Abstract
Darrin Nordahl’s e-book was the first in Island Press’s E-ssentials series, a complement to their published works aimed at providing pithy versions of important ideas from some of their more popular authors. At under 130 pages, it is a quick and accessible read, organized by transportation mode (bus, bike, and pedestrian) with an introductory chapter establishing the larger premise that the missing ingredient in transit’s success is fun and a closing chapter informally assessing its affordability. As a scholar, the book is easy to dismiss with its informal language, abundance of exclamation points, and strawberry-shaped bus stops as simply a lighthearted, lowbrow effort to lure us hopelessly auto-centric Americans from our own bad habits. Yet for all its informalities, Nordahl is relentless in his attempt to find a new answer to a complicated and unsolved transportation dilemma—enticing motorists out of their cars and onto their feet, a bike, or a bus (to use the book’s subtitle). Though the line between conviction and research may at times be too indistinct, his structure of “strategies” and “mythologies,” when taken in total, seem packaged to introduce readily accessible—if sometimes microscopic—ideas for reduced auto-dependence to those who actually work in city agencies, make transportation policy decisions, or produce products for the mass market. While not a surprising read for those working in the forefront of urban design or planning today, Nordahl’s book is worth a good scan, if only to remind us that simple ideas can be powerful; design should play a role in the shaping of cities at every level; and transportation choices, like most other choices, are swayed by the tools of the capitalist market.
Though one chapter is focused on cycling and another on walking, the majority of the book is devoted to ways transit, particularly buses, might be reconfigured and repackaged to claim a more substantial slice of the transportation market share. Relying on descendants of Volkswagen’s earlier onomatopoeic Fahrvergnügen ad campaign, the Fun Theory of Nordahl’s first chapter is another Volkswagen-driven initiative that claims “the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better” is to make the experience more enjoyable (http://www.thefuntheory.com). Decidedly one-offs, the short experiments recapped by Nordahl (and documented on The Fun Theory website) do prove a point, if provisional. Stairs that play music will entice walkers off the escalator, DVD players that require seatbelts to be fastened to play will keep kids buckled up, and speed cameras that give lottery opportunities for compliers as well as tickets for offenders create gamers out of all of us. Questions remain, though, if such temporary gratification and low-grade bribery actually have any long-term effect on behavioral choices. Globally respected transportation researchers have yet to conclude that quality of experience (over more widely substantiated factors like convenience and cost) is enough to entice choice riders to switch modes permanently (Taylor et al. 2009). This kind of scholarly transportation research, however, is not the concern of Making Transit Fun!
Though Nordahl spends a good share of the text convincing the reader that adding joy and smiles to the transit experience will instigate behavioral change, the bottom line—and the point he makes quite thoroughly—is that transit could fare far better by appropriating the marketing tools car manufacturers have perfected that bond personal identity, status, and self-esteem with transportation choices. Small-scale examples he cites, such as better graphics and improved ambiance, could certainly upgrade the bus experience. But the funding gap between a public sector service and a private, for-profit venture—particularly in the capitalist U.S.—prohibits most cities from the larger facelifts to transit necessary for recognizable overhaul. Nordahl leaves out such public/private comparisons along with such large categories as politics.
Throughout the book, Nordahl recaps many marketing success stories, mostly by automobile companies. Few transit systems in the U.S. would warrant even a passing reference to brands like Apple or BMW—corporations motivated by a high-end user experience and a design-first agenda. The examples Nordahl does cite for their design efforts are, not unlike the Fun Theory examples, either hokey one-offs (a desert tortoise circulator down the center of the Las Vegas strip) or nostalgic reruns (thematically costumed streetcars like the “Veranda” or the “Front Porch” in Charlotte, NC) (p. 18). Though his intentions are on target when he stresses the need for transportation infrastructure to be a thoughtfully considered architectural component of the public realm, these examples seem a slight to more visionary design solutions currently happening in the world of public transportation.
