Found in Translation: The Transportation Experience in Albanian and Bulgarian

Feb 16, 2016

Oxford University Press sent to me copies of the First Edition of The Transportation Experience translated into a couple of foreign languages. It's Big in Bulgaria and Albania. If you want to read it in English, go here.

Experience with Transportation (Albanian)

The Transportation Experience (in Bulgarian) THE TRANSPORTATION EXPERIENCE William L. Garrison and David M. Levinson are pleased to announce the publication of their book The Transportation Experience: Second Edition The book is available for order at Oxford University Press (see Flyer for 20% discount), Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes and Noble ISBN-10: 0199862710 and ISBN-13: 978-0199862719

Book Description

The Transportation Experience explores the historical evolution of transportation modes and technologies. The book traces how systems are innovated, planned and adapted, deployed and expanded, and reach maturity, where they may either be maintained in a polished obsolesce often propped up by subsidies, be displaced by competitors, or be reorganized and renewed. An array of examples supports the idea that modern policies are built from past experiences. William Garrison and David Levinson assert that the planning (and control) of nonlinear, unstable processes is today's central transportation problem, and that this is universal and true of all modes. Modes are similar, in that they all have a triad structure of network, vehicles, and operations; but this framework counters conventional wisdom. Most think of each mode as having a unique history and status, and each is regarded as the private playground of experts and agencies holding unique knowledge, operating in isolated silos. However, this book argues that while modes have an appearance of uniqueness, the same patterns repeat: systems policies, structures, and behaviors are a generic design on varying modal cloth. In the end, the illusion of uniqueness proves to be myopic. While it is true that knowledge has accumulated from past experiences, the heavy hand of these experiences places boundaries on current knowledge; especially on the ways professionals define problems and think about processes. The Transportation Experience provides perspective for the collections of models and techniques that are the essence of transportation science, and also expands the boundaries of current knowledge of the field.

Reviews

Reviews of the first edition of the book appear in:

ITS Review
Journal of Regional Science: Volume 46 p. 993 (download)
Growth and Change: Volume 37, Issue 1, p. 158 (download)
Journal of the American Planning Association: Autumn 2007; 73, 4, p. 477 (download)

Preface

Part One - Wave One: 1790–1851

1. Rivers of Steam
2. Design by Design: The Birth of the Railway
3. The Turnpike Era

Part Two - Phase 1 of the Life-Cycle

4. Inventing and Innovating

Part Three - Wave Two 1844–1896

5. Maritime Modes
6. Railroads Deployed
7. Good Roads
8. Transit
9. Telegraph

Part Four - Phase 2 of the Life-Cycle

10. Magic Bullet

Part Five - Wave Three 1890-1950

11. American Shipping
12. Taking Flight
13. Railroads Regulated
14. Bustitution
15. Public Roads
16. Urban Planning: Who Controls the Turf?
17. Telephone

Part Six - Phase 3 of the Life-Cycle

18. Aging

Part Seven - Wave Four: 1939-1991

19. Logistics
20. The Jet Age
21. Railroads Rationalized
22. Interstate
23. Recapitalization
24. Lord Kelvin's Curse

Part Eight - Life-Cycle Dynamics

25. Lifecycle
26. Meta-cycles

Part Nine - Wave Five: Modern Times

27. Energy and Environment
28. Higher-speed rail
29. Internet
30. Technology: Hard and Soft

Part Ten - Beyond the Life-Cycle

31. Policy
32. Speculations

Part Eleven - Afterwords: Reflections on Transportation Experiences

33. I-35W
34. Design of a Life
35. Commencement

Part Twelve - End Matter

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography