#21: Journey: Live from Austin, TDM meets transit, and a few interesting links.

Welcome to The Weekly Journey - your two-minute journey through the world of mobility and beyond. Use it to stay informed, find a new go-to source, or just have a peek inside how we think. Brought to you by the team at Journey.

Journey: Live from Austin. 🤠

Last week, our team was in Austin connecting with clients and colleagues during APTA Mobility—and celebrating the addition of our new Transit Analytics Lead, Amanda Wolfe. We also co-sponsored a lively event featuring TransitLand, CapMetro’s innovative transit-themed board game designed to foster deeper community engagement. The game sparked insightful conversations, plenty of laughs, and showcased the power of creative tools to bring people into the planning process in a meaningful way. Experiences like this remind us how thoughtful, engaging approaches can lead to better outcomes for agencies and the communities they serve. We had to resist the urge to take a copy home! Big thanks to our event co-sponsors Huitt-Zollars, Halff, Movitas Mobility, and Jawnt for making it a night to remember.

TDM meets transit. 🚎

On April 2, Journey founder Lauren Mattern and the Association for Commuter Transportation hosted transit leader and author Christof Spieler for the latest TDM Book Club session on Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit. Lauren shared she selected Christof’s book partly because of his strong reputation for mentoring and knowledge-sharing—qualities the industry needs more of.

The book club - moderated by Lauren - aims to break down barriers between TDM and adjacent disciplines and spark more sharing of ideas.

Here are our takeaways from the chat with Christof and the session attendees:  

1. Let’s Take the Technical Prowess Off the Shelf!

   • People are smarter than we often give them credit for and can understand transit planning trade-offs when they’re well-explained. We agree. And that’s a foundation of Journey’s planner-led engagement practice.

   • Ditch the technical jargon. Clear, direct language builds broader understanding and support.

   • Don’t just draw lines. Think about origins and destinations and where people want to go. Then get more specific and tell the story of the people who travel.

   • Talking about frequency is tough as it doesn’t have a driving equivalent. Explaining it well matters.

   • Infrastructure often gets the spotlight from elected officials. But service is the story, especially for the community. Every investment should answer: How does this improve service?

   • Advocacy matters. Boards won’t often make bold moves without the public showing up to speak in support of it.

2. History is Messy—and It Lingers.

   • Our transit systems are often shaped by a patchwork of historic decisions, often more random than rational.

   • Christof mapped 57 (!) North American transit systems and found that past choices are incredibly “sticky”. Changing course isn’t easy, but understanding the history helps.

3. The One Big Thing…

   • The most important thing to get right today is land use. Do it well and you’re making transit inevitable. Great land use means easy-to-serve density and activity. Lay things out, so it is very easy to serve people well with transit.

4. Build Bridges, Not Silos.

   • TDM and transit should be closer friends. There is shared passion for creating new riders and building ridership can be a key TDM metric that ties interests. This is a founding thesis of Journey!

   • Transit drives development value - an opportunity to get more supporters for transit.

   • The walk to transit is often the worst part of the trip and is rarely in the agency’s control.

   • For events and stadiums, buses can often work better than rail. Buses get people closer to the front door and can be queued and ready for post-event crowd departures. They are more flexible and cheaper than rail. Transit agencies can do a lot if venues are willing partners. This conversation is timely given the upcoming FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games.

Thanks to the ACT community for bringing energy to this discussion. Next up: parking policy with Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World author Henry Grabar. Sign up today so you don’t miss out! 

A few interesting things. 🧠

Buses in Suburbia: A great dispatch on how Brampton - a suburb of Toronto - built a successful bus network.

Commuting in Austin: Movability recently released their survey of Austin commuters (PDF link) - lots of interesting trends to unpack.

Building Codes in Austin: Last week, Austin City Council approved a change to building code permitting apartment buildings up to five stories to be built with a single staircase. ICYMI, we previously linked to a great resource on the benefits of permitting single-stair buildings.

Boston in the 1950s: MIT has digitized a photo project documenting Boston pre-urban renewal. H/T Universal Hub.

Jobs in MA: We came across a few great new job postings in Massachusetts for those in the market…. SRTA is looking for their next Director of Transit Planning. The MBTA is adding a new Capital Planning Project Manager, as well as their next Deputy Director of Capital Asset Planning. Boston Indicators is looking for a Senior Research Analyst.

A quick Journey update. 🏗️

📃 Certification Update:

• Journey is now certified as a WBE by the City of Chicago, IL!

• We also hold certifications in over 25 states and jurisdictions. Check out the full list.

📚 Book Clubs:

• Chicago City Builders Book Club (Meets Next Wednesday, April 23!!!): Lauren co-hosts the monthly Chicago City Builders Book Club with Marla Westervelt of CityFi the fourth Wednesday of each month at a location in The Loop. This month, they are reading There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz. A Chicago classic, the book is a powerful portrait of two boys growing up in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes during the late 1980s, revealing how systemic neglect, poverty, and violence shaped everyday life in public housing. It reads like an intimate novel or biography but effortlessly weaves in urban policy history. A must read - but also just join if you haven't read it to discuss the ideas with other book club members. Sign up here.

• ACT Book Club: Journey founder Lauren Mattern hosts the monthly Association for Commuter Transportation Book Club. Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World on May 14 from 3-4 pm eastern, with a special appearance by author & journalist Henry Grabar. Sign up here and earn 1 TDM-CP credit for attending.

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