Recent Resource Articles

Encouraging Public Transportation Through Effective Land Use Actions

Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 -0500

Introduction

This document is a companion to Metro's Transportation Service Guidelines, which describes the conditions for establishing and evaluating new and existing transportation services, and the Metro Transportation Facility Design Guidelines, which provides information on the standards used by Metro in the design of transit and ridesharing facilities. It provides information for local planning staffs on the effects of land use decisions on public transportation service and provides guidelines for the private sector on how to design new projects to be compatible with public transportation. A short summary of each section and its objectives can be found on pages vii-xi.

Coordination between land use and public transportation should occur at the following levels in the land use planning process: 1) comprehensive plan policies, 2) zoning ordinances, and 3) the environmental review and building/site plan review process. Since funds for public transportation services are limited, there needs to be a better under standing of what factors are involved in distributing these services and what actions local communities can take to promote conditions which can support higher service levels. At the federal level, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration has called upon local jurisdictions and the private sector to assume a greater role in the provision of public transportation services. Consequently, a need exists for local jurisdictions and the private sector to assist Metro in developing markets for transit and ridesharing as well as establish street networks that allow reasonably direct transit service to local communities.

Benefits to transit and ridesharing from closer coordination between public transportation and land use planning are:

Higher transit ridership and auto occupancy;
Lower transit operating costs;
Improved access for transit vehicles; and
Increased financial support for public transportation through public-private sector partnerships.

Local jurisdictions benefit through:

Reduced demand on roadway capacity;
Improved access to activity centers and greater mobility for residents;
Reduced parking needs; and
A more pedestrian-oriented environment.

Benefits that can be realized by the private sector when public transportation is considered in the initial design stages of a new project include:

Reduced parking needs, which translate into cost savings;
Greater marketability of the project;
Fewer delays in the development review process, with attendant cost savings;
Increased chance of project approval.

There are also benefits to the public. These include:

Higher levels and quality of service within a fixed budget;
More transportation options; and
Environmental benefits.

This manual will examine some of the most effective land use tools and transportation management approaches that have been developed to enhance the use of public transportation. We will also evaluate their impact and suggest how local governments and the private sector might incorporate such programs into the land use planning process.

Ahwahnee Principles for Resource-Efficient Communities

Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 -0500

The Ahwahnee Principles for Resource-Efficient Communities, written in 1991 by the Local Government Commission, paved the way for the Smart Growth movement and New Urbanism.

These principles provide a blueprint for elected officials to create compact, mixed-use, walkable, transit-oriented developments in their local communities. Cities and counties across the nation have adopted them to break the cycle of sprawl.

If you like the newly emerging downtowns across the nation – full of people, activities and great public spaces – that’s the Ahwahnee Principles in action.

Since then, the Ahwahnee Principles for Economic Development in 1997 and the Ahwahnee Water Principles in 2005 have been developed to complement this pioneering vision.

Transit-Supportive Land Use Planning Guidelines

Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 -0500

This document contains a set of guidelines which show how all forms of urban development and redevelopment can be made more accessible by public transit. The guidelines are a distillation of transit-friendly land use planning and urban design practices, drawing from experience in Ontario and from elsewhere in North America and abroad. To make them as effective and practical as possible, the guidelines were reviewed and refined with input from a variety of groups interested in the transit-land use connection: professional urban planners, transit organizations, municipalities, environmentalists, developers and the building industry.

Transit Friendly Design Guide

Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 -0500

The Transit Friendly Design Guide flows from the Calgary Transportation Plan 1995 and the Sustainable Suburbs Study. It has been developed with the help of community stakeholders to describe how community design and transit service can be mutually supportive. Application of the principles and policies contained in this guide will create an environment that will help make Calgary Transit’s vision a reality.

Transit-Oriented Development in San Diego County: Incrementally Implementing a Comprehensive Idea: UCTC No. 343 Working Paper

Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Abstract

While transit-oriented development (TOD) has become an increasingly popular planning idea, very few studies have examined how localities plan for and implement transit-oriented projects. This paper helps fill that gap by studying the TOD implementation process near stations on the oldest of the current generation of light rail lines œ the San Diego Trolley. Interviews with planning directors in the region, supplemented by zoning data, archival research, and inspection of station-area land use, all suggest that TOD is a niche market in the region. There are several barriers which have constrained TOD implementation in San Diego County. TOD projects have been pursued most aggressively in cases where those barriers are less severe or do not apply. Overall, we argue that each city, while being sympathetic to regional rail goals, works within a framework of local goals and constraints. The net result is regional TOD implementation which resembles the incremental model of policy-making first popularized by Lindblom (1959). One implication of this is that a comprehensive reshaping of station-area land use will, at best, take years to be realized.

Seattle Station Area Planning: Summary of Developer Focus Groups

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 -0500

To help craft policies that will support transit-oriented development around light rail
stations, the City of Seattle’s consultant team conducted small group interviews over the
course of a day with fifty individuals involved in the design, development, and financing
of new housing, retail spaces, and offices. The interviews helped identify some of the
opportunities and obstacles for more dense, pedestrian-oriented development around
transit stations. While the individuals interviewed were not of one mind, certain themes
emerged about the development potential in station areas and the appropriate direction
of future City policies.

Measuring the Success of Transit-Oriented Development: Retail Market Dynamics and Other Key Determinants

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Abstract

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has become the dominant urban growth planning paradigm in the United States. Yet scant evidence has been proffered to indicate that it will produce significant environmental and social benefits commensurate with the costs of the major transportation system improvements that it requires.

Sixteen distinct planning issues will determine whether TOD significantly changes travel behavior in a metropolitan region. While some analysis exists, understanding of these issues needs improvement. In particular, more research is needed on non-work travel, retail market dynamics, and the likely constraints this $2.3 trillion area of business and human behavior imposes on TOD.

Introduction

Over the past two decades numerous metropolitan areas in the United States have embraced the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD) in an attempt to control and manage the negative environmental and social impacts of dispersed growth patterns (Porter 1997). TOD, it is suggested, will increase pedestrian and transit trip taking while reducing the number and length of auto trips, and it will contribute to the livability that some feel is lacking in modern suburban development (Calthorpe 1993).

In essence, TOD means the creation of denser, mixed use activity nodes connected by high quality public transportation. Proponents believe that a combination of design features will induce travel mode shifts that result in reduced area-wide traffic congestion and improved air quality. These features include improved street connectivity, public amenities, and a concentration of residences and jobs in proximity to transit stations and commercial businesses. As an additional benefit, the enhanced pedestrian environment will increase "casual encounters" among neighbors that can contribute to a sense of community.

These efforts typically begin implementation with major new "mass" transit investments, often light-rail systems, that are designed to link central city cores, suburban downtowns, and other major activity centers. TOD is possible without new transit, but most metro areas choose to make the transit investment. Bernick and Cervero (1996) suggest that what is needed for TOD to succeed is a "transit metropolis," meaning a sufficient number of TODs having balanced or special uses that are connected and allow for efficient rail travel with bi-directional travel flows.

Construction of the new transit system usually precedes the land use restructuring required to effectively support the investment, i.e., the concentrations of population, employment, public amenities, and commercial activities that will attract transit riders in sufficient numbers to satisfy the transit system’s fare box recovery requirements. Commercial activities, in particular, often become a consideration after the transit system alignment is finalized and station areas are identified.

A useful review of previous studies in the urban planning and transportation literature of the transportation impacts of neo-traditional development and TOD is provided by Berman (1996). This paper summarizes several more recent empirical and modeling studies of TOD, and it indicates how TOD success should be measured. Specifically, it outlines the key factors that need to be understood and weighed before significant new transit investments are made. Our aim is to enhance the regional planning process in a way that leads to cost-effective investments of scarce public dollars.

Mixed Use Zoning & Streets Standards: Executive Summary of the Diagnosis of Existing Codes & Policies, Executive Summary

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

Colorado Springs retained Clarion Associates, teamed with Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, LSA Associates, and ThermoRetec, to help the city implement the Comprehensive Plan’s vision of mixed-use activity centers that are compatible, convenient, and attractive. The team is specifically charged with identifying and making changes to the city’s zoning and subdivision codes, as well as to the city’s street standards, to encourage and promote the development of mixed uses as the new, preferred pattern of development.

Statewide Transit-Oriented Development Study: Factors for Success in California

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Provides a state-of-the-practice review of TOD and outlines strategies to encourage broader implementation

How to Make Transit-Oriented Development Work

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Instead of branding anything that is built near transit a successful TOD, this report suggests that projects should be judged against specific desired outcomes

People, Parking, and Cities

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Compares job and parking densities and policies of Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco

Trackway Infrastructure Guidelines for Light Rail Circulator Systems

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The intent of this document is to be supplementary to TRB TCRP Report 57, Track Design Handbook for Light Rail Transit, and it is therefore focused on the important differences between “line-haul” light rail systems and Circulator light rail systems as they relate to trackway infrastructure. The guidelines, narrative, and illustrations provided in this report are intended to highlight many of the principal issues and concerns that should receive attention when designing a Light Rail Circulator System’s trackway infrastructure. Past experience of a number of transit agencies with wheel-rail incompatibilities requiring extra effort and cost to resolve have indicated that the attention to detail required to achieve the successful construction of such infrastructure is not to be underestimated.

The Broader Connection Between Public Transportation, Energy Conservation, and Greenhouse Gas Reduction

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This study found a significant correlation between transit availability and reduced automobile travel, independent of transit use. This study began with the hypothesis that public transportation interacts with land use
patterns, changing travel patterns in neighborhoods served by transit. Importantly, this effect would apply not just to transit riders, who make an exchange of automobile use for transit, but also for people who do not use transit. These people, who live in places shaped by transit, would tend to drive less, reducing their overall petroleum use and their carbon footprint. In order to test this hypothesis, we began with a survey of the literature on the interaction of land use and travel patterns. The literature focuses on three major categories of influences on travel: land use/urban environment, socio-demographic factors, and cost of travel. For the purposes of this study, land use/urban environment variables were further broken down to include a separate category for transportation infrastructure.

How to Ease Women’s Fear of Transportation Environments: Case Studies and Best Practices

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

This study examines the issue of women’s safety on transit

A Modern Streetcar for North America

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

The City of Portland, Oregon, is supplementing the existing Tri-Met Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) regional light rail system with a 2.5-mile streetcar line designed to serve the neighborhoods in the central city core. This application required a vehicle considerably different than the standard light rail vehicle (LRV) – one designed to operate exclusively on urban streets in mixed traffic. The operational requirements mandated a narrower vehicle capable of operating in 3 m wide traffic lanes with high adhesion for stopping and grades. The neighborhood requirements mandated a shorter vehicle which “fit the neighborhood
environment”. Cost constraints precluded the development of a new custom vehicle. The solution was importing an “off-the-shelf” European streetcar and upgrading it to meet United States safety standards, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, and passenger comfort. The selected streetcar
was manufactured in the Czech Republic using systems from several European countries.

Beyond the Tracks: The potential of high-speed rail to reshape California’s growth

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:44:36 -0500

High-speed rail has the potential to offer Californians far more than the opportunity to travel quickly around the state. Throughout the world, high-speed rail systems have had profound and transformational impacts on cities, metropolitan areas and broader megaregions.

California is now planning to invest tens of billions of dollars in the design and construction of a high-speed train system from San Francisco to Anaheim, and later to extend it to Sacramento and San Diego. This investment in the state’s future is comparable to the Higher Education Master Plan, the state highway system and the State Water Project of the mid-20th century.

In an era of rising skepticism and public projects of all sorts, high-speed rail represents the best of California’s optimism, environmental concern and future orientation. The high-speed rail project could have great economic and environmental benefits to the state and the 26 communities with proposed high-speed rail stations. For each of these communities, the coming of the train is a unique opportunity for municipalities to capture new fiscal benefits and to organize growth in a more compact and less automobile-oriented manner.

However, major investments in land-use changes around the stations are necessary to fully realize the benefits of high-speed rail. If such investment does not occur, both the economic and environmental benefits will be significantly reduced.

This paper explores what it will take to generate a land-use planning and development response to the high-speed rail investment at both a statewide level and in the 26 communities that will receive stations.

Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

This report investigates ways that public transportation affects human health, and ways to incorporate these impacts into transport policy and planning decisions. This research indicates that public transit improvements and more transit oriented development can provide large but often overlooked health benefits. People who live or work in communities with high quality public transportation tend to drive significantly less and rely more on alternative modes (walking, cycling and public transit) than they would in more automobile-oriented areas. This reduces traffic crashes and pollution emissions, increases physical fitness and mental health, and provides access to medical care and healthy food. These impacts are significant in magnitude compared with other planning objectives, but are often overlooked or undervalued in conventional transport planning. Various methods can be used to quantify and monetize (measure in monetary units) these health impacts. This analysis indicates that improving public transit can be one of the most cost effective ways to achieve public health objectives, and public health improvements are among the largest benefits provided by high quality public transit and transit-oriented development.

Transit-Oriented Development Policy, Adopted by BART Board: July 14, 2005

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 18:29:21 -0400

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) is the steward of a large-scale public investment, which includes important real property assets essential to BART’s operation. These assets also contribute to the ongoing financial viability of the transit system. Recent system extensions and federal, state and regional policy direction to concentrate growth around transit further enhances the value of these assets. By promoting high quality, more intensive development on and near BART-owned properties, the District can increase ridership, support long-term system capacity and generate new revenues for transit. Also, such development creates attractive investment opportunities for the private sector and facilitates local economic development goals.

Preserving and Promoting Diverse Transit-Oriented Neighborhoods

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:34:06 -0400

To answer these questions, this report attempts to understand who lives near transit today and who is expected to live there in 25 years. This report also tries to lend a sense of urgency to a dialogue between those who want to ensure high-quality transit service, and those who want to ensure high-quality neighborhoods -- two sets of actors who have much at stake but do not often connect. This dialogue needs to be about how to use the increasingly hot market for housing near transit to serve the interests of many grassroots and community development groups working to build diverse, inclusive, opportunity-rich neighborhoods, and in the process increase support for transit systems around the country.

Impacts of Mixed Use and Density on Utilization of Three Modes of Travel: Single-Occupant Vehicle, Transit, and Walking

Sat, 01 Jan 1994 17:24:05 -0500

Findings from an empirical analysis to test the impacts of land-use mix, population density, and employment density on the use of the single-occupant vehicle (SOV), transit, and walking for both work trips and shopping trips are presented. The hypothetical relationships tested fo-cused on whether there is a relationship between urban form and modal choice, whether this relationship exists when controlling for non-urban form factors, whether this relationship is linear or nonlinear, and whether a stronger relationship exists between modal choice and urban form when they are measured at both trip ends as opposed to either the origin or the destination. A review of the literature and experiences sug-gested that a fair amount of information is known about the impacts of density on mode choice. However, considerable debate exists over whether density itself is actually the causal stimulus or a surrogate for other factors.

To address this issue a data base was developed with a comprehensive set of variables for which density may be a proxy, for example, demographics and level of service. This analysis employed a correlational research design in which mode choice was compared among census tracts with differing levels of density and mix. Findings from this research indicate that density and mix are both related to mode choice, even when controlling for non-urban form factors for both work trips and shopping trips. Furthermore, the relationship between population and employment density and mode choice for SOV, transit, and walking is nonlinear for both work and shopping trips. Transit usage and walking increase as density and land-use mix increase, whereas SOV usage declines. The findings from this research suggest that mea-suring urban form at both trip ends provides a greater ability to predict travel choices than looking at trip ends separately. The findings also suggest that increasing the level of land-use mix at the trip origins and destinations is also related to a reduction in SOV travel and an increase in transit and walking.

The Urban Future of Work

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:46:58 -0500

High unemployment rates and slow employment growth continue to threaten our economy. Once-successful sectors are in decline. Even the workplace itself is in transition. New technologies and ways of working have disrupted everything from the speed of a typical product cycle to the amount of real estate a company needs.

