Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

by Samuel I. Schwartz

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 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 knock it down and they will go away. Samuel I. Schwartz was inspired by the lesson. He started to reimagine cities, most of all his beloved New York, freed from their obligation to cars. Eventually, he found, he was not alone. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a surreptitious revolution has taken every year Americans are driving fewer miles. And the generation named for this new century -- the Millennials -- are driving least of all. Not because they can't afford to; they don't want to. They have better ideas for how to use their streets. An urban transformation is underway, and smart streets are at the heart of it. They will boost property prices and personal fitness, roll back years of congestion and smog, and offer a transformative experience of American urban life. From San Francisco to Salt Lake, Charleston to Houston, the American city is becoming a better and better place to be. Schwartz's Street Smart is a dazzling and affectionate history of the struggle for control of American cities, and an inspiring off-road map to a more vibrant, active, and vigorous urban future.

Genres: Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Urbanism, Cities, History, Urban, Urban Design

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 18, 2015

About the author

Schwartz was educated at Brooklyn College (BS in Physics) and the University of Pennsylvania (MSCE) and first worked as a New York City cabbie before being hired by the City of New York in 1971. He served as NYC Traffic Commissioner from 1982 to 1986, and when the traffic department became subsumed by the Department of Transportation he held the second-in-command post of First Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer from 1986-1990. While employed with the city, he attempted to introduce bicycle lanes and public plazas. They were vetoed at the last minute by then-mayor John Lindsay. He earned the nickname Gridlock Sam during the 1980 transit strike when he developed a series of transportation contingency plans, called the Grid-Lock Prevention Program.

After he left the city government around 1996, he started his own firm. He writes columns for New York City's Daily News, lower Manhattan’s Downtown Express, The Queens Chronicle, and in the Yiddish News Report as Gridlock Shmuel. He also tweets, and blogs for the Public Broadcasting Service and Engineering News-Record.

Reviews

[Michael Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, but I'm not sure how much I learned--it's definitely aimed at people who haven't thought too much about this space yet.

Great job explaining the history of our streets, and what does and doesn't work. I appreciate the breadth of examples that falsify many counter-arguments. He seems right on the merits most of the time, although I think he really missed on the zero to one nature of car ownership. Once you own a car, the marginal costs are so low, that you should drive many places. Anything from Uber to autonomous cars that discourages personal ownership has a huge side benefit.

I finished the book, though, thinking that while these are good ideas, I have no idea how to help them happen. What are the political levers we need to pull? Why isn't it happening?

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel I. Schwartz (aka "Gridlock Sam") is the perfect author to pen a book about traffic and transit patterns. He went into transportation planning in the 1970's and has come up with countless innovations to help all of us move a little faster in our cars. Ask anyone on the streets in NYC, they all know who he is and what he wants our cities to do and change. (The problem is the great advice he gives is sometimes not taken.)
His book "Street Smart: A Fifty-Year Mistake Set Right and the Great Urban Revival" is a must read for anyone attempting to understand America's transportation woes. At the heart of the book is how American cities became so dependent on cars and the many problems it has caused. NOTE: A important read especially for the millennials who have faced the worse traffic of any generation and need to listen to Mr. Schwartz. Smart streets? Yes. Cost and time efficient driving times. Yes. Read this book!

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a different take on urban planning in that it is very much focused on roads. And being primarily set in New York City, many of the names and places were quite familiar to me. That said the assertions around the impact on removing parking, skinnying up roads were not quite what I've seen before. One quote that resonated implied a study that was done that compared walking a half an hour a day favorably to taking zoloft. Another chapter downplayed the helpful impact on self-driving cars. And yet the book was a bit uneven in structure and wasn't always the easiest to read. Intriguing though.

[Sarah D Bunting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gridlock Sam’s book is both history and prescriptive; v readable, and not at all the pinko attack on car owners the subtitle might imply. New Yorkers especially will dig it, and if he writes a memoir/oral history of his time in NYC government I am here for it.

[Kadhir Patchamuthu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would tend to agree with the sentiment of other reviews of this book. For people who have no exposure to the topics in this book (many of which I too had not directly familiar with but exposed to) this is a fun and engaging read. I learned a decent amount but a lot of it is putting words to thoughts about transit I’ve had.

All in all though still a very enjoyable read.

