Abstract
If you decide to develop a network based on connections, the quality of your service will depend heavily on the quality of the connection experience at a few locations. Transit’s ability to get you from point A to point B is no longer just about the service between A and B; it’s also about a connection point C. In designing a connective network, then, we have to care about two aspects of each connection point:
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Notes
- 1.
Switzerland’s intercity rail and bus network is largely built around pulses, a decision they made in the early 1980s for the purpose of improving the legibility and attractiveness of public transport (bus, rail, and other forms). Whole cities are connected to the rest of the country at the same time in each hour of the day—a practice called clock headways. These headways make it easy to remember the entire day’s timetable at your stop. Once you are in the system, any required connections are usually pulses.
- 2.
The only limitation on this would be that reliability tends to fall as transit lines get too long.
- 3.
No opinion about this project should be inferred from my use of it as an example.
- 4.
Readers in countries that drive on the left need only reverse every compass direction and “left” or “right” in this paragraph to get the same point in their terms.
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© 2012 Jarrett Walker
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Walker, J. (2012). From Connections to Networks to Places. In: Human Transit. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-174-0_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-174-0_13
Publisher Name: Island Press, Washington, DC
Online ISBN: 978-1-61091-174-0
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