But as our economy changes, the emerging story is also a positive one. While many formerly robust industries are struggling, the Bay
Area’s innovative knowledge services sector is growing quickly, led by companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. And while technology allows us to work remotely, the role of the office is becoming even more important. Companies are finding that they need the vibrancy and density of an urban-style environment in order to collaborate, innovate and stay competitive.

How can we capitalize on the Bay Area’s successful knowledge services sector and its trend toward density and interaction to strengthen our region’s economy?

In this SPUR report, we make the case that there is a strong link between density and job growth. In fact, we believe that locating jobs closer to transit, and closer to one another, will be key to the Bay Area’s long term economic growth. We recommend 20 strategies for increasing density, strengthening the regional economy and promoting job growth.

Infrastructure Financing Options for Transit-Oriented Development

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:13:08 -0500

Report website

Executive Summary

Metropolitan areas form economic regions that benefit from passenger rail systems. Communities have learned that the benefits of public transport can be enhanced when station-area planning makes it easier for people to walk or bike as well as take transit or drive, provides affordable housing options, and offers businesses greater access to potential employees and customers from across the region. This type of planning, known as transit-oriented development (TOD), brings together housing, transportation, and jobs.

But while transit and TOD can offer a community a host of advantages, the infrastructure is costly. A street network is required to get people to their local destinations. This street network must also have infrastructure and facilities to support drivers, transit users, bikes, and pedestrians. Sidewalks and on-street parking will be needed, and commuters, residents, and commercial users often need parking garages. Energy, water, and storm water must be addressed and managed. Regardless of who delivers the infrastructure, it must be funded, and a municipal commitment might be needed to instill market confidence.

Rail projects and TOD are long-term economic commitments. Whether a particular market is expanding or contracting, passenger rail and TOD can catalyze economic prosperity. A municipality does not want to pass up long-term transportation investments for lack of funding or financing. In many cases, places with or considering passenger rail already have professional staff with experience in sophisticated financial transactions for various types of infrastructure and transportation finance. Yet funding might already be allocated to other projects, or existing sources of funding such as revenue, formula funds, or grants might no longer be available at past levels. This raises the troubling issue of how to balance investments for long-term growth and development when the ability to fund these projects is limited.

This report provides information about funding mechanisms and strategies that communities can use to provide innovative financing options for TOD. It explains dozens of tools that provide traditional financing as well as new tools. The tools are broadly categorized under:

Direct fees, including user and utility fees and congestion pricing.
Debt tools, including private debt,bond financing, and federal and state infrastructure debt mechanisms.
Credit assistance, including federal and state credit assistance tools and the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA).
Equity, including public-private partnerships and infrastructure investment funds.
Value capture, including developer fees and exactions, special districts, tax increment financing, and joint development.
Grants and other philanthropic sources, including federal transportation and community and economic development grants and foundation grants and investments.
Emerging tools, including structured funds, land banks, redfields to greenfields, and a national infrastructure bank.

This report also describes how 11 communities across the country have used these tools as stand-alone devices, in combination with other tools, or in phasing strategies in four categories:

Station and station-area infrastructure financing strategies.
District and downtown infrastructure financing strategies.
Transit corridor infrastructure financing strategies.
Regional initiatives.

The report also introduces four innovative models that communities could consider as they develop plans for financing infrastructure and creating TOD:

Anchor institution partnerships with nonprofit or private entities such as universities, hospitals, and corporations that are inextricably tied to their locations because of real estate holdings,capital investment, history, or mission.
Corridor-level parking management that would set parking prices and manage parking demand across a transit corridor or system, including both transit station parking and surrounding on-and off-street spaces.
Land banking that can make it easier and more affordable to assemble and acquire land for TOD infrastructure.
District energy systems that could reduce individual buildings’ energy use, encourage renewable energy, and facilitate compact development.

A community’s context, needs, and resources will determine which strategy or combination of strategies is most appropriate for funding TOD infrastructure.Strong markets will have more tools at their disposal than weaker markets. Certain infrastructure components such as structured parking might always be difficult to finance, whether due to costs and risk, market synergies, or project dynamics. Some communities might find that the tools are helpful but that they must overcome administrative challenges such as statutory requirements, hiring new staff, or creating new entities that have authority to originate the funding, enter into financing agreements, and administer the funding program. Some places might face the challenge of limited local capacity, such as a lack of public understanding of the opportunity, lack of local organizations to engage and partner with, or a lack of qualified developers. As they determine how to proceed, local governments could consider some guidelines for thinking strategically about TOD infrastructure:

Have a plan thatestablishes a broad, long-term vision for a TODareayet isflexible enoughto respond to a changing market cycle, funding opportunities, and other conditions. Constant monitoring and proactive coordination can allow local governments to take advantage of new opportunities as they emerge.
Think strategically about prioritizing public investments and public funds.Starting with small steps and moving forward incrementally helps to build market confidence and attract other sources of capital.
Look for multiple funding sources.
Look for a broad funding base, both to generate the most funding possible and to create a more stable revenue stream, which could allow the project to get a lower interest rate. Look for synergies among infrastructure projects. By grouping projects together, communities might be able to create efficiencies.
Look for partnerships to fill the gaps left by traditional funding sources.

Enhancing Economic Opportunity through Transit: Lessons Learned from Denver’s Southeast Light Rail Line

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:17:32 -0400

Introduction

The Denver region is currently embarking on one of the most ambitious and extensive investments in new rail and bus service in the United States. In less than a decade, the $7.8 billion FasTracks transportation infrastructure project will connect much of the Denver Metro region with 122 miles of new commuter and light rail, 18 miles of bus rapid transit, 70 new transit stations and a variety of other expanded multimodal options.¹ This investment has the potential to expand the reach of opportunity for many people, providing better connections between housing, jobs and other essential destinations. New transit service will provide more transportation options to major job centers and educational institutions that provide career ladders and workforce training for people of all incomes and skill levels. Other regions are watching closely to see how the network is built out and if transit can spur new development and redevelopment of existing assets in station areas, as well as how transit will improve social equity for the Denver region’s most economically disadvantaged residents.

Detailed maps created by Reconnecting America are available in the maproom.

Improving access to economic opportunities via transit is especially important to households with lower incomes, who spend a greater proportion of their income on housing and transportation and often have to travel long distances to find good-paying jobs and the training needed to get them. While only around 18% of all trips are made by public transportation, approximately 59% of all trips by public transportation are made for employment purposes.² Traditionally, however, most research and planning efforts focused on transit-oriented development emphasize residential development, with little consideration of how to attract, retain and grow businesses and jobs by transit. In the Denver region, most station area plans mention economic and workforce development by stating that it is a goal to sustain and grow jobs near the station, but without any concrete action steps to achieve these outcomes.

The purpose of this memo is to examine the economic, workforce and real estate development changes that occurred after the Southeast light rail line (hereinafter the “Southeast Line”) opened in the southeast Denver metropolitan region in 2006 and use the lessons learned to guide future planning and policy decisions along future transit corridors in the region. This memo is part of a larger research project to analyze the current landscape and understand what has been done to date to improve social equity in the Denver region through increased transit accessibility. To date, little research has been done on the impact of the investment in light rail on the Southeast Line on new business attraction and job creation, especially for those workers with less than a bachelors’ degree.

This analysis delves into publicly available data sources, as well as survey data of business owners along the Southeast Line, to gain a better understanding of what happened after the Southeast Line opened and inform planning decisions being made on other corridors and ensure that the Denver region is providing access to opportunity for everyone.

Key Findings

Job opportunities along the Southeast Line are primarily in office-based, professional industries. The Southeast Line runs through the Denver Tech Center, which contains the second largest concentration of jobs in the Denver region, outside of the central business district. The majority of jobs along the corridor are in office-based industries (primarily professional and scientific, healthcare, and finance and insurance). These jobs also are clustered closer to the transit station than jobs in other industries.

Job growth occurred mostly in higher-income careers, but large increases in health care jobs suggest more middle-skill job opportunities. The majority of job growth along the line since it opened has been in jobs that pay more than $40,000 a year, which may suggest that most new jobs require higher levels of education and training. Office-based industries saw the highest job growth after the light rail line opened, though the recession impacted job growth toward the end of the study period and the number of office jobs actually saw a net decrease. Health care was the only industry to see a large increase in jobs after the light rail line opened, and since this industry includes a significant percentage of middle-skill workers, there may be more opportunities available than before the line opened.

Job growth in low- to middle-skill industries remained stagnant or decreased. Besides office and healthcare jobs, job growth in industries with middle-skill jobs did not see a bump after the light rail line opened. The Denver Tech Center has not traditionally been a center for jobs in the manufacturing, construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing industries, and the number of jobs in these industries remained fairly constant during the study period.

Very few work-supportive services or affordable housing units have been built along the Southeast Line. In contrast to other parts of the region, there is a dearth of workforce training providers, childcare facilities and affordable housing units in close proximity to the Southeast Line. Very few of these resources have been built in transit-oriented developments along the line, so workers have to travel long distances to get the training they need, take care of their children and find an affordable home if they work along this line. The lack of these resources also makes using transit a significant challenge for those who could benefit from using it the most.

Transit is not the driving force in the location decision of employers, but it is a top consideration. Surveys of business owners reveal that few considered the light rail line when choosing their current location, though this is partly because the Southeast Line was a major job center before the line opened and many employers have been there for a long time. However, employers do value their proximity, ranking it third overall from a list of various considerations they make in choosing a location. Employers also ranked other built environment-related considerations such as facility, neighborhood and visibility high overall, in contrast to other employers surveyed in the region who ranked lease rates and access to highways and parking as top considerations.

“Last mile” connections from the Southeast Line light rail stations to workplaces are a major barrier to taking transit. The Southeast Line is adjacent to an interstate highway on one side throughout most of the line, so workers on the other side of the highway have severe connectivity challenges. Moreover, many of the existing office buildings are surrounded by surface parking lots and busy arterial streets, so getting to and from the stations remains a major challenge. Local employers and RTD also do not provide many connector shuttles or bus routes that could get workers to jobs located one to two miles from the station.

Notes

1 Regional Transportation District, About FasTracks. Available at http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/main_26 (last accessed January 4, 2013).

2 American Public Transportation Association, 2007. Public Transportation Fact Book. Available at http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/pages/transitstats.aspx (last accessed January 4, 2013).

L.A. Story: A Reality Check for Transit-Based Housing, Working Paper UCTC No. 250

Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 -0500

Abstract

An increasingly inﬂuential planning strategy for leveraging rail transit is high-density resident development near rail stations, or ‘Transit-Based Housing.’ Proponents argue such projects will get more people onto transit, reduce developers’ expenses, and lower commuting costs, housing prices, and air pollution in the bargain. While most of the literature has addressed the merit of such projects, this paper considers a separate question: Whatever virtues transit-based housing may have, what are its prospects?

We ﬁnd that transit-based housing faces a much steeper uphill battle than the conventional wisdom suggests. Cities’ parochial ﬁscal and economic interests appear to conﬂict with transit-based housing in several fundamental respects, a view strongly supported by a behavioral analysis of zoning data for all 282 existing and proposed Southern California rail transit stations. Municipalities behave as if they prefer to use rail transit stations for economic rather than residential development, suggesting that transit-oriented planning strategies would proﬁt from more attention to their local ﬁscal and economic beneﬁts.

Integrating Land-Use and Transportation Planning for Livable Communities, Making the Connections: A summary of the LUTRAQ project

Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 -0500

This booklet describes the problems the LUTRAQ project sought to address: dispersed land-use patterns that encourage auto use and reliance on new highway capacity to relieve congestion. The second section reviews the project’s technical and political processes, focusing on land-use plans and design standards, transportation investments, and market strategies.

In 1988, a new land-use and transportation alternative and an innovative research program began to take shape in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. What started with opposition to the proposed Western Bypass suburban freeway, evolved into the project this report reviews, Making the Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality Connection (LUTRAQ).

TCRP 31: Funding Strategies for Public Transportation, Final Report

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 -0500

The transit industry in the United States has experienced a number of changes in recent years. There have been demographic shifts in transit markets, policy initiatives, and funding changes at all levels — these changes have led to concerns about the ability of transit agencies to remain financially viable over the short and long terms. TCRP Project H-7 was initiated to highlight these issues and suggest solutions to this perceived growing financial "crisis" among U.S. transit agencies.

Over the past 30 years, transit agencies have been supported primarily by federal, state, and local funds, combined with fare revenues. However, many transit agencies believe that operating and capital costs are rising rapidly, in part because of policy goals and mandates, while farebox revenues and public funding — especially federal funding — are not keeping pace. Federal operating funding levels in particular have decreased significantly since 1994 and may be eliminated in 1998 except in the smallest urbanized and rural areas. As a result, many agencies
have been compelled to adjust service levels and modify their funding strategies by increasing state and local shares and looking to non-traditional revenue sources.

Transit Agency Partnering in Supporting Development Around Rail Transit Stations, APTA 1999 Commuter Rail/Rapid Transit Conference Proceedings Paper

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 -0500

With the growth of rail transit in the United States, transit agencies are engaging in a number of creative partnerships to support transit-oriented developments (TODs) around rail transit stations. Recent experience with rail projects in the United States reveals a number of strategies that transit agencies use to support TODs. This report presents a summary of recent transit agency practice with transitoriented development. This summary is based on materials produced by each agency highlighting their approaches to supporting transit-oriented developments and on interviews with key staff at each agency.

Assessing the Economic Benefits of Transit Projects

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

The development of effective transit systems requires investments of millions or even billions of dollars in public money. Controversies often rage over whether such investments are efficient or whether the money would be better spent on other public projects or even returned to the taxpayer. Public servants charged with allocating investment dollars therefore need ways of assessing the economic benefits that arise from transit projects to see whether they are sufficient to justify the cost. This paper seeks to provide an overview to the issues and methods related to the assessment of economic impacts from transit projects

Modal Alternatives for Transit-Oriented Communities

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

This paper compiles, in concise form, descriptions of the transportation modes and families in use today, particularly those classified as public transportation. Moreover, an emphasis is placed on the fit between forms of public transportation and forms of urban development.

Parking and TOD: Challenges and Opportunities, Statewide Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Study: Factors for Succes in California Special Report

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Introduction

This special report is intended to provide information to local jurisdictions, transit agencies, developers, financial institutions, and others as they develop and implement parking standards and programs for transit-oriented developments (TODs) in California. It provides an overview of available information regarding the extent to which parking for various types of land uses may be reduced in the vicinity of major transit stations1. It is one of a series of reports produced for the California Department of Transportation, Division of Mass Transportation’s Statewide Transit-Oriented Development Study. This report is not intended to be an exhaustive source of information on TOD parking issues; rather, it is meant as a starting point upon which additional information can and should be added. For some topics (e.g., shared parking, parking planning), guidebooks currently exist which can be referenced for more detailed information (see Sources section).

TOD offers significant opportunities to reduce the number of parking spaces below conventional parking requirements for retail, office and residential land uses. TOD provides these opportunities by increasing transit accessibility and combining a mixture of land uses. At the same time, increased densities in TODs, coupled with the goal of improving accessibility for pedestrians to transit stations, often means building structured parking garages. Parking spaces in structures can cost from $10,000 to $30,000 each, compared to about $5,000 per space for surface parking (depending on underlying land values, type of parking structure [e.g., above or below ground], landscaping, and architectural quality). These increased costs can negatively affect the financial feasibility of projects, even if they are otherwise profitable.

Hence, if the design and location of TODs enables a reduction in the number of parking spaces needed, the cost savings can be significant.2 Reduced parking requirements can lower TOD construction costs, which in turn can make housing more affordable and/or allow more development to be built on sites near transit. For example, in one case study of six San Francisco neighborhoods, the standard requirement for off-street parking was found to increase costs for single family homes and condominiums by more than ten percent3.

