Jarrett Walker

Walker has also written several peer-reviewed papers, including "To Predict with Confidence", published in the Journal of Public Transportation in 2018, and "Purpose-Driven Public Transport," published in the Journal of Transport Geography in 2008. He has also been published in the peer-reviewed Shakespeare Quarterly.

Walker gained significant media attention from a dispute he had with Elon Musk. In December 2017, Musk expressed his disdain for public transit and reiterated his preference for individual transportation in response to an audience question during the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference. Walker criticized him on Twitter, stating that "Musk's hatred of sharing space with strangers is a luxury (or pathology) that only the rich can afford." Musk responded with "You're an idiot", before saying: "Sorry [...] Meant to say 'sanctimonious idiot.'" The dispute led to a broader debate about Musk's opinions on transit, including during a segment on Fox Business Network in which Walker spoke with Stuart Varney and prompted an outpouring of people sharing their stories of the connections and community formed on transit, using the hashtag #GreatThingsThatHappenedonTransit. Walker also appeared as a character in the neo-Shakespearean play Trapped in Elon's Mansion by Joe Bagel, where he criticizes Musk's plans to build underground tunnels for cars, in a town hall with Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti.

Walker's proposed redesigns have sometimes faced criticism from city residents, advocacy groups, or news agencies. In Dublin, Walker proposed consolidating the complex bus network into central "spines" with more frequent bus service. The public transit authority received over 72,000 comments from the public, of which a large portion criticized the proposal as service cuts, despite overall increases to both service frequency and geographic coverage. In Houston, transit advocacy groups and news organizations argued that the transit network still failed to meet ridership and financial targets, despite the 2015 bus redesign, .

Walker advocated for an "urbanist tea party" in 2013, arguing that cities were playing an increased role in daily life and that political systems should be updated to reflect that trend.

Walker graduated with a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in 1980, and received his PhD in theater arts and humanities from Stanford University in 1996.

Walker was raised in Portland, Oregon, in the 1970s, where he became interested in transit issues while using the TriMet bus system. He later worked as a planning intern at TriMet.

Jarrett Walker (born 1962) is an American transit consultant and author. He has a consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon, that has worked on projects across North America, Europe, and Oceania. Walker is the author of the book Human Transit.