To design transit, you need to understand how and why people move. For Graeme, urban influences, land use opportunities and constraints, road network challenges, and passenger behavior, converge on one passion—creating innovative and cost-efficient transit networks. For the past 26 years he’s focused on building an in-depth understanding of community transit needs and the psychology of using transit.
When working on an ongoing system, Graeme’s approach involves layered transit services: different types of transit for different needs in the community. He creates transit that is easy to understand, easy to use, and simple to operate, which in turn creates its own ridership and grows with the community. Graeme and his team plan single-bus systems up to 1,500-bus systems including work with ferries, LRT, BRT, and subway corridor planning and evaluation.
In major event planning, the work requires an understanding of how people travel to a unique event. It’s something unusual, outside of their normal travel pattern or commute. Using that understanding, Graeme focuses on filling the need for information, providing wayfinding, and supporting human interaction. This planning also includes finding the correct short-term changes to traffic patterns to facilitate movement and keep that special game-day feeling going on the trip home.
A watercolor artist, Graeme focuses his art on architectural views of cities, but he’s also designed graphics for t-shirts, mainly for the local rugby club and school.