This study also found that, based on home selling prices and the distribution of incomes for San Francisco residents, an additional 26,000 households could potentially afford to purchase condominiums if off-street parking was not legally required.

In addition, reduced parking requirements can:

Reduce residential parking rates
Reduce office/commercial rents
Lessen urban water runoff
Reinforce/encourage transit use
Increase taxable square footage
Improve local traffic circulation
Improve urban design, and
Generate congestion management credits for businesses (where applicable)

The research summarized in this special report indicates that TOD can potentially reduce parking per household by approximately 20%, compared to non transit-oriented land uses. A wide range of parking reductions (from 12% to 60%) has also been found for commercial parking in TODs. To date, however, there are no clear conclusions regarding how much parking may reasonably be reduced for any particular TOD. Therefore parking needs must be calculated on a site-by-site basis.

Overview of Report Organization

This special report is organized in five main sections. The first section presents general findings regarding the extent to which parking can be reduced in TODs, which derive from interviews/surveys of transit agencies and developers in California and around the country, and a review of the literature. Sources that were reviewed include academic studies, trade journal articles, consultant reports, agency studies, and planning documents available in hard copy or on the Internet.

These findings show that parking can successfully be reduced in TODs. However, there is no single formula that can or should always be used, and parking needs can vary widely in various locations -- even within the same jurisdiction. In establishing parking codes, studies have found that jurisdictions often simply use other localities’ parking codes or strategies, which often lead to parking problems. Experience has shown that strict adherence to local parking codes or national Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) parking data often creates oversupplies of parking in many places.

Thus, the general findings offered here should be tempered with additional research that accounts for various factors that affect parking demand, such as: the specific tenant mix in a particular project (e.g., office worker densities, shoppers per retail employee); the quality of the local transit service; applicable trip reduction requirements and/or incentives; residential demographics; site conditions (e.g., pedestrian circulation constraints, parking spillover potential); as well as other local factors that can affect transit and auto use rates.

The next two sections of the report present summaries of site-specific and regional strategies that various jurisdictions and developers are using to reduce parking or to use parking more efficiently in TODs.

However, since it is not feasible to universally apply the specific parking reduction factors and strategies described in this special report to all situations, the fourth section of the special report suggests a generalized process for developing a local parking program. The primary purpose of this section is to point out general issues that need to be addressed.

Finally, the report provides several appendices that supplement other information presented and provide some illustrative examples. Appendix A summarizes a general methodology for implementing shared parking strategies. Appendix B describes parking policies and programs in a number of “case study” TODs that were analyzed within California and in other parts of the U.S. for this report. In addition, Appendix B summarizes information about actual experience that has resulted from implementing these policies. It is difficult to form any conclusions about “ideal” TOD parking standards or programs based on the specific information presented in Appendix B alone, however, because each of the case study TODs are unique with respect to their context and experience. For instance, some of these TODs are still under construction, some do not reduce parking, while others do reduce parking, but for different reasons.

At the same time, much of the information presented in the Appendix volume is consistent with other research and professional judgment regarding parking and TODs. Appendix C lists maximum parking standards that local governments in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area have established to reduce the number of non-residential parking spaces allowed per capita. Finally, Appendix D presents “parking planning worksheets” that can be used in estimating parking requirements in TODs.

Importantly, this special report does not address two important issues that pertain to commuter parking and TODs, namely:

It does not identify TODs that should include park-and-ride facilities, as this is a transit system planning question that is best answered by local transit agency staff. This issue should be resolved as early as possible in the design of transit stations and TODs, however, so that all parking planning efforts can be integrated.
It also does not provide suggestions on how to configure parking to maximize accessibility and safety for pedestrians. This is primarily an urban design issue.

Spring Valley and Main Street Station Area Plans

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Station area plans for two DART stations in the City of Richardson

Zoning Practice: August 2004 Issue Number Eight Transit-Oriented Development

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Driving Growth Through Transit-Oriented Development and Using Zoning to Reap the Beneﬁts of TOD.

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has been a planning buzzword for over a decade. The notion of lively, walkable places near transit appeals to many, as does the prospect of improving transit performance, reducing congestion, and reducing the amount of time busy families spend in the car.

A Planner's Guide to Fixed Guideway Electrification Projects

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

This article sets out to highlight some of the major elements of fixed guideway and railroad electrification systems, and to point out what transportation planners should be aware of as they evaluate alternatives for new public transportation projects in their communities. While planners continue to debate the cost effectiveness of rail transit as a force in urban development and land use, in those cases where rail transit is a viable option, electrification inevitably is a factor, whether one is considering streetcars, light rail, heavy-rail, commuter rail or even BRT systems.

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Guidebook

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

This guidebook is intended to create a shared understanding of what Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is and what its benefits are, in addition to identifying the key elements and factors for success. It will be especially useful for those participating in the creation of, reviewing, or adopting station area plans: City Council members, Planning Commissioners, a wide range of City staff, developers, property owners who own land within a TOD district, and residentswho live within and immediately around a TOD district. This guidebook defines TOD and provides a list of guiding principles, identifies the City of Austin’s mission and goals with respect to TOD, describes Austin’s process for developing a TOD ordinance, provides a summary of the ordinance, outlines the Station Area Planning (SAP) process and SAP elements, and lists several TOD resources.

Funding Bus Rapid Transit in the U.S.

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The number of U.S. communities planning or studying bus rapid transit has increased significantly in the last few years. This is the result of recent BRT projects that have proven that BRT can work in the US. Also, there is fierce competition for federal capital project funds. Many transit agencies are also facing internal budget restrictions. This is creating a strong incentive to find more cost-effective transit options. This paper looks at the current state of BRT funding. It briefly describes major sources of BRT funding, and then describes how 18 BRT, rapid bus, and express bus projects – both operating and planned — have used these sources. The paper finds that, while funding opportunities for BRT have improved over the last few years, there are still some artificial barriers to BRT funding that will continue to challenge transit agencies if they are not addressed.

Preserving Opportunities: Saving Affordable Homes Near Transit

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Study examines federally assisted affordable housing located in close proximity to public transportation in 8 cities (2008)

Preserving affordable housing near transit means more than simply saving a building—it means preserving opportunities for low-income families and seniors to access jobs and services. Next to housing, transportation is the second highest household cost for most Americans. Affordable housing located near transit allows families and seniors to live an affordable lifestyle and access employment, education, retail, and community opportunities. Reconnecting America and the National Housing Trust identified federally assisted affordable housing located in close proximity to existing or proposed public transportation in 8 cities: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, New York City, Portland, St. Louis, and Seattle (See attached maps). More than 100,000 federally assisted housing units sheltering more than 300,000 individuals in these cities are located in transit rich neighborhoods. Approximately 65,500 of these units- or 63 percent of total units near transit- are covered by federal rental assistance contracts expiring before the end of 2012.

Traffic Generated by Mixed-Use Developments – A Six- Region Study Using Consistent Built Environmental Measures

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The purpose of this study was to develop new methodology for more accurately predicting the traffic impacts of mixed-use developments

Creating Successful Transit- Oriented Districts in Los Angeles: A Citywide Toolkit for Achieving Regional Goals

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Report assesses opportunities to improve land use and transportation linkages in communities surrounding 70 existing and planned transit stations

Inside the Growth Machine: Real Estate Professionals on the Perceived Challenges of Urban Development

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The growth machine framework maintains that coalitions of elites work together to promote and adopt policies and practices that best serve their economic interests and propel cities toward growth. While numerous scholars have subjected the growth machine to theoretical and empirical tests, we know little about the beliefs and perspectives of individual actors within the growth machine. To address this gap in the literature, the present research uses in-depth interviews to examine the subjective views of one segment of the growth machine—real estate professionals. The findings demonstrate that these practitioners see the exercise of power at the local level to be less coordinated, consensus-driven, and growth-oriented than the growth machine thesis suggests. Specifically, they see their own power and capacity to act to be constrained by four factors: the (re)-election interests of politicians; the professional interests of municipal economic development staff; bureaucratic procedures and zoning regulations; and mobilized community members and groups. The research concludes with a discussion of the implications for urban political theory and suggestions for future research.

Beursplein, Rotterdam

Mon, 18 Mar 1996 17:39:14 -0500

Rotterdam's main shopping centre was severed by a busy traffic route. A multifunctional complex was built at the intersection of Beursplein and Coolsingel, supplying additional retail space, recreation, homes and car parking. Rotterdam's main shopping centre, consisting of the old zone, Beursplein and Hoogstraat, and the postwar Lijnbaan (by Van den Broek & Bakema), was severed by a busy traffic route, Coolsingel. The area needed upgrading with more shops, greater visual unity and improved connection between the two sides of Coolsingel. To this end, de Architekten Cie. built a multifunctional complex at the intersection of Beursplein and Coolsingel, supplying additional retail space, recreation, homes and car parking. The complex consists of two parts: Beurstraverse, a sunken and partly underground shopping street passing beneath Coolsingel, and a block with a shopping arcade and a residential tower on the corner of Beursplein and Coolsingel.

A Taxonomy of Suburban Office Clusters : The Case of Toronto

Fri, 01 May 1992 16:52:36 -0400

Metropolitan plans are commonly based on a system of suburban office clusters . The large variation among recent plans suggests a poor understanding of their nature and impacts . A taxonomy of office clusters could provide a necessary framework. Six hypotheses on the type, frequency, location, employment base and travel characteristics of suburban clusters were tested in a case-study of the Toronto region. Six physical types were identified and found to be associated with certain
locations, employment activities and travel mode characteristics . The Toronto metropolitan plan was found to be successful when it conformed with these findings and unsuccessful when it did not. The results lead to provisional guidelines for future metropolitan plans .

Housing + Transportation Affordability in Washington, DC

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:01:19 -0400

Introduction to H+T

Significance of Transportation Costs and the Lack of Transparency

Today, the real estate market knows how to incorporate the value of land into the price of the home—based on its location and proximity to jobs and amenities—but there is less clarity about how the accompanying transportation costs also contribute to the desirability of a location. In most cases, the very same features that make the land and home more attractive, and likely more expensive per square foot, also make the transportation costs lower. Being close to jobs and commuter transit options reduces the expenses associated with daily commuting. And being within walking distance of an urban or suburban downtown or neighborhood shopping district allows a family to replace some of their daily auto trips with more walking trips. Walking, bicycling, taking transit, or using car sharing instead of driving a private automobile reduces gasoline and auto maintenance costs, and may even allow a family to get by with one less automobile.

By contrast, places where single-family homes are more “affordable” are often found in outlying areas where land is cheaper. However, the lack of amenities and access to necessities common in these neighborhoods often results in households having transportation costs that are much higher and can often outweigh the savings on housing costs. In many of the areas where households “drive to qualify” for affordable housing, transportation costs can exceed 32% of household income, making it, at times, a greater burden than housing. Conversely, for some communities where households benefit from less automobile dependency, transportation can represent as little as 10% of household income.

This information gap on location efficiency, which is measured here as the cost of transportation associated with each place, leads to unexpected financial burdens and time constraints for households, poor location decisions by developers, and missed and misplaced opportunities for municipalities. Furthermore, it leads to misinformed criticisms of the cost of building transit, since these critiques do not fully account for the benefits or take into account the hidden costs associated with sprawl and auto dependency. Not only are the high costs of transportation hidden, but so are the low costs, and therefore so is the inherent value of more convenient in-town urban, inner-suburban, and other urbanizing locations. Consequently, many of these convenient but undervalued areas suffer from disinvestment and lack the ability to attract new investment and redevelopment.

Expanding the Definition of Affordability

From an affordability perspective, the lack of transparency in transportation costs puts households at significant financial risk. Traditionally, a home is deemed affordable if its costs consume no more than 30% of a household’s income. This measure, however, ignores transportation costs—typically a household’s second largest expenditure2 —which are largely a function of the area in which a household chooses to locate. This report proposes expanding the definition of housing affordability to include transportation costs to better reflect the true cost of households’ location choices. Based on data from 337 metro areas, ranging from large cities with extensive transit (such as the New York metro area) to small metro areas with extremely limited transit options (such as Fort Wayne, IN), CNT has found 15% of the Area Median Income (AMI) to be an attainable goal for transportation affordability.

By combining this 15% level with the 30% housing affordability standard, this report recommends a new view of affordability, one defined as H+T costs consuming no more than 45% of household income.

Considering housing and transportation costs in conjunction changes the picture of affordability significantly. Many areas in which low home prices make the area appear affordable are no longer so attractive when transportation costs are added to the equation. Conversely, areas in which housing prices may seem out of reach for many households can actually become more affordable when high levels of location efficiency allow households to experience significantly lower transportation costs.

Transportation Costs Vary by Location

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) has developed a unique tool, the Housing + Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index, which has so far been applied to all 337 metro areas in the United States.

The transportation cost model, the T in the H+T Index, describes the relationship between independent neighborhood and household characteristics and three dependent variables: auto ownership, auto use, and transit use. Building off of years of research on location efficiency, the transportation cost model considers factors such as household density, average block size, transit access, job access and journey to work time and explains how they influence transportation behavior (see fig. 3).

These three factors of transportation behavior—auto ownership, auto use, and transit use—estimated at the neighborhood level, are combined to illuminate the cost of transportation associated with that location.

Neighborhood Variables

Six neighborhood characteristics are utilized in the transportation model to predict transportation behavior, as measured through auto ownership, auto use, and transit use. Household density (both residential and gross measures), average block size, transit access (as measured in the Transit Connectivity Index developed by CNT), job access, and average work commute time have all been found to be determining factors of transportation behavior. (The specific definitions of each measurement can be found in the Detailed Methods section.)

Household Variables

Three household characteristics have also been found to be significant indicators of transportation behavior: household income, household size, and the number of commuters per household. However, in the transportation model, these three variables are fixed at regional average values. Therefore, by holding these characteristics constant and examining transportation costs for the “typical household,” this report focuses on and highlights the variation resulting from the built environment, or neighborhood characteristics. (See the Detailed Methods section for further explanation.)

Total Transportation Costs

The transportation model results with values estimating average auto ownership, auto use, and transit use, to which cost components are multiplied to estimate total household transportation costs. Auto ownership costs, for the purposes of this research, are defined as depreciation, finance charges, insurance, license, registration, and taxes (state fees). Auto use costs are composed of gas, maintenance, and repairs. Transit costs factor the average cost of transit use per household using a regional average price as derived from the National Transit Database. (See details in the Cost Components section of the Detailed Methods.)

