“One of the nation’s leading experts on urban transportation,” according to the St. Paul Pioneer
Press, Jonathan Richmond, addresses fundamental questions about the
types of transportation services that should be provided and how to best
supply them, with a focus on revealing unstated assumptions and developing
understandings of complex phenomena which promise to contribute to better
decision-making.
Richmond researched his 2001 book, The Private Provision of Public Transport, as a fellow at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The book was featured in an article in The Economist as well as in transit industry publications, while a review in the Journal of the American Planning Association says the book is “required reading for all researchers and practitioners involved in the delivery of urban mass transportation... Accessible to researchers and practitioners alike, The Private Provision of Public Transport promises to become the definitive coverage of the current state of affairs in transit privatization at the opening of the 21st century.”
His recent book, Transport of Delight — The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles, released in January 2005 by the University of Akron Press, is an updated version of his MIT dissertation, which explores the role of myth in making urban rail transit seem attractive. Reviewing the book in Technology and Culture, James Smart writes: “Whatever one might happen to think about the virtues of different modes of urban transit, Transport of Delight presents an excellent case study in the power of myth, and it provides us with a compelling picture of a place where culture and technology blend seamlessly.” A former Fulbright Scholar at the MIT Center for Transportation Studies, from which he received masters and doctoral degrees, he has taught in the planning programs of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and UCLA; in the Department of Economics at the University of Reading; and as New South Wales Department of Transport Visiting Professor of Transport Planning at the Institute of Transport Studies, University of Sydney. Recently, he taught graduate students in the transportation program at Asian Institute of Technology, was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Urban Planning & Design at Harvard University, and taught in French for the transport, tourism and logistics program at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. Recent research has examined transportation service and infrastructure development and management in Bangkok and Singapore.Jonathan Richmond has served as policy advisor to the Chair of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and conducted work on strategic transportation planning funded by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Recently, he completed a month-long exercise in Mauritius aimed at forming consensus amongst actors in transportation policy, with an accord signed by 19 out of 20 participants and the most important proposal, to reorganize transportation agencies into a new Land Transport Authority, adopted by the Government of Mauritius. He has also been appointed an advisor on transport policy by the Government of Singapore.
In addition to specific foci on building better transportation organizations and transportation plans and products, Richmond has broad interests in planning theory and ethics, with a particular concern for the ethical design of systems of evaluation in planning, and for developing systems of government and management that learn and act in ethical and well-informed ways.
With interests in reaching popular audiences, Richmond writes in an accessible style, and has contributed opinion articles to major newspapers as well as delivered public testimony to legislative bodies.
In his spare time, Richmond’s two obsessions are travel and music. He has spent a night in the rainforest rather too close for comfort to an active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii; stayed in a Jordanian desert Bedouin encampment he approached late at night; spent a day (voluntarily!) experiencing prison life in Bolivia; crossed Madagascar by taxi brousse and truck; and hitch-hiked across Tibet to the world’s highest elevation monastery, Rombuk, and Everest Base Camp. Previously the Christian Science Monitor’s Boston-based classical music critic as well as prize-winning Arts Editor of MIT’s The Tech, he is now an advisor to The Tech’s current generation of student journalists (whom he thanks for providing the space to host his web site).
Jonathan Richmond’s resume