Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

December 27th, 2012 My definition of public transit: Multiple people use the same vehicle to go somewhere together Everyone has access to any vehicle or trip(at least nominally) Trips are scheduled in advance Users pay per-use or per-trip I think that probably sounds pretty tame, but it has some important implications for the self-identity of […]

October 4th, 2014 A friend of mine just emailed with a very good question: Why do the buses just stop sometimes, with no one getting on or off, no traffic jam, etc, and no clear reason why they  aren’t running? The Answer: The buses here operate on a fixed schedule, with a set time for […]

October 16th, 2012 I have a theory that I don’t think is going to be very well liked: Rail transit is as popular as it is in large part because it tends to have simplified diagrammatic maps. People in Cincinnati tend to make extremely sharp mental distinctions between buses and railcars. The two vehicles are […]

February 18th, 2013 I was talking to an environmentalist recently, trying to understand why she wanted to go into environmental law. Why at the lowest level she wanted to do it…what her vision for the world was. I was dissatisfied with her answer, which was posed mostly in negative terms: less this, less that, none […]

October 27th, 2012 There’s a lovely logic to the way TANK arranges their stops in Downtown Cincinnati. All lines can be boarded south of 5th Street Lines to or through Covington board on 4th St between Main and Walnut. Lines to or through Newport board on Vine St between 4th and 3rd. Lines running all […]

September 30th, 2012 Don’t say ‘economic development’! Transportation is one of our most basic human needs. Without it, we would die pretty quickly. Transportation is the act of moving something from one place to another. We need transportation because all of life’s necessities and pleasures can’t possibly fit within the reach of our static bodies from […]

September 6th, 2017 And what if everyone had an even probability of visiting some other fellow cyclist who lived between 3 and 8 kilometers away from them? This would be a beautiful and strange world. Here is what the traffic might look like in that world, assuming there were no effects of congestion. Thicker lines […]

July 20th, 2015 Another in a series of posts that need finally to either die or exit my draft folder by publication. This one was composed sometime in the summer of 2014. -Nate ——– I gather myself in the presence of others though not in their company. They pass me by, a harmless goomba on […]

August 9th, 2013 Below is a visualization of weekly frequency for each of SORTA’s routes, derived from the just-released GTFS data. The area of each square is directly proportional to the number of trips a route will make each week after the August 18th, 2013 service changes. The #1 at the top will make a […]

October 31st, 2013 It’s been available for a while, but I’m now more confident that I actually have everything in the right place 😉 The main PDF version can be found at:CincyMap.org/map That’s where I’ll always keep the best/most-up-to-date regional transit map that I have floating around. And now This map is like a teenage […]