Space Race Map Function Test

Tue, 10 Nov 1987 17:21:00 -0500

National Map HTML Test

New York Metro Region
NY	Second Avenue Subway Phase I	NYMTA	Heavy Rail	4867	MTA
NY	LIRR East Side Access	NYMTA	Heavy Rail	7386	MTA
NY	7 Line Extension	NYMTA	Heavy Rail	2100	MTA
NY	Passaic Bergen Commuter	NJ Transit	Commuter Rail	164	NJ Transit
NY	34th Street Transitway	NYC DOT	BRT	28	NY DOT
NY	Nostrand/Rogers Avenue	NYC DOT	BRT	40	NY DOT
NJ	Northern Branch Project	NJ Transit	Light Rail (LRT)	866	NJ Transit
NJ	Lackawanna Cutoff Phase 1	NJ Transit	Commuter Rail	-	NJ Transit
NJ	Lackawanna Cutoff Total	NJ Transit	Commuter Rail	551	NJ Transit
NJ	MOM Line	NJ Transit	Commuter Rail	-	NJ Transit
NJ	Union County Light Rail	NJ Transit	Light Rail (LRT)	500	NJTPA
NY	Staten Island North Shore	NYMTA	Unknown	-	MTA
NY	Lower Manhattan Jamaica JFK	NYMTA	Unknown	-	MTA
NY/NJ	West of Hudson Regional Access	NYMTA	Unknown	-	MTA
NY	Hylan Boulevard	NYC DOT	BRT	-	NY DOT
NY	Second Avenue Subway All Phases	NYMTA	Heavy Rail	12133	MTA
NJ	Hudson Bergen To Jersey City Rt 440	NJ Transit	Light Rail (LRT)	171	NJTPA

Los Angeles Metro Region
CA	Orange Line Extension	LACMTA	BRT	216	LACMTA
CA	Expo Line Phase I	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	862	LACMTA
CA	Gold Line Foothill Extension Phase I (to Azusa)	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	690	LACMTA
CA	Expo Line Phase II	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	1300	LACMTA
CA	Crenshaw/LAX	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	1400	LACMTA
CA	Perris Valley Line	RCTC	Commuter Rail	233	FTA
CA	E Street BRT Corridor	Omnitrans	BRT	192	FTA
CA	Westside Subway Extension	LACMTA	Heavy Rail	6000
CA	Regional Connector	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	1366	LACMTA
CA	West Santa Ana Transit Corridor	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	649	LACMTA
CA	Gold Line Foothill Extension Phase 2 (to Montclair)	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	450	LACMTA
CA	Gold Line Eastside Transit Corridor Phase II	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	1800	LACMTA
CA	Metro Green Line South Bay Extension	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	555	LACMTA
CA	Wilshire BRT	LACMTA	BRT	32	LACMTA
CA	Downtown LA Streetcar	LACMTA	Streetcar	100	LA Streetcar
CA	Redlands Rail Line	SANBAG	Commuter Rail	240	SANDAG
CA	Aerial Tram San Bernardino to Big Bear	SCAG	Cog Rail or Cable Car	380	SCAG
CA	Gold Line Foothill Extension Phase 3 (to Ontario Airport)	SANDAG	Light Rail (LRT)	300	SANDAG
CA	San Fernando Valley Corridors Phase 1	LACMTA	Rapid Bus	13	LACMTA
CA	San Fernando Valley Corridors Phase 2	LACMTA	Rapid Bus	158	LACMTA
CA	Green Line to LAX	LACMTA	Light Rail (LRT)	-	LACMTA
CA	Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor	LACMTA	Heavy Rail/BRT	2468	LACMTA
CA	Foothill Blvd East	SANBAG	BRT	215	SANDAG
CA	Hold Avenue/4th Street	SANBAG	BRT	208	SANDAG
CA	Euclid Avenue to Corona	SANBAG	BRT	180	SANDAG
CA	San Bernadino Avenue	SANBAG	BRT	119	SANDAG
CA	Foothill Blvd West	SANBAG	BRT	166	SANDAG
CA	Grand/Edison Avenues	SANBAG	BRT	179	SANDAG
CA	Sierra Avenues	SANBAG	BRT	79	SANDAG
CA	Riverside Avenues	SANBAG	BRT	174	SANDAG
CA	Haven Avenues	SANBAG	BRT	110	SANDAG
CA	Harbor Blvd. BRT (Fullerton to Costa Mesa)	OCTA	BRT	4	OCTA
CA	Westminster/17th BRT (Santa Ana to Long Beach)	OCTA	BRT	2	OCTA
CA	28-Mile BRT (Brea Mall to Irvine Transportation Center)	OCTA	BRT	4	OCTA
CA	La Palma BRT	OCTA	BRT	-	SCAG
CA	Beach Blvd. BRT	OCTA	BRT	-	SCAG
CA	Edinger BRT	OCTA	BRT	-	SCAG
CA	Katella BRT	OCTA	BRT	-	SCAG
CA	Anaheim Rapid Connection	OCTA	Unknown	757	SCAG
CA	Santa Ana and Garden Grove Fixed Guideway	OCTA	Unknown	144	SCAG

Chicago Metro Region
IL	Red Line Extension (South)	CTA	Heavy Rail	1093	CTA
IL	Orange Line Extension	CTA	Heavy Rail	445	CTA
IL	Yellow Line Extension	CTA	Heavy Rail	263	CTA
IL	UP Northwest Upgrade	Metra	Commuter Rail	531	Metra
IL	Metra BNSF Extension	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Circle Line (Phase II; south)	CTA	Heavy Rail/BRT	1000	CTA
IL	STAR Line	Metra	Commuter Rail	2737	Metra
IL	Southeast Service Corridor	Metra	Commuter Rail	778	Metra
IL	Circle Line (Phase III; north)	CTA	Heavy Rail/BRT	-	CMAP
IL	Jeffrey Boulevard BRT pilot	CTA	BRT	-	CTA
IL	Chicago Avenue BRT pilot	CTA	BRT	-	CTA
IL	Halsted Street BRTpilot	CTA	BRT	-	CTA
IL	79th Street BRTpilot	CTA	BRT	-	CTA
IL	Central Area Transitway	CTA	BRT	-	CMAP
IL	CTA Blue Line West Extension	CTA	Heavy Rail	-	CMAP
IL	CTA Brown Line Extension	CTA	Heavy Rail	-	CMAP
IL	DuPage "J" Line	Dupage Co.	BRT	-	RTA
IL	Express Airoport Train Service	CTA/Chicago	Heavy Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Inner Circumferential Rail Service	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Heritage Corridor	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Electric Extension	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Milwaukee District North Extension	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Milwaukee District North Improvements	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Milwaukee District West Extension	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra Rock Island Extension	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	Metra SW Service Extension & Full Service	Metra	Commuter Rail	-	CMAP
IL	O'Hare to Schaumburg Transit Service	IDOT	CR/BRT	-	CMAP
IL	Mid-City Transitway	CTA	Heavy Rail/BRT	-	CMAP
IL	South Lakefront Corridor	CTA	CR/LRT	160	CMAP

Bicycling And Walking In The United States: 2012 Benchmarking Report

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:13:15 -0500

Executive Summary

What isn't counted,doesn't count.

Government officials working to promote bicycling and walking need data to evaluate their efforts. In order to improve something, there must be a means to measure it. The Alliance for Biking & Walking's Benchmarking Project is an ongoing effort to collect and analyze data on bicycling and walkingin all 50 states and the 51 largest cities. This is the third biennial Benchmarking Report. The first report was published in 2007, the second in 2010, and the nextreport is scheduled for January 2014.

Objectives

(1) Promote Data Collection and Availability

The Benchmarking Project aims to collect data from secondary sources (existing databases) and to conduct surveysof city and state officials to obtaindata not collected by another nationalsource. A number of government and national data sources are collected and illustrated in this report. Through state and city biennial surveys, this project makes new data available in a standardized format that otherwise does not exist.

(2) Measure Progress and Evaluate Results

The Benchmarking Project aims to provide data to government officials andadvocates in an accessible format that helps them measure their progress toward increasing bicycling and walking and evaluate the results of their efforts. Because the Benchmarking Project is ongoing, cities and states can measure their progress over time and will see the impacts of their efforts. By providing a consistent and objective tool for evaluation, organizations, states, and cities can determine what works and what doesn't. Successful models can be emulated and failed models reevaluated.

(3) Support Efforts to Increase Bicycling and Walking

This project will ultimately support the efforts of government officials and bicycle and pedestrian advocacyorganizations to increase bicycling and walking in their communities. Byproviding a means for cities and states to compare themselves to one another, this report will highlight successes, encourage communities making progress, and make communities aware of areas where more effort is needed. By highlighting the top states and cities, otherstates and cities will gain inspirationand best practice models. This report is intended to help states and communities set goals, plan strategies, and evaluate results.

Data Collection

This report focuses on 50 states and the 51 largest U.S. cities. Most bicycling and walking is in urban areas, and because of short trip distances, the most potential for increasing bicycling and walking is in cities. Whenever possible, theAlliance collected data for this report directly from uniform government data sources. Researchers collected data that were not readily accessible from national sources through two surveys for cities and states. In October 2010, the Benchmarking Project team reached out to 50 states and 51 cities, utilizingthe staff of cities, state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, and advocacy organizations to provide data for city and state surveys. The surveys complementedexisting government data sources to create a comprehensive reserve of data that evaluates multiple factors that affect bicycling and walking in cities and states.

Results

Levels of Bicycling and Walking

From 1990 to 2009, the percent of commuters who bicycle to work increased from 0.4% to 0.6% while the percent of commuters who walk to work decreased from 3.9% to 2.9%. According to the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS), 3.4% of commuters nationwide are bicyclists (0.55%) or pedestrians (2.86%). Residents of major U.S. cities are 1.7 times more likely to walk or bicycle to work than the national average. According to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 1.0% of all trips are by bicycle and 10.5% of all trips are by foot nationwide. It is difficult to determine bicycling and walkingmode share for all trips at the state and city levels because of small sample sizes of NHTS.

Bicycle and pedestrian commuters are generally distributed proportionately among ethnic groups in the U.S., according to the 2009 ACS. Greater disparities are found among genders. According to the 2009 NHTS, 49% of walking trips are men and 51% are female, yet among bicycle trips, 76% are male and only 24% are female. A look at age reveals that while walking is generally distributed proportionately among age groups, youth under age 16 make up 39% of bicycle trips. This age group accounts for just 21% of the population.

Safety

In 2009, 4,092 pedestrians and 630 bicyclists were killed in traffic. This is down significantly from 2005 when 4,892 pedestrians and 786 bicyclists were traffic fatality victims. While overall numbers of bicycle and pedestrian fatalities are declining, pedestrians and bicyclists are still at a disproportionate risk for being a victim of a traffic fatality. Although just 10.5% of trips in the U.S. are by foot and 1.0% are by bicycle, 11.7% of traffic fatalities are pedestrians and 1.8% are bicyclists. In major U.S. cities, 12.7% oftrips are by foot and 1.1% are by bicycle, yet 26.9% of traffic fatalities are pedestrians and 3.1% are bicyclists.

According to the 2007-2009 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the 2009 NHTS, seniors are the most vulnerable age group. While adults over 65 make up 10% of walking trips and 6% of bicycling trips, they account for 19% of pedestrian fatalities and 10% of bicyclist fatalities.

Policies and Provisions

A number of policies and provisions are represented in this report including funding and staffing levels, infrastructure, written policies, and bike-transit integration. This report marks a significant increase in planning for bicycling and walking over the last two years. Many states and cities have adopted new plans and goals to increase bicycling and walking and reduce fatalities. Overall, states and cities still rankpoorly for funding bicycling and walking at a rate proportionate to active transportation levels.

Funding for Bicycling and Walking

2010 data from the Federal Highway Administration reveal that states spend just 1.6% of their federal transportation dollars on bicycling and walking. This amounts to just $2.17 per capita for bicycling and walking. About 40% of these dedicated bicycle and pedestrian dollars are from the Transportation Enhancement (TE) program. The majority of TE funding (48%) goes toward building bicycle and pedestrian facilities and to bicycle and pedestrian education.

Planning and Legislation

Since the 2010 Benchmarking Report, there has been a 63% increase in the number of states that have published goals to increase bicycling and walking, and a 27% increase in the number of states that have published goals to reduce bicycle and pedestrian fatalities.

2011 League of American Bicyclist data on state legislation reveal that most states have basic bicyclists' rights legislation such as allowing bicyclists to legally ride two-abreast, signal right turns with their right hand, and to take a full traffic lane in the presence of a side path or bike lane. Twenty-one states have 3-foot passing laws that require motorists to pass bicyclists at a safe distance of at least three feet (up from 14 as of the 2010 Benchmarking Report).

A survey of other policies found that 19 (of the 51 largest) U.S. cities and 26 states have adopted complete streets policies that require streets be built to accommodate all potential road users. Nearly half of states report having a bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. And 38 states report having a publicly available bicycle map.

Cities were surveyed on a number of planning and policy initiatives. Forty-one cities report having a bicycle master plan, and 21 have a pedestrian master plan. Over half of cities have bicycle and pedestrian advisory committees.

Infrastructure

City surveys examined current and planned bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in order to benchmark the progress communities are making. Specifically, cities reported miles of bike lanes, bicycle routes, and multi-use paths. On average, cities have 1.8 miles of bicycle facilities (bike lanes, multiuse paths, and signed bicycle routes) per square mile—a 29% increase since the 2010 Benchmarking Report.

While implementation of innovative facilities such as bicycle boulevards and colored bike lanes is low, surveys indicated that there are new projects currently being implemented or in the process of approval. The number of cities that report having implemented innovative facilities has increased significantly in the last two years. Seventy-three percent of cities now report having implemented sharrows, or shared lane markings.

Bike-Transit Integration

Bike-transit integration has proved to be a vital aspect of effective bicycle systems. The report analyzes responses from city and state surveys, as well as American Public Transportation Association (APTA) data, to see how well cities are integrating bicycle systems with transit. Forty-four cities report that 100% of their bus fleet have bicycle racks, a 19% increase over the past two years. Major U.S. cities report an average of 2.5 bicycle parking spaces at bus stops for every 10,000 residents.

Education and Encouragement

Education and encouragement programs at the state and city level are effective ways to inform the public and promote bicycling and walking. Information from state and city surveys and the National Center for Safe Routes to School illustrates the growth in bicycle and pedestrian education in communities. National Walk and Bike to School Day is a popular encouragement activity with growing school participation nationwide.

Thirty-eight cities report having youth bicycle education courses and 41 have adult courses. Youth education is a vital area of outreach because it has the potential to influence the habits of the next generation. The number of youth who participate in bicycle education courses in cities increased by 31% from two years ago. Surveys indicate a 40%increase in adult participation levels for bicycle educational courses over the last two years.

League of American Bicyclists' data indicate that almost all states (49) have information on bicycling in their statedriver's manual, yet just 32 states have questions on bicycling on their state driver's exam. The majority of states (38) have a "Share the Road" or similar public safety campaign. Seventeen states report sponsoring a statewide ride to promote bicycling or physical activity.

The Alliance also collected data on professional education regarding bicycling and walking. Overall, these efforts are growing among states, but there is still great room for improvement. Only 20 states have bicycle enforcement as a police academy requirement. And, just 25 states report having hosted a statewide bicycle and pedestrian conference.

Cities were also surveyed on encouragement activities including presence of and participation levels in Bike to Work Day events, open street/ciclovia initiatives, and city-sponsored bicycle rides. Bike to Work Day is the most common encouragement event with 43 cities participating with an average of oneparticipant for every 286 adults. Thirty-two cities sponsor rides to promote bicycling or physical activity with an average of one participant for every 350 residents. Twenty-one cities have open street (car-free or ciclovia) initiatives with an average of one participant for every 37 residents.

Cycling and Walking Advocacy

Advocacy organizations have the potential to influence bicycling and walking in the communities they serve by advocating for and winning new policies, funding, infrastructure, and programs. The number of Alliance state and local bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations has been increasing steadily since the Alliance was founded in 1996. This report measures organization capacity of Alliance member organizations and sets standards for membership, revenue, staffing, and media exposure. Results from Alliance organization surveys vary widely because of the great variation in maturity and operations of these organizations as well as the communities they serve. Some organizations in this report are decades old while others were founded not long before these surveys were collected.

Surveys indicate that organizations serving cities earn significantly more per capita than their statewide counterparts. Local organizations earn an average of $0.15 per resident served while statewide organizations earn just $0.03 per resident. In general, organization revenue is diversified, coming from membership and donations, events, fees, grants, contracts, and the bicycle industry. Local Alliance organizations also have much higher per capita membership levels averaging one member per 1,522 residents. Statewide organizations have an average of one memberper 4,975 residents. Similarly, statewide organizations operate with an average of 0.4 full-time-equivalent staff (FTE) per million residents served. Organizations serving cities average 2.2 FTE staff per million residents.

Factors Influencing Bicycling and Walking

Analysis in this report shows several positive relationships between bicycling and walking rates and safety, advocacy capacity, density, and car ownership. While weather does not appear to be afactor that directly influences bicycling levels, density, advocacy capacity, and car ownership are a few factors that appear to influence bicycling and walking trips.

ACS and FARS data indicate a positive correlation between bicycling and walking levels and safety. In line with previous studies, an increase in walking and bicycling levels is strongly related to increased bicyclist and pedestrian safety.

