Podcasts · The Strong Towns Podcast
The Transit Tradeoff No City Can Escape
· 1 h 03 min · Episode 711
Episode The Transit Tradeoff No City Can Escape
Putting a route near every community sounds fair until the buses only arrive once an hour. Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit and principal of the firm helping Des Moines rethink its bus network, explains why cities cannot maximize frequency, coverage, and affordability at the same time. In Des Moines, the tradeoff comes with a 10% service cut, long waits, indirect routes, and streets that make some bus stops difficult or dangerous to reach. To understand whether the system is useful enough for people to actually rely on it, Walker asks a more revealing question: how much of the city can someone reach within a reasonable amount of time?
Additional Show Notes
• Jarrett Walker (LinkedIn, Site) • Human Transit (Book) • Des Moines: Welcome to Your New Transit Network (Article) • Final Network Report Reimagine DART (PDF) • Chuck Marohn (Substack)
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Links in the notes 7
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarrett-walker-3789b7a/
- https://jarrettwalker.com/
- https://humantransit.org/2026/06/des-moines-welcome-to-your-new-network.html
- https://d3kezc94ztul02.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/28113648/DART-Final-Network-Report_20260212.pdf
- https://clmarohn.substack.com/
- https://www.strongtowns.org/membership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campa%5B%E2%80%A6%5Dcontent=0_podcast_podcast_membership-link-podcast-shownotes
- https://commons.strongtowns.org/users/sign_in?post_login_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fcommons.strongtowns.org%2F#email
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