[Lauren Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly presented, sanity-saving insight into transportation systems by the master.
Compelling to read, easy to understand, important to realize.
Let's keep maximizing multimodal and multinodal efficiency and access for our present and our future!
A perfect selection to read around Earth Day and my family's relocation to Baltimore!

[Nick Wolters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great audiobook to listen to while sitting in traffic.

[William Frankel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very very very good. I really enjoyed, but also I’m kind of a nerd about urban planning. There were even times when I didn’t really care about the 17 different US cities that were implementing bus rapid transit. I still loved it and it was especially good because he wrote it as a semi-memoire talking about his relationship to urban planning and how it can impact regular people’s lives.

Also shock of the book is that I actually hate cars less now! I used to be believe in the public transit utopia ideology, but I’ve learned that smart streets have at least 5 modes of transportation and automobile has to be one of them!!! Still against free parking though :)

[Miri · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting with important insight on the importance of cities, especially safe cities, through urban planning and investment into public transit over simply building more roads for cars. however, i found charles montgomery's Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design to be a much better written book with more detail on environmental impacts of increased urban planning. montgomery also writes much more than schwartz about how well-planned public transit can decrease racism and classism in cities.

[Jai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for a city planning book, and this is a good one, including coverage of the changing perspective on driving by the millennial generation.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Street Smart, Sam Schwartz promotes a more balanced urban street design to safely handle pedestrians, transit and automobiles in order that those streets might better serve the people who live in towns. He first provides a history of streets, quickly telescoping from the first cities to the dawn of the automobile age. In the first three chapters, he blends history with his own experience to give a sweeping look at what has happened in the 20th century and where we might be going in the 21st. He then takes a chapter to explain the health and economic costs of what we're doing and the benefits of what he wants to promote. The rest of the book presents his ideas on how to make city streets work better for the people for whom and by whom they are built.
Mr. Schwartz limits Street Smart's scope to daily, in-town trips for work, shopping or play which typically average less than 10 miles. He maintains a realistic perspective on the role of the automobile - he envisions a more balanced future, not a care-free fantasy. His history is engaging and even-handed. While we are told many familiar stories such as the collusion and corruption which brought about the end of most street-cars and subsidy that free-roads give cars and not transit, Mr. Schwartz doesn't discount the natural advantages of the automobile such as personal autonomy that would have made it a strong contender for transportation even without the National City Lines scandal. Likewise, his arguments for the health and wealth benefits of a more balanced urban design back up common sense with statistics.
The meat of the book is the four chapters which outline his vision for making "smart streets." First, he looks at "active transportation" - walking, biking and the like. In this chapter, he provides the basic design ideas behind skinny streets and traffic calming. He even looks into the buildings we use with design that promotes stair use over elevators. He uses examples effectively by considering not only coastal cities, but also efforts in Columbus, OH and Oklahoma City.
Even in the "ideal" city, you can't walk everywhere - walkability maxes out around three-quarters of a mile. Schwartz moves on to making the most of powered transportation. Schwartz recommends having a grid and then making the most of it. Through streets with lots of connections provide every mode of transportation plenty of options and "nodes" - places where you can switch lines or even modes of transportation.
After looking at how we move and the designs which help or hinder those modes, Street Smart covers new technologies which can help take mobility to the next level. Mr. Schwartz argues that it's not the car itself that people love, but the sense of autonomy it provides - and transit lacks. When you're driving a car, you can stop on a whim. When you're on a subway, you're at the mercy of the MTA. He doesn't think it needs to be this way. New technologies such as GPS and mobile apps can utilize the huge amounts of information if transit authorities make it easily available to make travelers more comfortable relying on public transit.
These chapters do not provide in-depth design procedures, but instead focus on the big-picture ideas. He hits many topics including lane-width, various traffic calming methods, how to design successful transit lines, and cites "The High Cost of Free Parking."
His last chapters consider social issues and are perhaps the book's weakest. The main point is true enough: transportation needs to serve everyone and furthermore, transit works better when people of all income levels are invested in using it. However, he rolls many topics into the discussions on technology and policy. He meanders here and there and occasionally descends into polemics which distract from the narrative. At one point, he argues that we need regulation to limit “vehicles in motion” and uses an example from the early 80s on how too many cars can cause gridlock. He did not mention, however, whether regulation or nature solved the problem in that instance – or whether it ever has been.
Overall, Street Smart provides a compelling narrative of how our streets can work better for us. Mr. Schwartz doesn't advocate for centrally planning the details of citizens' lives. Instead, he does acknowledge that all policy decisions have some affect and argues that we need to be aware of these. He also proposes using anthropology and sociology to understand how people behave and then to apply those lessons in design transportation infrastructure that will promote better outcomes. While I didn’t agree with him on all points, the thrust of the book – that streets have a big impact society and design decisions are worth getting right – is relatively well made and worth reading.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schwartz was the traffic commissioner that inherited and had to dismantle the failures of Robert Moses’s late career. As Moses mentally declined and subjected himself to the idea that building highways would alleviate traffic, Schwartz was working as a young traffic engineer that would eventually legally supplant most of Moses’s later work. Having never been familiar with Schwartz (most of my education on NYC history ends with Moses’s death), hearing his side of this political struggle was the most compelling aspect of his book.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book is a testament to why engineers shouldn’t directly write books meant to educate the public. Instead of detailing technical aspects of traffic engineering and carefully detailing his arguments, Schwartz comes off as meandering and opinionated, and possibly on the wrong side of history.