Public Health Benefits

To see how bicycling and walking influence public health, the Alliance compared public health data to bicycling and walking levels. Data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and ACS reflect a direct relationship between levels of bicycling and walking and several public health indicators. Data suggest that the risk for such health problems as obesity, diabetes, asthma, and hypertension will decrease with more bicycling and walking. States with lower bicycling and walking levels on average have higher levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. States with higher levels of bicycling and walking also have a greater percentage of adults who meet the recommended 30-plus minutes of daily physical activity. This suggests that increasing bicycling and walking can help achieve public health goals of increasing physical activity and lowering rates of overweight and obesity.

Economic Benefits

To see how bicycling and walking influence the economic strength of communities, the Alliance surveyed numerous studies and data sources. Evidence suggests that bicycling and walkingprojects create 11-14 jobs per $1 million spent, compared to just 7 jobs created per $1 million spent with highway projects. Surveys show that facilities for bicycling and walking attract tourists, event participants, and business. In addition bicycling and walking are affordable investments that save commuters money and in turn equate to more money available for local economies.

Studies that have performed cost/benefit analysis on bicycling and walking facilities have found that these facilities have significant benefit for public health, traffic congestion, and air quality. The cost benefit ratio of Portland, OR's bicycle investments, looking at just health and fuel savings, ranged from 3.8-to-1 to 1.3-to-1.

Conclusions

While many state and local communities are making sufficient efforts to promote bicycling and walking, much more work needs to be done. Barriers in staffing and funding remain a consistent limitation to promoting bicycling and walking. Bicycling and walking make up 11.5% of all trips, and 13.5% of traffic fatalities, and yet receive just 1.6% of federal transportation dollars.

The proven environmental, economic, and personal health benefits that bicycling and walking offer are evidence that increasing bicycling and walking levels are in the public good, yet a much greater investment is needed throughout the U.S. This Benchmarking Report identifies which cities and statesare leading the way and provides links to resources (Appendix 5) from these communities.

The Alliance recommends that government officials and advocates take the time to evaluate their efforts to promote bicycling and walking. This report can be used by communities to see how they measure up, to identify role models, and to set new goals. Continued benchmarking and improvements in the availability of data will strengthen the report in the coming years, and lend a better understanding of the factors that influence bicycling and walking. Ultimately, by providing a tool for communities to consistently measure progress, evaluate results, and set new targets, this report will advance efforts for a more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly America.

Transit-Oriented Development Typology Stratedgy for Allegheny County

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:02:05 -0500

Cities and regions from coast to coast are pursuing transit-oriented development (TOD) strategies as a way to achieve many goals, including increased economic competitiveness through improved quality of life, reduced congestion, lower transportation costs for households, improved air quality, reduced costs for providing city services, and growth management. The concept of TOD is becoming more popular as the number of regions planning light rail, bus rapid transit, and other fixed-guideway transit investments expands.

While other regions must spend hundreds of millions – or billions – to create transit-oriented communities, Allegheny County, fortunately, is well-poised to capture the creative labor force and new employers interested in the improved quality of life offered through transit-oriented living that its current fixed-guideway investments could catalyze.

Many of the county’s neighborhoods – and surrounding communities – were built around historic transit lines. A large share of neighborhoods near the T, Busways, and Incline stations are already walkable and include their own nearby community retail and service amenities. However, a more systematic approach to transit-oriented investments is needed to unlock the potential of these neighborhoods and draw regional economic growth.

This Transit-Oriented Development Typology Strategy is designed to provide a framework for understanding what these transit-oriented investments are, where they can leverage the greatest economic potential, and how they can be funded and implemented. Each station area in Allegheny County’s system has its own set of implementation needs to support transit-oriented development. The typology offers a framework for prioritizing and understanding these needs at a glance. There are additionally seven strategies that agencies and advocates can deploy to support and catalyze momentum for transit-oriented development across the entire transit system, regardless of place type.

TCRP Synthesis 21 - Transit-Focused Development: A Synthesis of Transit Practice

Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 -0500

The wave of rail transit construction in recent decades has renewed interest in developing transit related land-use patterns in American cities and suburbs. This synthesis describes the public policy and action frameworks that have evolved to support transit-focused development and examines the development that has occurred in station areas in 19 cities and transit agencies.

TCRP Synthesis 22: Transit Advertising Revenue: Traditional and New Sources and Structures

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 -0500

Reacting to funding cutbacks and increasing revenue needs, many transit agencies are looking at increasing the amount and kinds of advertising that they permit on transit facilities and equipment as a way to raise additional revenue. The search for new dollars came at the same time that marketing experts were looking for new ways to carry their messages to consumer audiences outside the home. The term "out-of-home" media means literally whatever carries advertising messages to the consumer outside of the home--not print and television ads. It includes everything from billboards and posters to displays on transit vehicles, on shelters, in stations, airports, shopping malls, sports arenas and supermarkets. The history of
billboards in this country spans a century with advocates pointing to a proud tradition of providing consumers with valuable information about everything from gas and lodging to other necessary services. Detractors point to the proliferation of signs and the "blight" of billboards. The battle raged for years and culminated in the mid 1960s with passage of national legislation limiting highway billboards.

Impacts of Rail Transit On Property Values

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Introducing rail transit into a region often creates expectations about the impact of the rail project on property values. Information on the impact of rail on property values is often incomplete and limited to anecdotal evidence, leaving regions planning for rail investments without a firm basis to judge the future impact of such an investment. In addition, this lack of complete information limits the extent to which transit agencies can develop strategies to maximize positive property value impacts. This paper summarizes a comprehensive survey of recent research on the impact of rail transit and property values.

Parking Cash-out: Where "Smart Growth" and Effective Transit Intersect

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

The paper reports on the implementation of parking cash-out in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Region in 1999 and 2000. Since parking costs in a downtown setting are typically a substantial portion of commuting costs, cashing-out parking subsidies can provide a strong incentive for commuters to choice an alternative to driving alone.

Construction of Transit-Based Development, MTI Report 01-05

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

This project reviews policies and legislative programs that can be adopted at all levels of government to encourage transit-based development. The focus of the study is on local government implementation because cities and counties have the land use responsibility of planning and zoning. The study also investigates how higher levels of government (regional, state, and federal) can encourage development through legislative powers and policy incentives. The study recommends additional land use, legislative, and fiscal powers that are needed by local jurisdictions so that they can carry out these incentives.

The Returning City: Historic Preservation and Transit in the Age of Civic Revival

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The study that resulted in this book was initiated in September 2001 to examine how decisions about public transportation, land development and redevelopment, and historic preservation have complemented one another in dozens of communities nationwide. The goal of the study was to demonstrate how transit and historic preservation act as compatible forces to revitalize communities. We set out to illuminate the many ways in which communities of all sizes have restored their urban or suburban cores and made full use of those centers’ capacities to help metropolitan areas grow sustainably. We wanted to find out how historic preservation values are informing community planning for public transit, and how these values are being used in development decisions intended to promote transit use.

Bus Rapid Transit: The US Experience

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Bus Rapid Transit can achieve the capacity and economic development potential of rail, but at a fraction of the cost. Despite these successes, communities often view rail as superior to BRT and thus demand new rail systems. The challenge will be to ensure that BRT is evaluated on a level playing field with other technologies.

Parking Cash Out: Implementing Commuter Benefits as One of the Nation's Best Workplaces for Commuters

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

This document is one in a series of briefing papers designed to help employers implement commuter benefits to achieve the Best Workplaces for Commuters designation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) have established a voluntary National Standard of Excellence for employer-pro-vided commuter benefits. Commuter benefits help American workers get to and from work in ways that cut air pollution and global warming pollution, improve public health, improve employee recruiting and retention, improve employee job satisfaction, and reduce expenses and taxes for employers and employees.

Housing Prototypes: Multidwelling Zones, Portland Infill Design Guide Draft

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The housing prototypes of this section are intended to serve as a problem-solving tool to help improve the design of medium-density infill housing projects, particularly in the R2 and R1 multidwelling zones. The prototypes highlight medium-density housing types and configurations, suitable for common infill situations, that meet City regulations and design objectives and are feasible from a market perspective. They illustrate solutions for common infill design challenges, such as balancing parking needs with pedestrian friendly design and providing usable open space while achieving density goals. They are also intended to help broaden the range of housing types being built in Portland by presenting innovative configurations, with a particular focus on arrangements conducive to ownership housing.

Portland Streetcar Economic Impacts – First Phase Carbon Footprint Benefits Modeling

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This memorandum outlines and illustrates a methodology for modeling prospective benefits of reduced carbon emissions associated with Portland Streetcar as a form of development oriented transit.

Appendix A summarizes consultant-related experience. Appendix B covers project contacts and reference listing. Appendix C contains detailed illustrative model worksheets. In response to comments received in review of a preliminary draft of September 28, 2007, this memorandum serves as a revised draft, subject to further refinement based on added input received.

Essential Smart Growth Fixes for Urban and Suburban Zoning Codes

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Tool includes 11 Essential Fixes to the most common barriers local governments face when they want to implement smart growth approaches. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Development, Community, and Environment Division (DCED), also known as the Smart Growth Program, has put together this document to help those communities that may not wish to revise or replace their entire system of codes and ordinances, but nevertheless are looking for “essential fixes” that will help them get the smarter, more environmentally responsible, and sustainable communities they want.

EasyConnect II: Integrating Transportation, Information, and Energy Technologies at the Pleasant Hill BART Transit Oriented Development

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Smart growth policy strategies attempt to control increasing auto travel, congestion, and vehicle emissions by redirecting new development into communities with a high-intensity mix of shopping, jobs, and housing that is served by high-quality modal alternatives to single occupant vehicles. The integration of innovative technologies with traditional modal options in transit-oriented developments (TODs) may be the key to providing the kind of high-quality transit service that can effectively compete with the automobile in suburban transit corridors. A major challenge, however, of such an integration strategy is the facilitation of a well-designed and seamless multi-modal connection infrastructure – both informational and physical. EasyConnect II explored the introduction and integration of multi-modal transportation services, both traditional and innovative technologies, at the Pleasant Hill Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station during the initial construction phase of the Contra Costa Centre Transit Village (or TOD) in the East San Francisco Bay Area.

Addendum to "Funding Bus Rapid Transit in the US"

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

An analysis of funding tables for BRT in the United States. It is important to note the difficulty of obtaining exact figures for every funding contribution to a transit project, even completed projects. As a result, although these tables strive to provide the most accurate information possible, figures for operating systems should be considered approximate, and figures for planned systems should be considered projected estimates.

An Evaluation Of Property Values In New Jersey Transit Villages

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The New Jersey Association of REALTORS® (NJAR®) Governmental Research Foundation (GRF) has released a report conducted by the Bloustein School's Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center revealing an association between designated Transit Village areas and higher residential property values. The study, An Evaluation of Property Values in New Jersey Transit Villages, is available online.

According to GRF President Bill Hanley, “The study was undertaken to determine whether the Transit Village Initiative, and its corresponding redevelopment, leads to increased property values for home and business owners within the designated area.”

Researchers performed an in-depth examination of six of the state’s 20 Transit Villages: Bound Brook (Somerset County), Belmar (Monmouth County), Burlington City (Burlington County), Journal Square in Jersey City (Hudson County), Metuchen (Middlesex County) and Pleasantville (Atlantic County). The various site analyses were conducted between January 2008 and June 2010. A graphical analysis was performed on all 20 Transit Villages, as well as a statistical analysis of almost every municipality in New Jersey.

The correlation between increased residential property values and the Transit Village designation was statistically small; however, property values in 13 of the 20 transit villages in New Jersey increased when compared to their respective regions. “The report could not show a cause-and-effect relationship between home values and the designation, but did confirm that other factors tying into the Transit Village designation had an effect on property values. In addition to transportation accessibility, other factors that affect home value include crime rates, school quality, population density, housing supply and property tax rates,” Hanley stated.

In the six transit village site visits, new development included a mix of retail and residential uses, with the exception of Bound Brook, where there was virtually no new commercial construction and Journal Square, where there was a large amount of new office development. The study was unable to determine whether retail and industrial rental rates were affected either way by Transit Village designations. Hanley added, “The study also found that municipal involvement also has a connection to property values. The report revealed that municipalities that are more pro-active in their planning and are more equipped to complete redevelopment projects are more likely to reflect increased property values.”

According to Voorhees Transportation Center Director Robert Noland, “We conducted detailed statistical modeling that included almost every municipality in the state. We were surprised to find that in some models we found a small effect on home prices associated with the Transit Village designation. Our further investigation of six specific transit village municipalities suggests that it is not the Transit Village designation that necessarily affects home prices, but a commitment to more transit-friendly development in those municipalities. The support of the state from the Transit Village Initiative certainly is helpful, and it is worthwhile to reward those municipalities who desire to change how they have developed in the past. Our analysis of commercial real estate prices was hampered by poor data and thus we have no conclusions on how they were affected by the Transit Village Initiative.” Noland led the research team of Michael L. Lahr, associate research professor at the Bloustein School's Center for Urban Policy Research, and Stephanie DiPetrillo, project manager of the Voorhees Transportation Center.

“Therefore we can conclude that it is not the designation itself that led to how property values were affected, but other factors in the respective communities, such as municipal commitment to redevelopment,” Hanley concluded.

The Transit Village Initiative was created as a “smart growth” strategy designed to foster transportation-efficient community redevelopment and revitalization around transit facilities. The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) administers the initiative in partnership with NJ Transit. In order for a municipality to receive a Transit Village designation, it must have the presence of or potential for: affordable housing; bicycle and pedestrian improvements; public amenities; a local management organization; and community events.

Subcentering and Commuting: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1980- 1990

Mon, 01 Apr 1996 17:56:13 -0500

Our study has sought to refine the analysis of the spatial implications on commutinbgy disaggregating data among employment centers, measuring highway and transit network distances, and examining commuting behavior during the entire 1980-1990 window of rapid suburban employment growth. When combining refined commute distance measures with data on shifts in modald istributions and occupancyl evels, it is clear that employment decentralization has been associated with substantial increases in commuteV MTpe r employee, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since stfifts in VMTpe r employeea re thought to be strongly associated with transportation externalities, the broader social implications of job decentralization on commuting, we would argue, deserve more public policy attention.

Bay Area Transit Oriented Development Demand Analysis

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:38:03 -0400

MTC is conducting a “TOD Study” to address the transit oriented development opportunities in the Bay Area. This report looks at demographic characteristics of transit users to estimate the households and jobs with a preference for living/working near transit in the Bay Area, by 2030. It compares these estimates by county with ABAG Projections 2003 and the Smart Growth Vision.

District of Columbia Streetcar Land Use Study, Phase One

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:14:35 -0500

Letter To Residents

The District of Columbia is committed to bringing a streetcar system to the city to improve transit services available to residents and create walkable, vibrant communities. In the spring of 2010, the DC Office of Planning (OP) initiated a land planning study to ensure that the city and its residents gain the greatest possible benefits from the new system, and that the overarching vision and goals for the District are furthered by the new system.

Goals of the DC Streetcar system:

Link neighborhoods with a modern, convenient and attractive transportation alternative.
Provide quality service to retain and grow transit ridership.
Offer a broader range of transit options for District residents.
Reduce short inner-city auto trips, parking demand, traffic congestion and air pollution.
Connect people to jobs and services with frequent, affordable, reliable transit service.
Encourage economic development and affordable housing options along streetcar corridors.

The Streetcar Land Use Study provides an assessment of the citywide benefits of the system in terms of access to jobs and schools, quality of life, transportation costs for households, job growth, and real estate impacts. The study also considers potential challenges to the introduction of streetcar service such as the impact on historic and cultural resources, housing costs and small business retention. The report examines the benefits and challenges along each proposed corridor and proposes adjustments to phasing and small segments to maximize mobility and economic development benefits of the investment.

