Reddit mentions: The best mass transit books

Hi, great that you're taking an interest to get him a book on cartography. I've recently began doing the same, and books are definitely superior over wikipedia etc.

• 'Great Maps' by Jerry Brotton: Very accessible, kind of a coffee table book that you can look into when you have some minutes to spend.
  
  
• 'A history of the world in 12 maps' by Jerry Brotton: Bought this one together with 'Great Maps'. Gives a more academic point of view on maps and on their origins/purposes. Haven't finished it yet though. Kind of unaccessible because there aren't really maps included (some maps, but pictures are way too small). Definitely recommend it, in combo with 'Great Maps'.
  
  
• As /u/churizurd mentioned, Atlas of Remote Islands is pretty fun too. Pricing seems kind of strange on Amazon (1130$ for paperback lolwat)
  
  
• Transit maps of the world is on my wishlist, looks cool

Just graduated with a master's in planning (in Canada). The first thing you should know is that you cannot go into this field for the money or for great job prospects. Getting a job right out of school is extremely difficult in both the US and Canada right now unless you have the right prior experience and skills (which school will not give you). Many people take unpaid internships (which is disgusting on the part of employers in my opinion) or have a long wait ahead of them for an entry-level job.
So if you do pursue planning for grad school make sure you are in no financial difficulties and that you have a backup plan or money to spare in case.

There is also a difference between what skills jobs want and what you'll learn in planning school. Planning school will focus heavily on "issues" in urban planning (social science, econ, history, etc). So you'll be writing term papers just like you are now in poli sci. You'll also learn a bit about planning law and the planning system but not nearly enough of what jobs want. And lastly, planners need to know some software, but this greatly depends on what type of job you have. Some typical programs include ArcGIS, AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator/Indesign.

Learning about the urban issues part of planning is not too difficult in comparison and there are a lot of great books.
The best one's I've read so far are also the books that are best to introduce anyone to the major issues in planning:

• The Geography of Nowhere
  
• Walkable City
  
• Straphanger
  
  
  If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer!

Excellent. Thanks.

Here are the Amazon links for those books for anyone interested.

• The High Cost of Free Parking (Paper book only)
  
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile (Kindle and paper book)
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Paper book only)
  
• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Kindle and paper book)
  
• Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (Kindle and paper book)
  
• The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World (Kindle and paper book)
  
• $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better (Kindle and paper book)

Yeah, I've been trying to find one as well and the only thing I could find was a shitty t-shirt on the WMATA site in google's cache. Alternatively, this is kind of cool as a coffee table book. One of the additional images shows it has DC in it. I do quite a bit of international traveling so maybe it's just interesting to me but I thought it was a pretty cool idea for a book. I think I may get it pretty soon.

Good idea. I wish I kept more of my transit passes. I'll have to dig up the ones I've saved. BTW, this is an interesting book to accompany your collection.

That was a cool slideshow. Did anyone see the pictures of the Swedish subway system that were on Reddit a month or two ago? Also, has anyone else checked this book out? I snagged a cheap used copy. It definitely focuses on the design aspect of the map, rather than tons of info about the subway, but it'll make any transit geek happy.

If you like these, you should probably have a look at Transit Maps of the World which contains a wealth of information on how these maps were designed and evolved.

If you're interested in the urban development/design side, "The New Urban Agenda" is a fantastic read which highlights a lot of different issues and provides various solutions to said issues. It's a pretty quick read, a little dry, but not like a textbook.

"Straphanger" also has a large chapter on Toronto, though not TO specific.

Edit: Formatting

So, speaking of the west side highway, I did read a book you might find interesting, although it doesn't have many photos, called Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars -- it was written by NYC's 1980s traffic commissioner. Here's a relevant quote from the summary:

> On a Saturday morning in December 1973, a section of New York’s West Side Highway collapsed under the weight of a truck full of asphalt. The road was closed, seemingly for good, and the 80,000 cars that traveled it each day had to find a new way to their destinations. It ought to have produced traffic chaos, but it didn’t. The cars simply vanished. It was a moment of revelation: the highway had induced the demand for car travel. It was a classic case of “build it and they will come,” but for the first time the opposite had been shown to be true: knock it down and they will go away.

Found this which maybe of interest:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leicester-Buses-David-Harvey/dp/1445647117

is this book common knowledge on r/transit? it's your tumblr in print form.

https://www.amazon.com/Street-Smart-Rise-Cities-Fall/dp/1610395646

Travel writer Carl Hoffman wrote The Lunatic Express about a round-the-world journey using only the most dangerous and least reliable forms of transport - Cubana Airlines, a bus on that ultra-dangerous cliff-side road through the Andes in Bolivia, intercity buses in Africa, ramshackle boats down the Amazon, those ferries in the Philippines that seemingly capsize once a month...

...the only time his transport ever broke down? A Greyhound bus.