Shifting Gears

Toward a New Way of Thinking about Transportation

Susan Handy, Bhavna Shamasunder, Robert Gottlieb

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• eBook ISBN:
  9780262376969
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Excruciating traffic jams. Struggling transit agencies. An epidemic of pedestrian fatalities. It is clear that transportation is not working in the United States and that we need to rethink our approach. In Shifting Gears, Susan Handy provides an in-depth history of the ideas embedded in American transportation policy and the emergence of new ways of thinking that could give us better transportation options. Weaving in bits of her own personal narrative, Handy gives readers a deeper and clearer understanding of our transportation system and the roots of its successes and failures.

Handy covers the myriad costs of car ownership, the futility of expanding highways, and the misplaced faith in technological innovation. She offers new ideas and strategies that can improve the health of our car-centric transportation system—most crucially, the idea that communities across the country must create an array of choices for daily travel. Shifting Gears asserts that a diverse transportation ecosystem is essential for creating more just, sustainable communities, but getting there will take a dramatic shift in how we think about transportation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Ideas: What are those transportation people thinking (and who are they, anyway)?
• 2 Freedom: Cars make life easier, except when they don’t
• 3 Speed: Going fast is great, but going slow can be better
• 4 Mobility: Traffic is truly horrible, but does it actually matter?
• 5 Vehicles: My car is happy, but I’m feeling a little neglected
• 6 Capacity: All that construction, and this is what we get?
• 7 Hierarchy: I love my cul-de-sac, but I’m not so sure about yours
• 8 Separation: If you can’t play nice together, we’ll have to separate you
• 9 Control: Just what we need, another traffic light
• 10 Technology: And they said Segways were going to solve everything
• 11 Up Ahead: Who’s got a better idea?
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index