Needed for transit: A sense of fun

Make the transit experience a thing of joy, advises Darrin Nordahl, author of Island Press's ebook Making Transit Fun: How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and Onto Their Feet, a Bike, or Bus). “Joy helps transit compete against the allure of the automobile. ... The fun factor—inherent in the automobile—is what is missing in public transit today,” says Nordahl. Better! Cities & Towns reviews this book in the July-August issue. Among the examples that Nordahl offers is a bus in the Quad Cities region of Illinois and Iowa that has a front that “looks like it was extracted from a Peterbilt semi,” and a rear with a rounded tail and split rear window that “takes styling cues from a 1939 Studebaker.” A stair leading to an underground transit station in Stockholm, Sweden, is equipped with black and white pressure sensors, turning the steps into a "fully functioning piano keyboard."

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