Slate last week published a book review of sorts, looking at a tome titled “Human Transit,” authored by a Portland transit planner. But the article is much more than that.

The piece — What’s the Best Way To Get Users To Embrace Mass Transit? — explores the question of whether it’s more important for transit to work efficiently or to embrace the “cultural texture of a place.”

The debate is billed as System versus Empathy.

Here’s an excerpt, but please click through to read the whole thing.

The latter argues that “if transit is to become an attractive alternative to the automobile, the ride itself must offer an experience to passengers that they cannot get within the solitude of their cars”—maybe it’s the genteel sociability of a New Orleans streetcar, maybe it’s the free [Wi-Fi] on an inter-urban bus. The former says we need frequency, legibility, connections, proper stop spacing—in short, all those things that don’t make good news copy. It’s no doubt easier to enchant the collective imagination with a gaily painted trolley jauntily jangling down the street than to crunch the numbers on the weekday boardings per hour of an authentic Los Angeles transit success story, the Wilshire Rapid bus line.

(Photo from Flickr user Averain)