The most disturbing aspect of both Moses and Schwartz (rivals, by any definition) is that both are subservient to nostalgia. This is a point that needs to be addressed to anyone who reads this book. Basically:

Moses - 1900s to 1970

to power in an age where cars symbolized freedom, as citizens of congested cities could leave those cities. Contrary to the whitewashed idea of pre-Ford cities that Schwartz would like to believe in, cities were miserable places before cars. Many citizens of larger cities (in a rather dystopian way) literally never left the borders of their counties. Their experiences—emotional, intellectual, financial, mental—were limited (in a similar way to how modern Americans think of the midwest) to the nearsightedness of their cities. When Robert Moses came to power, he (in his own words) took a “meat axe” to the idea that anyone would be trapped in New York with no options of seeing the world around them.

Schwartz - 1960s to Present

to power in an age when cars symbolized inherited misery. As he makes clear in this book, because of Moses’s never ended highways, traffic congestion and suburbs took decades away from the lives of citizens. Children grew up in the backseats of cars, and began viewing them as the opposite that their parents did: no longer were cars freedom to escape the misery of cities, cars were misery to be escaped. Schwartz built his career dismantling the idea that cars symbolized freedom, is responsible for much of the traffic-limiting legislation mayors and governors are implementing.

However:

Moses and Schwartz are both limited in scope, and direct responses to the times that they lived. It is difficult to believe that either were anything more than powerful reactionaries, limited by their resentments and nostalgia. Schwartz makes his limited scope clear in the second half of this book, where he advocates for (the already failed and dated ideas of) exclusive urban transportation, paid parking, skinny streets, and the slow destruction of suburbs. While Schwartz may understand how best to eliminate traffic congestion on a local street level, his social-political agenda for doing so on a national scale is myopic.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful insights from someone at the center of transportation and mobility in one of the largest North American cities, NYC.

Narrated in a colloquial manner, Sam takes complex cost-benefit analysis and translates it into easily understandable layperson language. He highlights the history of how we got to where we are, and doesn't shy away from celebrating past successes like bypassing bureaucracy, or mourning failures like never quite getting the go ahead to levy a rush hour vehicle tax.

He takes a holistic approach to explaining why the smart streets concept can be beneficial to everyone - including those who wish to maintain their cars and sprawl - by consistently focusing on the next generation and their choices.

An interesting and worthwhile read.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has lived many years both with and without a car (I grew up in New York City in a car free household), I was quite interested in the topics covered in this book. Samuel Schwartz, a leading traffic and transportation expert, highlights the many benefits of walking, biking and public transportation. At the same time, he's not an anti-car fanatic and recognizes that people are not simply going to abandon the personal car.

I learned quite a few things in this book, such as that Salt Lake City now has one of the best public transportation systems in the U.S., that one-way streets are more dangerous for pedestrians than two-way because traffic moves faster and that even slightly widening sidewalks can make a big difference in making them more pedestrian friendly.

It was enlightening and encouraging to find out that many millennials are depending less on cars. According to Schwartz, this is more for convenience (including the ability to use devices while traveling) than environmental reasons. People of all ages are starting to appreciate the benefits of living in close proximity to work, shopping and cultural activities.

I already knew, from personal experience as well as seeing documentaries such as The End of Suburbia, that building the highway system at the expense of public transportation was a major cause of the sprawl that afflicts so much of the country, but Schwartz does a good job in recounting this part of recent history.