In the months ahead, the Streetcar Land Use Study will provide an initial foundation of analysis that OP, DDOT and other involved agencies will use to make recommendations regarding the District’s streetcar system. Future elements of the Streetcar Land Use Study will examine specific land use recommendations at the corridor and neighborhood level including zoning, retail and residential uses, streetscape and urban design. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will lead the system design, financing, construction and operation of the streetcar, and DDOT is moving forward with the initial phase of the streetcar system with construction of the H Street/Benning Road line. As DDOT completes system planning for each corridor, extensive public outreach to local residents and businesses will take place. The findings supported in this study will further the dialogue between communities and District agencies as we continue planning for future lines.

Harriet Tregoning Director, Office of Planning

Creating Equitable, Healthy, And Sustainable Communities: Strategies for Advancing Smart Growth, Environmental Justice, and Equitable Development

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 16:10:47 -0500

Report website

Executive Summary

Communities across the country are integrating smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development approaches to design and build healthy, sustainable, and inclusive neighborhoods. Overburdened communities are using smart growth strategies to address longstanding environmental and health challenges and create new opportunities where they live. Regional and local planners are engaging low-income, minority, and tribal residents in decision-making and producing more enduring development that is better for people and the environment. Community groups, government agencies, and private and nonprofit partners are cleaning up and investing in existing neighborhoods, providing affordable housing and transportation options, and improving access to critical services and amenities.

This informational publication aims to build on past successes and offer other low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened communities approaches to shape development that responds to their needs and reflects their values. It identifies strategies that bring together smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development principles and that community-based organizations, local and regional decision-makers, developers, and others can use to build healthy, sustainable, and inclusive communities. These are places that provide clean air, water, and land; affordable and healthy homes; safe, reliable, and economical transportation options; and convenient access to jobs, schools, parks, shopping, and other daily necessities.

The strategies are grouped under seven common elements, or shared goals and principles that connect environmental justice, smart growth, and equitable development. The fundamental overlap between these concepts is around how to plan and build neighborhoods to address environmental, health, and economic disparities and provide opportunities for low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened residents; therefore, all the approaches described relate to land use and community design. This document provides a brief introduction to each strategy, with a description of what it is, how it supports equitable and environmentally sustainable development, and examples of how it has been used. Local governments and community-based organizations can choose the approaches that best suit their needs and goals. Each of the seven common elements is illustrated by an in-depth case study highlighting a community’s experiences with these strategies.

The seven common elements, along with the strategies that fit under each one, are summarized on the following pages.

Strategies Linking Smart Growth, Environmental Justice, and Equitable Development

Common Element #1: Facilitate Meaningful Community Engagement in Planning and Land Use Decisions

Meaningful community participation in land use planning and decision-making can produce development that meets the needs of a diverse group of residents, build broad support for projects, and lead to more effective public processes. Planners and community-based organizations can use interactive, customizable strategies to engage low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened residents who face barriers to participation, are not traditionally involved in public processes, or are particularly affected by development proposals.

Conducting multilingual outreach as part of planning and development decision-making is increasingly important with the growing number of U.S. residents whose primary language is not English. This approach results in policies and projects that better meet the needs of community members and have stronger public support.
Conducting community assessments helps residents gather, analyze, and report information about current conditions and needs related to priority issues in their neighborhoods, such as street safety for pedestrians. These hands-on exercises can be facilitated by community-based organizations or local and regional planners.
Holding community planning and visioning workshops helps groups of residents and organizations define a shared vision and goals for a site, neighborhood, city, town, or region, laying a foundation for subsequent land use policy and regulatory changes and investments.

Common Element #2: Promote Public Health and a Clean and Safe Environment

Designing and developing neighborhoods and buildings to protect air, water, land, and public health—particularly the health of overburdened populations—can reduce exposure to harmful contamination; prevent future pollution; and promote physical activity, reduced incidence of chronic disease, and other positive health outcomes among residents. This section provides land use planning and zoning-related approaches to address the potential environmental and health concerns from chemical plants, refineries, landfills, power plants, industrial livestock operations, and other facilities that are disproportionately located near low-income, minority, and tribal communities. It also discusses ways of cleaning up and reusing the contaminated sites left behind by those facilities, and methods for integrating healthy and sustainable elements into buildings and streets.

Collaborative planning and zoning strategies can help reduce exposure to facilities with potential environmental concerns, mitigating the impacts of existing facilities on surrounding communities and siting and designing proposed facilities to avoid risks.
Likewise, local and regional planning agencies, community-based organizations, and industry representatives can work together to design freight facilities and surrounding neighborhoods in ways that reduce exposure to goods movement activities and support health, environmental, and economic goals.
Clean and reuse contaminated properties—specifically, brownfields and Superfund sites—in ways that support the community’s vision for its future. This can be critical to revitalize neighborhoods and increase access to needed amenities in established communities.
Strategies that promote green building can reduce exposure to toxics and pollutants that have been linked to cancer, asthma, and other health problems. These strategies can also reduce energy and water costs, which are often a significant burden for low-income families.
Local governments and community-based organizations can build green streets by carrying out relatively simple and low-cost projects, such as installing rain gardens; or by enacting comprehensive policy changes, such as updating street design standards.

Common Element #3: Strengthen Existing Communities

Many established communities—city downtowns, older suburban neighborhoods, and rural villages—are rich in culture, heritage, and social capital but lack economic opportunities for residents. Investing in these existing communities rather than in new developments on the outer fringes of metropolitan areas can improve quality of life for low-income and overburdened populations by bringing the new jobs, services, and amenities they need. This approach can also help address the health and safety risks presented by contaminated properties, abandoned buildings, and poorly designed streets, and can increase the tax base to support other local needs.

Approaches that encourage fixing existing infrastructure first prioritize the repair and maintenance of existing roads, bridges, buildings, and water and wastewater facilities over the building of new infrastructure in undeveloped places.
Reusing vacant and abandoned properties as community amenities such as housing, commercial space, gardens, or temporary green spaces can remove blight and safety concerns, increase residents’ access to needed services and opportunities, and spur additional investment in neighborhoods.
Redeveloping commercial corridors by creating compact, mixed-use land use patterns and making streets safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users can improve opportunities for businesses and access for residents along these important thoroughfares.

Common Element #4: Provide Housing Choices

Offering an array of housing options by preserving and building affordable housing allows residents at all income levels to live near jobs, services, and public transit; helps to minimize displacement; and reduces transportation costs and air pollution from long commutes.

Preserving affordable housing using tools like deed restrictions, housing trust funds, rehabilitation assistance, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits can maintain housing choices and access to opportunities for low- and moderate-income families in revitalizing areas and catalyze investment in struggling neighborhoods.
Creating new affordable housing through approaches such as inclusionary zoning, updated land use regulations, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits is another way to expand housing choices for low- and moderate-income households, including in affluent communities that lack housing options for low-income earners, young people, and seniors.

Common Element #5: Provide Transportation Options

For many low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened communities, public transit and safe routes for walking and bicycling are critical links to regional employment and educational opportunities that help residents improve their lives. Providing equitable and affordable transportation options improves mobility and access to jobs, services, and other daily necessities for all residents, including those who do not own cars.

Providing access to public transportation through inclusive schedule and route planning and thoughtful transit stop and street design connects people to regional jobs and services.
Implementing equitable transit-oriented development provides affordable housing near transit, which can significantly lower the housing and transportation costs that claim a large share of the incomes of many low-income households.
Local and regional agencies and community-based organizations can work together to design safe streets for all users by incorporating sidewalks, bike lanes, median islands, pedestrian signals, bus lanes, and other facilities for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and public transit users of all ages and abilities into new and existing streets.

Common Element #6: Improve Access to Opportunities and Daily Necessities

All residents, regardless of race, ethnicity, or economic status, should have access to the basic ingredients for healthy, productive lives, including employment and educational opportunities; services such as health clinics and child care; and amenities such as grocery stores, safe streets, and parks and recreational facilities.

Approaches to promote diverse, community-centered schools preserve or build schools that are near the families they serve. Community-centered schools allow students to walk or bicycle to school, which promotes physical activity; and provide important community anchors and gathering places.
Programs that create safe routes to school improve children’s health by providing education, enforcement, and infrastructure upgrades that make it possible for them to walk or bicycle to school.
Planners and community-based organizations can provide access to healthy food by removing barriers in land use regulations, offering incentives and financing to retailers, connecting retailers with financing, and assisting with challenging issues such as assembling land for development.
Providing access to parks and green space at all scales provides critical health, social, and environmental benefits for low-income and overburdened communities.

Common Element #7: Preserve and Build on the Features That Make a Community Distinctive

Authentic community planning and revitalization are anchored in the physical and cultural assets that make a place unique. As decision-makers and community stakeholders implement the policies and strategies described in this report, they should build on the distinctive characteristics of their neighborhoods. Preserving and strengthening the features that make a place special maintains what existing residents value about their homes, attracts new residents and visitors, and spurs economic development that is grounded in community identity.

Community planning and historic preservation strategies can help to preserve existing cultural features.
Tools such as design guidelines and neighborhood conservation districts can create new development that strengthens local culture by capturing the specific physical characteristics of development that determine the overall character of a neighborhood and applying them to new projects.

This publication demonstrates that smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development approaches can be an effective combination for responding to the challenges overburdened communities face, promoting development that is authentic and enduring, and laying the foundation for economic resilience. Taken together or in part, the strategies outlined here can help low-income, minority, tribal, and overburdened communities shape development to respond to their needs and reflect their values. These strategies can also help local and regional planners and policy-makers make land use decisions that are equitable, healthy, and sustainable for all residents.

The Role of Transit in Creating Livable Metropolitan Communities, TCRP Report 22

Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 -0500

This report describes transit’s increasingly important role in improving the livability of communities. Concerns about livability affect every community: inner cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. The report explores a “place-making” approach where a local community, working in partnership with a transit agency, plans and implements neighborhood-scale projects and programs that are mutually supportive of community livability and transit ridership goals. Part I of this report describes the place-making approach to livability and explores the relationships between transportation and livability that are keys to understanding the case studies. In Chapter 2, the role of transportation in building communities through transit programs, strategies to “calm” traffic in residential and commercial neighborhoods, and a new understanding of the relationship between transportation and land use is explored. Part II of the report—Chapters 3 through 9—presents examples and case studies of transit facilities and services that achieve community livability goals; the role played by communities, transit agencies, municipal agencies
and authorities, and the federal government is also discussed. Each chapter in Part II has two sections: (1) an introduction with highlighted example projects and (2) case studies. Chapter 3 describes the selection criteria for case studies and the research approach used in collecting the data and background information for the case studies.

The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 -0500

City and county leaders in California are most motivated to push for pedestrian-oriented infrastructure and land uses when there is a clear economic benefit to their communities.2 There are solid connections between walkable environments and economic viability. This brochure highlights some aspects of that nexus.

A Handbook of Proven Marketing Strategies for Public Transit, TCRP Report 50

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Forward

This report identifies, describes, and assesses proven low-cost and cost-effective marketing techniques and strategies appropriate for use in the transit industry. This is a "how-to" handbook for selecting and implementing such techniques at transit agencies. The target audience is transit marketing professionals, public transit managers, and executives who have responsibilities for marketing transit systems.

Marketing plays a critical role in assisting transit agencies in attracting new riders, retaining existing ones, and ensuring support from the community at-large. To maximize its effectiveness, marketing must be viewed as a comprehensive process through which transit agencies develop and provide transit service and communicate the benefits to their employees, patrons, and the general public. Marketing techniques that are both low-cost and cost-effective are needed by transit agencies and may be crucial to their viability. Transit agencies currently use a variety of low-cost techniques. Thus, there is a need to identify, assess, and share the proven strategies so that they may be adopted throughout the transit industry.

Texas Transportation Institute, in association with the South West Transit Association and the Center for Transportation Education and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, prepared the handbook for TCRP Project B-13. To achieve the project objective of identifying proven marketing strategies to implement at transit agencies, the researchers identified and described low-cost and cost-effective marketing techniques currently used at large, medium, and small, urban and rural transit agencies throughout the transit industry. The complete range of low-cost marketing activities includes traditional, broad marketing activities such as pricing, promotions, advertising, planning, and service delivery targeted at specific submarkets. Further, a method was developed to define the criteria that would be used to assess and select creative and promising marketing techniques. Selection of promising practices was made on the basis of cost, cost-effectiveness, ease of implementation, community support, and staff time required to implement the marketing program. A general overview of each strategy is provided. The overview includes a basic description of the strategies, the objective of its implementation, the resources necessary, the time required, the results of the project, any suggested adaptation or refinements, and when the project was implemented. The size of the transit agency implementing the project is indicated by fleet size.

Also provided in this handbook are summary materials on general principles of marketing public transit. Included are checklists and forms to make it easier for the public transit manager to incorporate solid principles of marketing and public relations.

Travel Patterns of People of Color, Final Report

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

Over the decades, public and private travel among Americans has increased significantly, making America one of the most mobile of societies. However, many policy-makers are concerned that the nature and distribution of travel are uneven, especially with regards to people of color. Developing a broader understanding of travel behavior of people of color, which includes African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others, is essential to create a more equitable distribution of transportation system options. This understanding involves many aspects, including why, when, and how people travel, and how each of these aspects varies with time, geography, and population characteristics. There is still very little known about the travel patterns of people of color. Only recently have significant efforts been made to better understand travel behavior among racial and ethnic groups. This topic joins a small but growing field in transportation research that analyzes other issues of equity in travel including gender, age, disability, and wealth.

A New Planning Template for Transit-Oriented Development, MTI Report 01-12

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

The Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University assigned a project team to design a planning template for transit-oriented development (TOD) that incorporates an understanding of nonwork travel, that is, trips for shopping, eating out, and engaging in recreational and cultural activities. Nonwork trips are growing in signifigance and now account for four of every five trips. At the same time, TOD has become a popular planning response to the impacts of metropolitan growth.

The project arrived at these essential findings:

(1) Venues for nonwork activities are very numerous and geographically dispersed.

(2) The spatial environment for nonwork activities is the result of growing prosperity, technical innovation, and a dynamic, competitive marketplace.

(3) The consumer marketplace will provide many more places to go than mass transit can cost-effectively serve.

(4) Current metropolitan planning methods and modeling tools focus on the work trip and do not adequately account for the complexity of nonwork trips and their linkage to work trips.

Using the Internet to Envision Neighborhoods with Transit Oriented Development Potential

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

This study is an extension of previous research that uses the Envisioning tool to identify neighborhood characteristics that would be important for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) developers and planners. The term TOD is used to describe land use development specifically designed to take advantage of close proximity to good public transit. An explosion of Internet information and means of displaying data, such as school test scores, crime statistics, and real estate listings using tools such as smart geographic information system-based maps, can be used to examine potential sites from both planning and development perspectives.

En-gendering Effective Planning: Spatial Mismatch, Low-Income Women, and Transportation Policy

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Discusses the applicability of the spatial mismatch hypothesis for welfare policy

Travel Characteristics of Transit-Oriented Development in California

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

This study provides a 2003 measurement of travel behavior in California TODs. It supports recent efforts to develop information and policy recommendations that enhance the effectiveness of TOD development. It builds upon previous studies conducted in the early 1990s, and examines a range of potential rail users—residents, office workers, hotel employees and patrons, and retail patrons. Survey sites are all located in non-CBD locations, are within walking distance of a transit station with rail service headways of 15 minutes or less, and were intentionally developed as TODs. Surveys were conducted along each of California’s major urban rail systems, including the San Diego Trolley, San Diego Coaster, Los Angeles Blue and Red Lines, Los Angeles Metrolink commuter rail, San Jose VTA light rail, Caltrain commuter rail, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, and Sacramento Light Rail.

