are mature (if not senescent), the rest of the world is still planning, developing, and deploying new systems. The accomplishments and mistakes of places like the United Kingdom and the United States, then, can teach us lessons that may be applied to places where transportation remains nascent or adolescent. The Transportation Experience seeks to understand the genesis of transportation policy in America and the UK, along with the roles that this policy plays as systems are innovated, deployed, and reach maturity, and how policies might be improved. The work presents case studies of particular transport experiences in rail, road, water and air (with a special emphasis on railroads), and then finds commonalities in all of these experiences with thematic analyses that are often bold and unconventional. The book is predicated on the idea that the story of transportation policy can tell us what transportation, is, does, and might do in the future, and at an even broader level, how society has learned to create, deliver, and operate large, complicated systems. It should appeal to students and researchers in a broad array of fields, including geography, civil and environmental engineering, and public policy.

Reviews

"The Transportation Experience is wholly unlike any other text on transportation out there. It is wide-ranging, eclectic, well-argued, discursive, nonlinear, historical, futuristic, insightful, and sprawling; it takes us off in many directions at once; and it epitomizes what's so intrinsically enthralling and at the root of transportation: connectivity ."-David A. Plane, Professor of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona

"Two of the most original thinkers in transportation-Garrison and Levinson-have joined forces to created a truly unique book. While most scholarship examines transportation problems from distinct disciplinary lenses, these two self-proclaimed 'transportationists' argue in twenty-eight wide-ranging chapters for a new, transportation-centered disciplinary lens through which economic, political, and technological issues can be viewed in a very different light."-Brian D. Taylor, AICP, Associate Professor and Vice-Chair of Urban Planning, Director, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

"Comprehensive, insightful, and well-written, this volume should be of interest to everyone interested in how we got to where we are and where we will most likely go in the future with transport. It should also be the first volume read by the planners, engineers, and social scientists who intend to devote their careers to transport research."-William R. Black, Professor and Chairman, Department of Geography, Indiana University

"The Transportation Experience takes a no-gloves approach with well-thought-out and provocative statements on transit, energy, the environment, induced demand, and even the choice of paving materials and aid to developing nations. Garrison and Levinson have produced a timeless book."-Reg Souleyrette, Gerald and Audrey Olson Professor of Civil Engineering, Iowa State University

Product Details

472 pages; 106 halftones, maps & line illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-517251-5ISBN10: 0-19-517251-5

About the Author(s)