Robert Firth on mobility

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a great feature in the Sunday paper called "The Next Page" which gives the author a fair amount of space to cover particular issues, most often related to the future of Pittsburgh and the region.


Left: map by Robert Firth of parking options in Pittsburgh's Cultural Districts.

Robert Firth is an information designer in Pittsburgh, who among other things, created the design scheme for Pittsburgh's wayfinding system.  He has also created an extensive set of maps for getting around Pittsburgh, that look at mobility in interesting ways, a la Richard Saul Wurman's work or some of the map explorations that have been offered at Greater Greater Washington (such as Peter Dunn's spider bus map for the H Street neighborhood, "H Street bus "spider map" can demystify bus service").

I have never met him, but the people I know at Neighbors in the Strip know him quite well, and the next time I am up there (probably the inauguration especially if Romney wins) I should probably try to meet with him. 

In fact, I think I came across his work at the NIST office, as they had one of the Next Page features posted on the wall.  And I have written about his writings from time to time in the blog.

Anyway, he has done a number of Next Page features on mobility, mostly transit, but lately on biking too.  All are worth reading.

• The Long Squiggly Line That's Killing Our Transit System (and News of a Brazilian Cure), January 28, 2007 (on Circulator buses)

• The Big Leap in Transit We Didn't Get -- But Could, June 28th, 2009

• A Life in Pittsburgh ... With a Lot Less Car in It: The 12-Step Program, May 2nd, 2010

• "Ditch the Port Authority"), March 12th, 2012

• A bicyclist's lament: imperfect humans drive cars ..., August 12th, 2012

Other images by Bob Firth