Some Thoughts About Transit, Transition and Uncertainty

Transition can be scary, but it also presents a tremendous opportunity for change

If you’re going to be at Transport Chicago on Friday, June 12th, I’ll be there too! Let’s talk about transit!

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…On Transit

I’ve been reflecting on my earlier articles lately, and one that I keep coming back to is What is Good Transit?

In that article, I think I pinned down, most concretely, my approach to the work I try to do as a transit planner. It takes a lot to operate a bus service that people actually want to ride. It requires the confluence of:

• Operational know-how to get a fleet of specialized vehicles (buses, trains, vans, ferries, etc.) out of the garage in the morning, back in the garage at night, and prepared to do it all again the next day

• Money to operate those buses at a high enough frequency to make them useful enough for people to want to ride

• Supportive land use that puts a mix of people and things to do within walking distance of transit, and makes it safe and pleasant to walk

• Technical know-how to maintain that fleet, which sees more people (and their associated wear and tear) in a day than a private car sees in a year

• Sufficient understanding of Transit Planning 101 and Transit Scheduling 101 to actually deliver on the promises of Good Transit

• Emotionally intelligent and strategically aligned enough leadership to keep the people driving and maintaining those vehicles at least content enough to show up the next day

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), many of those factors fall outside of the control of a typical transit authority. If the zoning board is hung up fighting about ADUs, the transit authority can (and should) throw its support behind the policy, but ultimately, the decision isn’t up them. Given all the pieces that must fall in place for good transit to be realized, I reaffirm that the strongest play for anyplace sincerely aiming for broadly useful transit service is to to ensure the service they design and operate is useful as hell to as many people as possible. If we make sure that the service that a rider might meet on the road is frequent, reliable, reasonably fast, and safe, then we cast a wider net to capture the places where the other forces do conspire.

…On Transition

In May 2026, Gov. Polis of Colorado signed SB26-150, revamping the governance structure for transit service in Denver. This change signals a coming period of transition, reducing the size of the board, and changing the required qualifications of board members. Learn more about the Denver RTD specifics here.

Transition necessarily means uncertainty, and uncertainty can be uncomfortable. Certainty feels safe, and safe must be good. Transition also threatens to disrupt existing power structures. Remember, once people and institutions gain power, they are generally reluctant to cede it.

Fortunately, transition also present a remarkable opportunity to wrangle up all of the dated practices, institutional grudges, tribalism, and scarcity oriented thinking held up by the flimsy precedent of “how things have always been done,” and really question their merit in the here and now. There’s no better opportunity than a time of transition to test old assumptions, policies and practices to see if they still hold.

Transition presents a splendid opportunity to practice learning, unlearning and relearning, a skill that we all can stand to build.

Learn, Unlearn, Relearn

The trick to getting the most out of transition is to lean into the uncertainty. Any vision, no matter how bold or achievable, is only as strong as our collective openness to shedding the elements of “how things have always been done” that don’t align with the vision. Don’t tiptoe around for fear of breaking something; use the moment to stress test every system, process and practice, formal and informal. Throw out the ones that don’t hold anymore, and have the audacity to replace them with something new.

The most interesting part about transition, in my opinion, comes a while after the transition is made. When you get a minute to reflect on the change, you’ll start to notice outcomes you never even considered.

Transit, at its core, is just a tool for getting around cities. Cities are inherently complex places. There’s always whole lot going on, and no matter how much we study, we can never truly predict all the ways a city will react to something like a transit service change. There are just too many people, that might respond in too many ways, for us to know with certainty what the outcome will be. We can take a guess, and we might be close, but we’ll necessarily be less nuanced than reality. Faced with this reality, all we can do is listen and respond.

If you’re still struggling to settle with the thought of uncertainty, channel these lyrics from Hum Along and Dance by the Temptations:

Ain't no words to this song
You just dance and hum along
Said, ain't no words to this song
You just dance and hum along
Now, dance

See y’all at Transport Chicago!

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