Transportation for Livable Cities

I ordered this book for a colleague who wanted to read it. I can't say anything about the content but the book was in excellent condition and the shipping was much faster than anticipated. Overall extremely happy with this transaction - thank you!

Used for a class.

Information presented on the true costs of our transportation choices is articulately conveyed and insightful. Dr. Vuchic's clear, well-founded discussion of holistic transportation systems is a must read. The "silos" we've created for ourselves in the US transportation planning and design industry are detrimental to our citizens. We abound in 'transit' professionals, 'highway' professionals, and 'bike-ped' professionals, but people with a holistic knowledge of how to integrate these systems are rare birds.

Overall an excellent book. Dr. Vuchic clearly explains the history behind urban transportation planning in the United States. He gives examples of cities in "peer" countries that have done an overall much better job of transportation planning than the vast majority of U.S. cities.He clearly describes the advantages and disadvantages of virtually every mode of urban transportation; car, bus, light rail, metro, bicycle, etc. In this book Dr. Vuchic writes about the importance of integrated multi-modal transportation systems, as well as the critical need for metropolitan areas to integrate various aspects of urban planning; housing, environment and transportation.A couple minor things in the book I did not entirely agree with. Some of his comparisons between cities, I did'nt feel were entirely accurate. He mentions Rome in the same sentence as Houston and Detroit when discussing cities with poor transit. Houston & Detroit have some of the worst transit in the developed world, but Rome's transit system, while not the best in Europe, is far ahead of Houston and Detroit. Dr Vuchic mentions Boston in the same sentence as Zurich when describing cities with good transit. Boston's transit system is quite poor by the standards of western Europe. When comparing major world cities Dr Vuchic tries to point to New York as having poor transit relative to London or Tokyo. While New York's transit system isn't as good as Tokyo or London, a much better example of poor transit among major world cities would have been Los Angeles.Despite what I felt were at times somewhat poor comparisons between cities, I still give this book 5 stars and would highly recommend it.

I am also a college student writing my Honor's thesis on a similar topic. It is complete and well written.