As Schwartz points out, the decades of the 20th century when cars ruled and people moved out into suburbs represents an aberration of how people have lived throughout history. It can also be associated with the rise of obesity and other health problems associated with lack of exercise.

Fortunately, this trend, with its harmful consequences to health, well being, the environment and even the economy, seems to be rapidly changing.

[Anastasiya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of the history of streets, how America got to where it is today, how we can get out of it, current trends, case studies, and all of the politics associated with it. The story is told in both anecdotes and factual statistics, with the caveat of how certain statistics are taken and what they mean within their parameters. It's definitely a book that is a proponent of public transportation, but more importantly, it's a book that's a proponent of multi-modal transportation; the nice thing about the author's argument is that he is not all-out against cars. He admits he likes his car and that cars have a time and a place and that there is no way that everyone everywhere will go without their cars. However, he creates well-crafted arguments against having streets be for cars only and for allowing government funds to go solely to car-centric infrastructure investments. The book also has great insight into the ways policies and politics, much more than engineering, play a role in infrastructure. Overall, great book that I would recommend as an introduction to transportation and infrastructure history.

[Kazen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am the wrong person to write a review for this book - I was an urban planning major in college and transportation planning was one of my favorite classes. Schwartz is my kind of guy, emphasizing the awesomeness of density, transit, and smart design. (Kudos for that - Urban Design was my other favorite class.) The writing is solid and down-to-earth without a hint of academic pretentiousness.

In short: this planning geek liked the book but didn't learn much new stuff. People less familiar will find it an interesting and readable look at the future (and past) of transportation and transit.

[Tim Shortt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough overview mixed with good-natured anecdotes from the long career of a - swoooon - traffic engineer. The author is realistic about the political impediments to change. This, by making his optimism measured, does leave the reader with some hope that the balance is shifting, if slowly. The last couple chapters, dealing with the opportunities of new technology, particularly GPS-aided wayfinding and self-driving vehicles, were probably the most informative and interesting. I appreciated his professional scepticism towards automated cars. Most of what you read on the subject is far more besotted.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book written by an engineer but without sounding like an engineer surprisingly. A solid read for anyone interested in the "big picture" of transportation engineering but daunted by the technical details. Sam Schwartz does a good job of writing a discourse to further his view point based on personal experience and a little bit of empirical evidence.

That said, the book unfortunately fails to be a convincing matter for those who may not share his beliefs. Those that do will find this a quick and simple read, but those who don't may find it preachy like an "expert" telling one to follow a certain path because it's "obviously right and better"

[Barry]

I've read a lot about urban design, but never by someone with so much responsibility for designing. A fun and informative book, but he's a self-driving car foot-dragger.

[Jason Weill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good if New York-centric view of mass transit's past, present, and future. It makes me want to get more involved in encouraging pedestrian and mass transit improvements where I live.

[cypher · Rating 5 out of 5]

focused on the american landscape and road evolution, nicely presented, with the author's personal story weaved behind the main subject. important subject for anyone into urban planning who wants to know more about the history behind the theory. nice book.
...but i'm also the fan who pushed people aside on the tube running to not miss Hitler's Autobahn documentary when they brought it back to the big screen a while ago. love the subject.
the american landscape was definitely one of the most influenced by Hitler's systematisation project, something we all benefit greatly from today...it is what it is, sometimes a strict regime can revolutionise a field and push development (urban planning and science were definitely pushed during that period, just like space travel was pushed during the Cold War) and, sometimes, with a strong totalitarian arm things can be built faster than otherwise...in this case, the Autobahn (translated as the 'highway') offered the world fast an example for improving the connection between cities, and everyone wanted to follow just as fast. like a lot of other major revolutionary projects in history, in any field (here, urban planning), this is full of controversy and tainted by political propaganda to support political and economical agendas...but this one worked...and america is definitely marked by it, an urban planning landscape hard to define in the absence of its massive highway system which helps accelerate the growth of the metropolis and the economy. we can't really imagine the world today without highways...this is the road we always take to get there faster.
this book talks about the impact highways have had and, in general, how the image of the american city changed, through its roads, specifically. if ever we are to talk about a boom in urban planning (and it is linked to the economy, it just shows up a bit slower on the map, pun intended, and sometimes it's not counted quite right) it's the highway.
...where's the one about the metro system...it's also connected, historically speaking, public transport was always a subject of interest for all great rulers wanting to boost quality of living and economic prosperity...and if we go back far enough we get to the roads built at Caesar's request which allowed for the Roman Empire to become more prosperous in trade and territory, on land, in an age where prosperity was strictly connected to access to a port.
trained as an architect and urban planner (even if that's not my job today), i'm a big fan of the subject.

