Confessions of a Straphanger

Taras Grescoe spends most of his new book, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, guiding readers on a world tour of public transit. We travel the subway tunnels of New York, the Art Nouveau métro entrances of Paris, the rapid-bus lanes of Bogotá, the endless bike infrastructure of Copenhagen. At each stop Grescoe blends present-day observations with a brief history and some expert analysis — delivered by policy wonks and politicians alike — on the future of travel within the city.

"This book is, in part, the story of a bad idea: the notion that our metropolises should be shaped by the needs of cars, rather than people," he writes.