CATS Systems Plan: Land Use Program & Station Types Report

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Commission (CMPC) understand transit’s relationship to land use and have created transit station types as an urban design framework to integrate CATS’ station location and design responsibilities with CMPC’s station area planning process. There are 64 stations anticipated in CATS’ five corridor Transit System Plan. Together, the land areas influenced by these 64 stations comprise 50 square miles of land, an area larger than the entire City of San Francisco. With such a large area influenced by transit it is imperative that the location design joint development polices, and land development regulations are developed in a way that are supportive of the variety conditions within the greater Charlotte region.

Sustainable Transport Choices and the Retail Sector, Final Report

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

This report sets out the results for a study of Sustainable Transport Choices and the Retail Sector which was commissioned by the Commission for Integrated Transport. The aims of the research, which are detailed in the project brief and proposal can be summarised as follows:

• To assess the nature of the relationship between mode of travel and retail spending in various retail sectors
• To compare patterns of expenditure and mode of travel between different retail sites at town centre, edge of centre and out of town sites
• To establish spending levels among those who travel by car compared to those who travel by bus, taking account of income levels
• To identify the effect of local transport policy on shopping locations
• To establish the main transport priorities of shoppers in various locations

The Effect Of Housing Near Transit Stations On Vehicle Trip Rates And Transit Trip Generation

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

In order to show the ridership benefits of TOD, we examined the best empirical information available for adjusting vehicle trip generation rates and estimating transit ridership. Fortunately, a fair amount of empirical evidence has been gathered in California over the past decade on TOD’s ridership impacts. The approach taken parallels somewhat that employed for the Air Resources Board’s URBEMIS model that aims to evaluate the potential emission-reduction benefits of smart-growth strategies. The URBEMIS model provides a range of “adjustment factors” for reducing estimated vehicle trip volumes by specific percentages based on characteristics of built environments – including the 3Ds of density, diversity, and design. We propose that the evaluative tool, like URBEMIS, will begin with standard ITE vehicle trip generation rates to estimate the potential reductions in vehicle use a TOD offers compared to a conventional suburban development (the basis of the most use ITE trip rates).

Advanced Network Planning for Bus Rapid Transit The “Quickway” Model as a Modal Alternative to “Light Rail Lite”

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Transit planning in the United States has tended toward viewing BRT as an analogue to light rail transit, with similar operating patterns. This model, referred to as “Light Rail Lite,” is compared to international best practices, which have often favored the development of a grade-separated bus infrastructure (“Quickways”) that in turn supports a varied mix of all-stops, express, and branching services. This model, dubbed the Quickway model, evolved out of the practical necessity of cities to meet ambitious ridership or mode split targets. The two models are contrasted along the key dimensions of BRT service, and significant differences are identified. Three international case studies—Ottawa, Bogotá, and Brisbane—are reviewed for their particular application of this model and of the results they have obtained. Four domestic cities are compared to these international examples: Eugene, Oregon, and Los Angeles are profiled for their adoption of the Light Rail Lite model, and two other cities, Pittsburgh and Miami, are profiled for their BRT implementations which share elements in common with the Quickway model. A set of lessons is drawn from this comparison, including a review of those conditions which may favor the adoption of either model or light rail in any given urban context. Recommendations are offered at the level of the Federal Government, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and planning and engineering firms, for the proper planning and evaluation of Quickway-based alternatives. An appendix introduces a fifth domestic case study, a Quickway-based planning effort sponsored by a nonprofit organization for the San Diego region, and the preliminary results of this effort are reviewed.

Strategic Package of Tools: Transit Oriented Development in Metropolitan Phoenix

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

This document summarizes a wide range of tools, both regulatory and non-regulatory, to help create and enhance vibrant, healthy communities that support the light-rail transit corridor. The TOD tools presented in the table on the following pages are organized in two ways. First, the tools are grouped according to their primary function in defining and supporting the implementation of TOD in the Phoenix region. These functional categories are important for understanding the range of efforts that need to be undertaken by the regional and local agencies and private interests to achieve successful TOD.

Local Government Climate and Energy Strategy Guides: Smart Growth

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

The Local Government Climate and Energy Strategy Guides provide a comprehensive, straightforward overview of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction strategies that local governments can employ. Topics include energy efficiency, transportation, community planning and design, solid waste and materials management, and renewable energy. City, county, territorial, tribal, and regional government staff and elected officials can use these guides to plan, implement, and evaluate climate and energy projects.

Challenges and Policy Options for Creating and Preserving Affordable Housing near Transit and in Other Location-Efficient Areas

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary

This report examines specific, actionable non-statutory changes that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development—and partner agencies—could adopt to better facilitate and encourage the development and preservation of affordable and workforce housing in location-efficient areas. These are areas near transit, employment centers, or other essential services that allow families to reduce the number and extent of necessary car trips. Transit as defined in this report encompasses reliable bus, bus rapid transit, street car, light and heavy rail commuter service and subway. Transit-oriented development (TOD) refers to new residential, commercial, and mixed-use development and the preservation, renovation, or rehabilitation of real estate within walking distance of these modes of transportation.

We gathered the challenges and policy options included in this report in the summer of 2010 from practitioners and thought leaders from around the country, including many individuals that develop, facilitate, or promote transit-oriented development and other forms of location-efficient development. A variety of venues, including two in-person forums, personal interviews, an online survey, and an online forum page were used to gather the information. The report was prepared for the What Works Collaborative.

This report addresses four topical areas, all related to providing affordable and workforce housing in the context of development oriented around transit, employment centers, and other location-efficient areas:

Developing Sustainable and Inclusive Communities
Ensuring Long-Term Affordability
Serving Very Low Income Residents
Preserving and Fostering Affordable Housing Opportunities in the Broader Neighborhood

Outlined here are the challenges and policy options for each of the topical areas suggested by practitioners and thought leaders interviewed for this report. More specific policy options follow in the full report.

a. Developing Sustainable and Inclusive Communities

The growing popularity of transit-oriented development is good news for a variety of reasons. However, as recent research confirms, housing and land prices often rise sharply in neighborhoods close to transit stations,1 which can make it difficult for low-income and working families to find affordable housing near transit.

While the new Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities has set out as a goal for federal policy the promotion of affordable housing near transit, our research identified a number of cases in which federal programs are not well coordinated to support the development of affordable and workforce housing near transit stations and may even inadvertently create incentives for the location of affordable and workforce housing in areas that are not location-efficient, such as outlying suburbs with limited or inconvenient public transit options. In addition, at the state, regional and local levels, many

governmental agencies lack the knowledge and capacity to adequately plan for affordable and workforce housing in location-efficient areas.

Federal agencies have an important role to play in addressing these challenges. Some changes which could potentially facilitate sustainable and inclusive communities near transit include:

Adjusting underwriting, mortgage insurance, and mortgage limit requirements to better support the development of affordable and workforce housing at transit locations.
Offering additional incentives to support location-efficient affordable and workforce housing through the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA’s) New Starts/Small Starts programs.
Helping local governments and nonprofits with land acquisition through changes to the CDBG program.
Providing research, best practices, guidance and leadership to support effective federal policy and build capacity at the state, regional, and local levels.

b. Ensuring Long-Term Affordability around Transit

Major investments of public funds will be needed to ensure that a portion of housing units near transit are affordable to low‐and moderate income families. To protect this substantial public investment and ensure that such families have continued access to sustainable communities, these public investments ideally should be accompanied by legal requirements that ensure the housing remains affordable over the long-term.

Many of the major programs that fund affordable housing do not require or effectively encourage long-term affordability. For instance, the HOME program—the largest federal program dedicated to affordable housing—requires a minimum affordability period of only 15 years for major investments in affordable homeownership and a minimum affordability period of only 20 years for new construction of rental housing. In addition, regulations for other major tools that support homeownership for lower income families, like FHA insurance, are not always compatible with programs that seek to provide long-term affordability (i.e., community land trust programs).

There are a number of steps that HUD could take to help strengthen incentives for long-term affordability in these programs and provide other incentives to promote and sustain long-term affordability near transit, including:

Changing the HOME program rule to extend the affordability periods for major HOME investments.
Modifying FHA regulations to be more supportive of long-term affordable homeownership.
Requiring or creating incentives for long-term affordability in competitive programs related to new public transit investments or TOD.

c. Serving Very Low Income Residents around Transit

Creating or preserving housing for very low income families (generally, 50 percent or less of area median income) in high-density, location-efficient areas is often not financially feasible without dedicated federal rental assistance subsidies. Yet this is precisely the income group most likely to need the transit and other vital services that such areas provide. If communities do not adopt policies to preserve and expand housing affordable to this population close to transit at the outset of major transit investments, it will only become more difficult to do so in the future as rents and home prices in these areas increase.

In the United States, there are over 200,000 federally subsidized rental units close to transit. However, there is the potential for the subsidies on more than two-thirds of these units to expire, which would greatly compromise affordability near transit across the country. To add to this, public housing authorities lack incentives to attach project-based subsidies to units near transit and job centers, even though they have the ability to do so.

HUD could take a number of steps to preserve affordability for very low income populations and facilitate the subsidizing of properties in location-efficient areas. Some of these steps include:

Preserving subsidy, and improving the physical condition and financial viability of projects close to transit.
Incorporating incentives and requirements into HUD programs to encourage the development of deeply affordable units and the provision of deep subsidies near transit centers.

d. Preserving and Fostering Affordable Housing Opportunities in the Broader Neighborhood

Major infrastructure investments, like new transit investment, can spur revitalization and create amenities that benefit residents of all income levels. At the same time, however, it can drive up housing prices, leading to displacement of low- and moderate-income families. Major housing investments (such as HOPE VI) can, in some cases, also have this type of impact. To ensure that major housing and transportation investments do not lead to an overall loss of affordability in the broader neighborhoods in which communities make those investments, it is important to consider and address the potential for such spillover effects in designing and implementing these investments.

Options for addressing these issues include:

Requiring a thorough assessment of potential spillover effects prior to project initiation and a plan for addressing those effects to ensure ongoing affordability.
Providing guidance on promising strategies for managing spillover effects.

TCRP 16: Transit and Urban Form Volume 1

Mon, 01 Jan 1996 16:17:41 -0500

The purpose of this report is to summarize the findings and conclusions of TCRP Project H-1, Transit and Urban Form, with the large body of literature described in the literature review (TCRP Research Results Digest, No. 7, June 1995). In order not to duplicate the literature review, the researchers focus on a relatively small number of studies, most of them completed within the last 5 years, on the ways in which "urban form" and public transportation interact.

Understanding Transit Ridership Demand for a Multi-Destination, Multimodal Transit Network in an American Metropolitan Area: Lessons for Increasing Choice Ridership While Maintaining Transit Dependent Ridership

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:27:17 -0500

Executive Summary

INTRODUCTION

There is a growing body of evidence, including earlier Mineta Transportation Institute-sponsored research, showing that multi-destination transit systems are far more effective in attracting passengers and more efficient in use of resources to carry each passenger than central business district (CBD)-focused systems. At the same time, however, evidence is beginning to show that multi-destination transit systems appeal largely to transit-dependent riders (also called captive riders), whose demand for transit service appears to be highly elastic with respect to the shortening of transit travel time between origin and destination. Given the interest in using transit investments to lure people from their automobiles in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce congestion, it is imperative that the appeal of such systems to choice riders (also called discretionary riders) also be understood. However, this issue remains as yet relatively unexplored.

In this study, we examine the Atlanta region’s transit system, and we derive lessons that can be applied to transit systems elsewhere that would like to increase ridership among choice and transit-dependent riders by better serving increasingly dispersed travel destinations through a multi-destination transit network. Atlanta provides an opportunity to explore the consequences of a multi-destination transit network for bus patrons (largely transit-dependent riders) and rail patrons (who disproportionately illustrate choice rider characteristics). This study is an extension of earlier work by the authors on the determinants of transit ridership demand for an overwhelmingly transit-dependent rider population in Broward County, Florida, whose transit agency (Broward County Transit, BCT) operates a bus-only multi-destination transit system. Atlanta provides an opportunity to extend this work to a metropolitan area with a much larger, multimodal, multi-destination transit system (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, MARTA) and to explore differences in the determinants of transit rider demand for different groups of transit riders.

DATA SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY

The method used in this research is to specify and estimate several statistical models that predict bus and rail transit work trips (the dependent variable) from one part of a metropolitan area (traffic analysis zone or TAZ) to another. In other words, we develop statistical equations that allow us to explain the influence of different types of variables on transit ridership. Explanatory variables include describing demographic and land use characteristics in zones where trips begin and end, as well as those describing the general cost of making the trip in terms of travel time. Our resulting models fall within a category of models known as direct demand models. The models use travel time estimates from the Atlanta regional transportation demand model runs for 2002, but the models used in this study are not sub-models of the models used by the ARC.

In this study, we employ two sets of models. For one set of models, the dependent variable consists of transit users who identified themselves as “bus or trolley bus” riders in the 2000 Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP). For the other set of models, the dependent variable consists of transit users who identified themselves as “subway or elevated” riders in the 2000 CTPP. Many respondents undoubtedly used a combination of bus and rail modes to complete their trips, but the 2000 CTPP did not give such transit users a box to check. Multimodal respondents were forced to identify themselves as either “bus or trolley bus” or “subway or elevated” riders. Therefore, we treat the former group as (self-identified) bus riders and the latter group as (self-identified) rail riders, although many riders in either category undoubtedly use multiple modes for their trips. The explanatory variables used in the models include socioeconomic variables from the 2000 CTPP, land use variables defined by the local metropolitan planning organization (MPO), and variables that measure transit service quality (broken into three components: in-vehicle, out-of-vehicle, and transfer time) obtained from the travel time skims of the regional travel demand model.

RESULTS

Bus riders were overwhelmingly transit-dependent riders, and rail riders included a disproportionate number of choice riders. By and large, rail riders tend to come from zones with high levels of vehicle access and bus riders from zones with low levels of vehicle access. The model results highlight important similarities as well as differences between the two rider groups. In terms of similarities, both bus and rail trips are produced in larger numbers in zones with higher populations and higher population densities, and attracted to destinations with larger numbers of jobs, but generally not areas with the highest densities of employment. Both bus and rail riders are also generally quite sensitive to in-vehicle travel time and transfer time.

In terms of differences between bus and rail riders, bus riders tend to come from zones with lower income, lower vehicle access (as noted above), and higher minority populations. While rail riders also disproportionately come from minority zones, they come from zones with high levels of vehicle access and the income variable is not significant, except in the cases of rail riders destined to more dispersed destinations, who tend to come from zones with lower incomes, but also relatively high levels of vehicle access. Bus riders do not place the same importance on out-of-vehicle travel time to transit as do rail riders, suggesting that bus stops are distributed in such a way that most patrons can easily access the stops to board a bus and then exit the vehicle to reach their final destination. Rail riders, on the other hand, do place a premium on out-of-vehicle travel time, suggesting that they have difficulty with access to the stations and/or reaching their final destinations. This is not surprising given the small number of rail stations and their spatial distribution relative to the patterns of population and employment in Atlanta.

The results for the land-use variables also reveal important differences between bus and rail riders as well as insights into the importance of transit-oriented development (TOD). Bus riders in Atlanta are not influenced by the presence of a transit-oriented development at either the origin or destination. The CBD does not emerge as a statistically significant destination for bus riders; indeed, lower density employment clusters emerge as important destinations for these riders. For rail riders, on the other hand, the CBD does emerge as an important travel destination, and two of Atlanta’s TODs (Midtown and North Avenue) emerge as important contributors to rail patronage, in excess of what would otherwise be predicted by the employment levels or densities of these zones.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Transit commuters who consider themselves bus riders seem to want a grid of routes connecting the region’s employment centers with faster, more direct, and more frequent service. Shelters, good pedestrian connections and other amenities at transfer points are also implied as being important to these largely transit-dependent riders. With such amenities, many more transit-dependent riders will use transit, presumably relying less on friends and relatives for chauffeured auto rides. Many of these riders appear to use trains to speedily move from one part of the region to the other, relying on buses at one or both ends of the trip, so good transfer connections between buses and trains will also increase ridership of transit-dependent riders.

