Quotes

A collection of quotes and cartoons that in a few short words, or in an image, demonstrate important transportation planning concepts...

Traffic and Induced Demand

“Adding lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity” - Lewis Mumford, Author

"You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic" - A Tom Tom billboard advertisement

“Remember, when asked to prove that bike lanes would be well used, it's hard to justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across a river” - Brent Toderian, Urban Planner/Former Vancouver Chief Planner

“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places” - Fred Kent, Founder, Project for Public Spaces

"We can have the kind of city we want. We can tell the car where to go and how fast. We can be a place not just for driving through but arriving at” - Jeff Speck, Author, Walkable City

Efficiency

Equity and Inclusion

“One of the requirements for happiness is equality, maybe not equality of income, but equality of quality of life and, more than that, an environment where people don’t feel excluded... A citizen on a thirty-dollar bicycle is equally important as one in a thirty-thousand-dollar BMW” - Enrique Penalosa, Former Mayor of Bogata, Columbia

“We need to make every single thing accessible to every single person with a disability.” - Stevie Wonder

"It is unfair to have cities where parking is free for cars and housing is expensive for people” - Donald Shoup, Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA, Author, The High Cost of Free Parking

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" - Brian Sims, Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Land Use

Discussing sprawl... "They take up more space per person, and are more expensive to build and operate than any urban form ever constructed. They require more roads for every resident, and more water pipes, more sewers - more power cables, utility wiring, sidewalks, signposts, and landscaping. They cost more for municipalities to maintain. They cost more to protect with emergency services. They pollute more and pour more carbon into the atmosphere. In short the dispersed city is the most expensive, resource intense, land gobbling, polluting way of living ever built." - Charles Montgomery, Author, The Happy City

Safety

“Streets that are designed solely around the car, are very good at allowing them to smash into each other” - Jeff Speck, Author, Walkable City

Health

"... obesity, inactivity, depression, and loss of community has not happened to us, rather we legislated, subsidised and planned it." - Dannenberg et al. 2012, Making Healthy Places

“There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym.”
- Bill Nye, Scientist

Implementation

“The truth about a city's aspirations isn't found in its vision. It's found in its budget.” - Brent Toderian, Urban Planner/Former Vancouver Chief Planner