Imagining a “cultural turn” in transportation geography

This paper asks what a “cultural turn” in transportation geography might look like. In taking seriously Susan Hanson's claim that transportation geography has become a “moribund corner” of the discipline, this paper suggests a set of new avenues for inquiry. To do so, the paper draws on fieldwork I conducted in California's East Bay, as well as the story a fictitious transit system called the “B-Line.” Despite being a fiction, I argue that the B-Line offers an excellent entry point into mapping what a “cultural turn” in transportation geography might entail. Speaking to the larger theme of “doing cultural geography,” this essay argues that doing cultural geography not only means continuing to explore questions of representation, ideology, and cultural meaning, but it also means applying those questions to areas of study like transportation geography—areas where such questions remain largely unexplored.