These are really cool - I wonder how the artists actually managed to do these - did they get official maps? I wonder if there are any exposing the many layers of stations inaccessible to the public, as described here:
Only interesting book I could see was about Mesopotamia. The author's fear of technical books is worrying - if you don't start reading hard at one point, you never will. The list he has compiled will merely skim the surface of many unrelated topics and make the author form uneducated biased opinions, since he won't be getting into the gritty realitiesof the matters.
1. If you really need to read technical books during your holidays, you're probably a bad professional, with poor training, little network and worse experience.
2. If you think that authors like Robert Caro, Mencken, Patrick Bouchard, and the others I mentioned will merely "skim the surface", you're uninformed and need to get out of your bubble.
3. If you don't begin reading other stuff than technical stuff, you'll end up without education. Your choice.
4. On a more positive note, what would be your list? I am curious.
Hi, I'm both a public transport planner and a tech founder (www.podaris.com). I disagree with your 2nd and 3rd points.
Funding and capacity limitations are indeed the cause of problems, but they're not root causes. They're symptomatic of broken political systems, broken business models, and a moribund industry that often delivers shockingly poor value for money.
Similarly, more money is a solution, but it's not necessarily a good solution, if the majority of that money will be lost due to graft, mistakes, and inefficiencies. (McKinsey estimates that around $1 Trillion dollars is wasted every year, across all classes of infrastructure.[1])
(Note: this assessment has a lot of regional variance. It is mostly true in most of America, mostly false in Singapore, and has various levels of applicability in between.)
Anyhow, before simply throwing more money at the problem, I'd recommend taking a look at how the politics, business models, and industry workflows can be shaken up a bit.
3. Automation? Depends on the transport it could be 5 years away (trains/similar) or 20-30 years away (buses/similar). Of course the trains/similar is more of a people issue than technical (;
For trains, automation already happened - in the 80's. London's DLR and Vancouver's skytrain are examples of mostly automated, completely driverless, metro systems - built in the 80's.
Afaik, the Vancouver skytrain still uses the original OS/2 software to run.
Start with reading fiction. That should be easy. Move on to history - it should be harder language, but still attention grabbing. Once you are comfortable with that, start moving towards reading textbooks. One thing I do is always read a fiction in between two textbooks - it keeps your motivation up.