[Cheryl Gatling]

Samuel Schwartz is a one-time traffic commissioner for the city of New York, and now runs his own company consulting on traffic problems.

He grew up in a Brooklyn where the streets were for cars, but also for walking, hanging out with friends, and playing games. He has loved city life every since, and has never stopped believing in that ideal of a walkable urban environment with mixed-use streets, and multiple modes of transportation (bikes, trains, buses as well as cars).

That ideal was lost as most of America moved to a cars-only environment. Roads were built to carry more and more cars faster and faster, and roads became unsafe for anyone else. He goes through the history of how this happened.

This is what he calls the "fifty-year mistake." He know you love your car. He knows you may not be convinced that people living in walkable cities are healthier and happier than those in car-dependent areas, so he brought data, a bunch of studies that say just that. Also studies that say that building more and bigger roads doesn't relieve traffic congestion, but makes it worse. Also that narrower lanes don't increase accidents, but decrease them.

If you still aren't convinced, he says, make the switch for your children. Millennials are trending away from car ownership. If you don't make your city a haven of multi-use transportation, he says, the kids will move somewhere else that is.

And that is true in my case. My home town of Syracuse has the elevated highways of Interstate 81 and 690 cutting right through the heart of the city. These routes are used by just about everyone to get to work, or just across town, but they are crumbling, and we are in the midst of the public debate about whether to rebuild or make a different plan. Meanwhile, the bus system... well, it could be better. And my 24 year old daughter has gone to live in another city where she has never owned a car and has never needed one.

Schwartz describes different cities around the world that have made transportation successes, and the different ways they have done it. He says that one of the surprising factors helping to make public transportation a success is the rise of smart phones. One of the things that makes train or bus travel intimidating is not knowing how to take it. Real time data sharing can change that, telling you exactly what your best route is, and when and where to stand, and how long the wait will be.

Schwartz also tells tales of people who fought change tooth and nail, but when it came, they liked it.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read about how city streets and space can be made smart (not necessarily in the trch-bro sense of the word).

In one section the author talks about a time when a large road collapsed in NYC and everyone assumed that there would be a massive traffic disaster since the road wasn't going to be open for a long time. But instead, no disaster came and the road remained closed. The traffic just disappeared. "The number of automobiles increases to fill the all space provided." Now that the space provided had disappeared, the cars didn't fill the space.

This is a lesson many city leaders and state DOT's need to learn. No matter how many lanes you provide there will always be more cars to fill the space if you prioritize cars. And the opposite is true as well. Take away space and people will find other ways to get around. "Lane closure not only causes traffic to decrease on the road's remaining lanes but only half of the decrease reappears anywhere else." Road diets work, people.

I love this quote about one of the core issues in transportation engineering: "This problem (speed is quantifiable, livability isn't) infiltrates every aspect of transportation engineering." Engineers are good at dealing with quantifiable data, but that's not really what we need when designing transportation systems.

In one section talking about millennials the author mentions that millennials and younger generations aren't the odd ones with their transportation and land use preferences but the previous generations post-war are with the suburban experiment and reliance on automobiles. Basically every other generation through history have always built dense walkable and mixed use cities (and of course rural towns too but nothing like the suburbs). It was only in the last 100 years where we (in North America, primarily) have ignored traditional development practices in favor of sprawl and car centric designs. Younger generations have grown up experiencing the myriad of problems that come with suburbanization and are choosing to live elsewhere in growing numbers.

[matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more. As someone who considers myself an avid urbanist and isn't afraid to proudly call myself a YIMBY, the premise of this book: car-centric design messes up much of the American city, is certainly something I can get behind. However, if there's one thing that can kill a book for me, it's when the author takes their subject matter and makes it a narrative all about themselves.

Now don't get me wrong, Samuel Schwartz is undoubtedly a very important figure in American urbanism, but at times this book reads akin to the author bragging about how important and cool he is. And on that note, why must Schwartz BEG, PLEAD, PRAY that the reader know he knows physics? Like come on, I don't want to psychoanalyze here, but the amount of times Schwartz jams in some analogy of how traffic engineering is like physics just screams "insecure that people will think he's not as smart as his brother".

Anyways, as for the actual content of the book, you get a few good nuggets here and there, but other than that, everything laid out in the book is probably well-trodden territory for your average nerdy urbanist. Nothing wrong with that, just means the book wasn't exactly a riveting read for myself. If anything, after finishing the book I'm left wondering how many of the stats presented have held up in the almost 10 years since this book's publication.

[Ed Bernard · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars
A fascinating though slightly disappointing overview of how to design and build smart cities, specifically around transportation. The author was a transit engineer or something similar in NYC and apparently coined the term “gridlock.” There are a lot of surprising facts in here, such as the fallacy of reducing congestion by adding more travel lanes and roads (in fact, the opposite happens — and, when travel lanes are removed, for construction, say, traffic is reduced). He makes a strong case for changing the way transportation is envisioned and built in the USA and illustrates his points with lots of examples. For me, the issue is that I already knew most of this from reading other books — “Door to Door” by Edward Humes covers almost all the same ground and a ton more. I read this book for a men’s discussion group I’m part of and there was nothing wrong with it at all — in fact, the writing was witty and fun in places, well-paced and obviously the author knows his stuff — it’s just not a great book for me.

Grade: B

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent. I've done a bunch of reading on new urbanism and other works that have stemmed from this line of thought. Its super interesting and important. The bottom line is that we need to think comprehensively about our actual needs. This leads to realizing that we need more density, more walkable areas, more and better public transport.

The most intriguing part of this book was the claim that Millennials drive less because they grew up listening to people complain about commuting and driving. Since moving out of the City to nj I've been dreading the commute I'll need to start after COVID. There's a bus right outside my door but it'll still take over an hour to get to work. As such, 1- I wish I could work in an office but closer to home and 2- I recognize how great the subway was when I was in the city. I also should caveat that I've always said trains are better than busses and that's going to be one major factor in my choice of where to live. And also when there's no traffic busses should be much faster.

In short, this book should be required reading

[Vaishali · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first transportation book and I enjoyed the historical/social/political perspectives shared on becoming a smart city.

I will remember:
1. Sam Schwartz's journey into becoming involved in transportation and his rise through NYC and onto his own firm as a planner. Our group was torn over his insertion of himself into several narratives but I personally enjoyed it.

2. I liked the various examples shared over how different cities have approached zero pedestrian fatality, to taking back the streets, to BRT, to optimizing VIM, etc. It was interesting to contrast these initiatives to what is going on in Raleigh/Durham.

3. The book dragged at the end and I wish there was more of a theme/narrative to tie it all together. The book ended w/o much of a path forward.

[Grayson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly fun read (and the audiobook really well narrated)! Some stuff I did know (or have been learning from three years now in a much more walkable city than what I grew up with) but also a lot of stuff I didn't. I'd really highly recommend this if you want to understand the history and culture behind the US prioritization of cars even in the face of the need to reduce carbon emissions, and while Schwartz doesn't go into climate change super often it does come up and the applicability is present throughout. Plus, he's pretty positive and hopeful and has a lot of cool ideas for the future of cities and transit, which is a nice break from all the doom and gloom that reading about this kind of thing can be.

[Julie Cornfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good intro into transportation planning! expounds on highway history/skinny streets/traffic calming/re-urbanization trends/evolving transit tech/congestion pricing/history of nyc city planning (Robert Moses, Jeanette Sadik-Kahn)/the dream of a car-free world. Buuuuuuut it felt dated— pandemic has happened, transit systems around the country are suffering, self-driving cars are a reality, there’s a bajillion stats that just can’t be accurate anymore. Also I laughed out loud at Sam Schwartz being so cringe sometimes. This one anecdote about how micro mobility is good because he met a “leggy brunette” crossing the street…like obviously had a huge impact on the transit world but damn he is sooo classic smart ego-driven cringe man

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does liking this book make me a huge dork?

I'm reminded of the scene from Mission Impossible 3 where Tom Cruise enthusiastically tells his party guests that he studies traffic patterns for a living... and their eyes all start to glaze over.

Who would have guessed that a book written by transportation engineer Sam Schwartz would be such an engaging (and dare I say "fun") read. Gridlock Sam spent years as the Traffic Commissioner in New York City, so not only does he have some incredible stories, but his wit and dry sense of humor were the perfect fit for this type of book.

Probably not for everyone, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.