The goal of Making Transit Fun! is obviously not to be an exhaustive text on transforming Americans’ transportation preferences, but a quick read cataloging a smorgasbord of simple, accessible ideas being tested in a wide range of markets. In that light, it would certainly appeal to stakeholders like apparel manufacturers, bus designers, or bike-share companies working on the economic fringes of transportation planning. Two other equally readable but perhaps more expansive investigations would make solid companions to Nordahl’s text for the urban transportation enthusiast. Jeff Speck’s book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time (2012), published within six months of Making Transit Fun!, is also an accessible read, but a more exhaustive and persuasive argument for pedestrian-oriented living. David Byrne’s more eloquent and introspective Bicycle Diaries (2010) taps into the personal aspects of biking-for-life that Nordahl fails to expand beyond their adolescence. His niche, though, is clearly bus ridership. Though not the subject of this review, I can only hope what appears to be Nordahl’s full-length version published in 2009, My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America, is a more worthy peer to Speck and Byrne.
Even in the short time since Making Transit Fun! has been available, the transit landscape has shown noteworthy signs of change. Though mentioned in the book, bike share is no longer just “gaining popularity in North America” (p. 66) but has reached a point where it seems nearly inconceivable to consider an urban transportation strategy without it. Ironically, some of the most interesting new transportation ideas intuitively incorporate the Fun Theory into their operations. Transportation Network Companies (somewhat akin to car sharing for profit) like Lyft and Uber are aimed at flexible, tech-savvy millennials. The fist bump greeting, the hot pink moustache affixed to the car grill, and company slogans like “your friend with a car” all aim to make the multipassenger auto experience more stylish and personal.
What also has miraculously changed is the very basis of the problem Nordahl lays out as his thesis: our nearly addictive attachment to our automobiles. Over the past thirty years—and particularly in the past five—driver’s license rates have been dropping (Goldmark 2012). More than 87 percent of nineteen-year-olds, for example, had driver’s licenses in 1987; that number was down to 69.5 percent in 2010 (Sivak and Schoettle 2012). No longer is the license a coveted threshold towards adulthood nor car ownership such a prominent maker of identity. Pundits speculate that this is due primarily to connectivity via other means—media, social networking, smart phones—and that the costs and responsibilities of car ownership are being left to older peers and parents long after one is legally eligible. Millennials, too, are now favoring dense urban environments, often with easy access to decent public transportation.
Regardless of the reasons, this is the turn that Nordahl has been waiting for—a gap for potential alternatives to fill. Though making transit fun is a novel way to reconsider strategies for luring drivers out of cars, a holistic sea change in transportation thinking and planning has to occur for systemic change. With the tethers of individual auto obsession loosening, now could be the time incremental improvements to transit tip the scales for carless twenty-somethings—and their grandparents. As walkability gains visibility, not only in urban planning and design circles, but also as a means to improve health and stimulate economic development, transit ridership may increase as the longer-distance partner to pedestrianism, particularly if combined with the increased costs of car ownership that comes with denser living. The wider range of people on the bus, the less uncool (to use Nordahl’s language) it becomes to ride rather than drive. Any modicum of investment by cities to improve the experience—and this is less about the joy that comes from music and logos, and more about the joy that comes from accurate real time information, reliable and frequent availability, and safe, clean, and comfortable waiting areas—will make more possible the tipping point towards transit.
This potential tipping point does make Nordahl’s book both timely and prophetic. Playfully rather than persuasively, he reminds us that the design and planning disciplines have a unique opportunity to capitalize on this moment of reinvestment in vibrant urban cores and the reintroduction of transportation as part of the larger realm of public space design. Considering cities holistically, including relationships between work, life, play, and the multiple paths between them, means smarter thinking about connectivity and urban symbiosis. Making transit beautiful, sustainable, innovative, and humane may go further in closing the gap between BMW and Metro than any advertisement ever could, but making transit fun may still be a necessary starter drug, enticing a resistant demographic to try something new.