Transit commuters who consider themselves rail riders, who primarily access transit by automobile, want trains to take them to major employment destinations, including the CBD and some TODs. Serving more of these riders, who are more likely to be choice riders than their bus rider counterparts, will require extending lines into job-rich corridors and developing stations and station environments in those corridors with those qualities typical of the TODs like North Avenue and Midtown. The more that can be done with a network of several regional rapid transit lines, the greater the number of choice riders using transit in the Atlanta region. If a transfer to a bus is required to complete the trip, the service will attract lower status workers who none-the-less will live in auto-oriented environments and will make use of autos to access the system. Are these choice riders, as well? The model results suggest that many of them are choice riders. Their numbers would increase in a more expansive regional network of regional rapid transit lines that had excellent bus transfers to jobs within one to two miles of stations.

A grid of local buses tied into such a regional rapid transit system would greatly increase the number of transit-dependent riders, as well, because it would enable them to reach additional employment opportunities that are presently difficult or impossible for them to reach by transit. These results derive from a study of Atlanta, Georgia, but given their consistency with lessons derived from other locales, they provide important policy guidance to transit agencies seeking to increase ridership by both rider groups.

4th And King Street Railyards, Final Summary Memo

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:57:29 -0500

Report website

Dear Interested 4th & King Railyards Stakeholder

The Planning Department is pleased to send you the attached 41h/King Railyards Final Summary Memo. The overarching purposes of the study were to evaluate the potential for transit-oriented development on the site in order to generate revenue to support rail infrastructure investments and operations as well as to improve physical conditions in the neighborhood, generate additional ridership, and help meet the City’s obligations to accommodate sustainable growth.

The study finds that the current published plans by the rail agencies (Caltrain, CHSRA) for the site would provide limited and challenging opportunity to generate any additional value from the site or to substantially improve the physical environment at or around the yards. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the study finds significant opportunity to generate upwards of $225 million and integrate the site into the fabric of the neighborhood given a relocation or significant consolidation of railyard functions.

This study should be regarded as an informational effort to inform decision-making regarding this site based on the potential for, feasibility of, and possible parameters for future development of the site. The purpose of this study was not to create a specific land use proposal for adoption or endorsement by any decision-making body or stakeholder. The findings of this study will hopefully inform decisions about rail investments and alignments as well as serve as a reference for future planning, design, and implementation efforts once the ultimate configuration of the railyards is more certain.

Caltrain and future High-Speed Rail are critical to the future of San Francisco. Our first interest is ensuring the perpetual success and sustainability of these services and the physical assets they rquire. Ultimately, for any significant change in the use and function of the railyards, including development such as considered in this study, there will need to be a shared vision from all stakeholders.

John Rahaim
Director of Planning

www.sfplanning.org

TCRP Report 31 Volume 2: Funding Strategies for Public Transportation, Casebook

Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 -0500

Case studies of innovative methods for generating revenue for the capital and operating costs of public transportation

The Zoning and Real Estate Implications of Transit-Oriented Development

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 -0500

Covers both legal elements of TOD policies such as density and use regulations, transfer of development rights, and procedures for implementing TOD, as well as the legal basis for TOD, zoning authority, takings, environmental impact statements, intergovernmental agreements.

Enhancing the Visibility and Image of Transit in the United States and Canada

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 -0500

A review of public attitudes and opinions towards public transit in the US and Canada and recommendations for developing a stronger image and market for transit

The Effect of Rail Transit on Property Values: A Summary of Studies, Draft

Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

A good transit system provides a hig h level of access to work and other activities for households and to customers and employees for businesses. The monetary value of this access will be reflected in the value of a home or a business, in addition to the value of other features such as the specific physical attributes of the building and neighborhood characteristics. This paper reviews recent studies on rail transit’s effect on property values. A matrix with the key findings of the major studies carried out over the last ten years can be found in the last section.

The impact of rail transit on property values has been studied from many perspectives, including analyses of different types of systems (e.g., rapid, commuter, light rail), of residential versus commercial impacts, and studies that have attempted to isolate both positive and negative effects. The varied approaches make it difficult to compare the results of one study to another. Further, some of the contradictory results over the years have often been due to differing methods of analysis, data quality, and regional differences. Nevertheless, it is clear that in most cases access to rail systems is valued by property owners and there is little support for the suggestion that proximity to rail actually decreases property values.

Wasatch Front Transit Oriented Development Guidelines

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

This handbook lays out a comprehensive framework for understanding, designing, and implementing Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in the Greater Wasatch region. It discusses the different types of TOD, describes TOD opportunities in the region, illustrates the different physical elements that make up an ideal TOD, and details strategies for implementing these principles.

Travel Patterns of the Elderly: The Role of Land Use

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

This report examines relationships between residential location and travel patterns of the elderly. Using the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, we describe travel patterns of the elderly and estimate models of trip making, daily travel and transit use. Travel tends to shift to the middle part of the day with age, and trip making declines after age 75. We find that land use and travel relationships are largely the same for the elderly as for the non-elderly, though there is some evidence that the oldest elderly are more sensitive to local accessibility.

Based on our findings, we consider the potential effectiveness of various land use strategies. Promoting more transit-friendly, mixed-use communities will increase local accessibility, but current preferences for automobile travel, low-density living environments, and the benefits of aging in place suggest that such strategies will play a limited role in addressing mobility problems of the elderly. Safer cars and transportation facilities, behavioral adjustments, and development of paratransit options more competitive with the private vehicle may be effective strategies for addressing mobility of the elderly.

South End Pedscape/Transit Station Area Plan

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

By 2006, South End will be home to three light rail transit (LRT) stations and six trolley stops. The South End Pedscape/Transit Station Area Plan provides a vision for the growth and redevelopment of South End, particularly the areas around the future transit stations. The plan defines development standards and infrastructure recommendations for the area. This plan supercedes the Central District Plan and the South End/Uptown Rail Corridor Plan as the land use policy document
for the South End area.

South End Transit Station Area Plan (Final)

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Plan for redevelopment of South End in Charlotte, North Carolina, which will include three light rail transit stations and six trolley stops

Communicating the Benefits of TOD: The City of Evanston's Transit-Oriented Redevelopment and the Hudson Bergen Light Rail Transit System

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

This is a tale of three cities—Jersey City and neighboring Hoboken in New Jersey, and Evanston, Illinois – that have experienced an enormous amount of development since the late 1980s, reversing three decades of decline brought on by the great suburban exodus of the 1950s. The result is that in 2006 all three cities are prospering, posting significant increases in property values and sales taxes and other revenues due to the
building boom and resulting increases in business activity. The amount of high-density development that has occurred could never have occurred this quickly if these cities did not have rich transit networks providing very high-quality connections to the abundant jobs, culture and destinations in their big city neighbors: Manhattan is across the Hudson River from Hoboken and Jersey City; Chicago and Evanston share a border.

Charlotte Urban Street Design Guidelines

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

T he Urban Street Design Guidelines described in this document present a comprehensive approach to designing new and modifi ed streets within Charlotte’s designated Sphere of Influence. The Guidelines will allow us to provide better streets throughout Charlotte – streets that refl ect the best aspects of the streets built in the past, and that will provide more capacity and safe and comfortable travel for motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders.

Transit and Reducing Greenhouse Gases: A Look at the Numbers

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

A presentation for Rail~Volution 2008 on the topic of transit's role in reducing climate change.

National Award For Smart Growth Achievement

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Honorees represent the best in smart growth development in 2009

Restructuring the Commercial Strip

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Smart Growth Program commissioned this document to provide communities with guidance on how they can revitalize these commercial corridors to accommodate economic growth, reuse land already serviced by existing infrastructure, and reflect the unique character of the town or city where they are located.

Next Stop: New Jobs

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

From the opening of the report:

New Jobs, Better Connections

Chicago is northeastern Illinois’ historic center of commerce and employment, yet over the last half century, economic activity has continuously dispersed to outlying suburbs. Among large metropolitan areas, Chicago is among the most decentralized, with two out of three jobs in the region located more than 10 miles from downtown. Many of these outlying employment centers are inaccessible by mass transit, thereby creating strains on road infrastructure, environmental systems and personal finances due to the costliness of car ownership and its attendant expenses.

Nevertheless, with one out of three jobs located within 10 miles of downtown, Chicago continues to be an economic force in the region. Chicago’s well-established mass transit system, which includes nearly 400 fixed-rail stations and over 180 bus routes, affords workers the chance to lower the cost of commuting by minimizing or eliminating the need for a car. Convenient and well-utilized public transit reduces congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. It also enables job development, as evidenced by the high number of existing jobs concentrated within transit zones.

Nationally, attention to neighborhood development around transit has focused on mixed-use development with residences, street-level retail and, occasionally, office space. This paradigm ignores the fact that much vacant land within station areas is strictly zoned for manufacturing or commercial purposes that could attract businesses offering living wages. Furthermore, job creation near transit can lead to more destinations along a corridor, creating demand for transit outside of the central business district (CBD) and, conceivably, in a reverse-commute direction during peak and off-peak travel times. This would spread ridership out along the system and make more optimal use of its carrying capacity over the course of the day.

Identifying Opportunities for Development

This analysis identifies which neighborhood transit zones in Chicago (namely those located outside of the CBD) have the greatest potential to create new manufacturing and commercial employment opportunities. To calculate prospective job creation in each area, CNT utilized its Employment Opportunity Optimizer Analysis tool (referred to as the Optimizer throughout this report). CNT developed this geographic information systems (GIS) application in 2003, and it has undergone continuous refinement through projects in metropolitan Chicago and other urban areas.

The Optimizer quantifies a number of characteristics—transit service, zoning, land use, population density and market potential—generally associated with successful developments and then determines which station areas are best suited for manufacturing or commercial uses. Since different ingredients are required in an area to sustain different types of businesses, the Optimizer utilizes variables specific to each of the employment sectors under analysis. These variables are briefly explained in the body of this report and are more thoroughly defined in the appendix.

The report highlights over 50 station areas with economic development potential in the manufacturing and commercial sectors. Most opportunities are individual transit zones, but a few are clusters comprised of overlapping transit zones. The top prospective sites are listed and mapped within the body of the report. A full listing of high-potential station areas is included in the appendix.

CNT chose sites based on the development potential of available land, but further market analyses are needed to ensure the most productive use of these properties. This report concludes with suggestions for further research and policy decisions to more effectively link employment centers to workers via transit.

RFP for Station Area Planning and Development

Mon, 22 Dec 1997 18:10:22 -0500

RFP for transit corridor market analysis and station area planning and development for the RTA 'Link" light rail project in Seattle

TCRP 16: Transit and Urban Form Volume 2 - Commuter and Light Rail

Mon, 01 Jan 1996 16:17:41 -0500

The purpose of the research is to provide guidance as to the land use characteristics in a corridor that can support new fixed-guideway transit services cost-effectively. It is postulated that land use characteristics in a corridor are a significant factor that drive the demand for transit service and, therefore, the value and effectiveness of such services. The research supports making the case for fixed-guideway transit where it is cost-effective and conversely lessening the demand for expensive fixed-guideway services where land use characteristics cannot support them. The research also makes it possible to suggest the nature of the changes in land use that could support transit.

TransitRenewal 2012-2017

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:47:17 -0400

Introduction

The 2011-2012 Sacramento Regional Transit Comprehensive Operational Analysis, commonly known as “TransitRenewal”, includes a review of existing market conditions and transit service and aims to position the RT network to sustainably meet future transit demand within the service area. Sustainability is the method of using a resource without depleting or damaging it for future use. Sustainable transit planning focuses on meeting transit needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet such needs1. TransitRenewal responds to changing economic circumstances and RT’s new financial realities. In 2010, RT implemented substantial service reductions which included discontinuing several bus routes, reducing service levels, and reducing spans. TransitRenewal responds to RT’s plan to regain previous FY 2010 service levels and intends to identify core areas of the RT system where investment will have a maximum benefit, and will guide RT to a more financially sustainable future.

Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit Sustainable Corridor Implementation Plan

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 15:36:30 -0400

Introduction

In spring of 2011, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles, was awarded a grant from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) to prepare the Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit Sustainable Corridor Implementation Plan (Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP). Metro, the City of Los Angeles, and SCAG retained Raimi + Associates and its consultant team of The Center for Transit-Oriented Development and Nelson\Nygaard to assist with the planning effort.

The Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP identifies a range of improvements to the Orange Line and the fourteen station areas on its original alignment – such as land use changes, catalyst projects, streetscape improvements, and transit connections – that will increase transit use for commuters and discretionary riders, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and advance Metro’s sustainable development principles. The four main goals of the Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP are to:

Identify strategies to better integrate transportation and land use decisions;
Identify transportation measures that support station-area and community plans;
Identify and prioritize staff time and resources to implement TOD-related projects by determining where improvements will have the most positive impact; and
Support Metro’s Sustainability Principles.

The Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP is intended to build on the success of the Orange Line by providing recommendations to create a network of transit-oriented districts (TODs) at station areas along the corridor. The study further develops the concepts identified in the 2010 CTOD report on Transit-Oriented Districts titled “Creating Successful Transit-Oriented Districts in Los Angeles: A Citywide Toolkit for Achieving Regional Goals.”¹

Creating transit-oriented districts is one strategy to achieve sustainability in the Los Angeles region. To provide direction for planning and programming activities, Metro developed the Sustainable Communities Planning Framework and associated Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy. The Framework establishes an approach for embedding social, economic, and environmental sustainability throughout Metro’s functions, and these principles are at the core of the Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP. Metro plays a unique role in facilitating a more sustainable future for the Los Angeles region. The agency plans, funds, constructs, and operates a transportation system that improves Angelenos’ health and well-being, strengthens the economy, and enhances the natural environment.

Recognizing this, Metro has adopted the following principles:

1. Connect People and Places

Access. Better integrate land-use and transportation planning to reduce trip lengths and increase travel choices.
Prosperity. Reduce transportation costs for residents and provide the mobility necessary to increase economic competitiveness.
Green Modes. Promote clean mobility options to reduce criteria pollutants, greenhouse gas emissions, and dependence on foreign oil.

2. Create Community Value

Healthy Neighborhoods. Improve public health through traffic safety, reduced exposure to pollutants, and design for walking and biking.
Community Development. Design and build transportation facilities that promote infill development, build community identity, and support social and economic activity.
Urban Greening: Enhance and restore natural systems to mitigate the impacts of transportation projects on communities and wildlife.

3. Conserve Resources

Context Sensitivity. Build upon the unique strengths of Los Angeles County’s communities through strategies that match local and regional context and support investment in existing communities.
System Productivity. Increase the efficiency and ensure the long-term viability of the multimodal transportation system.
Environmental Stewardship. Plan and support transportation improvements that minimize material and resource use through conservation, re-use, re-cycling and re-purposing.

The Orange Line BRT Sustainable CIP explicitly supports these key priorities, working to advance Metro’s Sustainable Communities Planning Framework and Countywide Sustainability Planning Policy by creating transit-oriented districts along the Orange Line. This study and the districts that result can be a model for how other transit corridors and stations areas within Metro’s service area can develop and how multiple agencies can work together to create transit-oriented districts.

The Orange Line Sustainable Corridor Implementation Plan includes the following sections:

Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter introduces the purpose of the report and provides a background on the Orange Line BRT system.
Chapter 2: An Overview of Transit-Oriented Districts. This chapter summarizes the concept and benefits of Transit-Oriented Development.
Chapter 3: Corridor-Level Conclusions and Recommendations. This chapter provides an overview of the conclusions of the study and specific recommendations for future corridor-wide improvements.
Chapter 4: Recommended Station-Area Improvements. This chapter provides more detailed information for each station area, including background information, the future intent of each station area, and specific recommendations for improvements that go beyond the corridor-wide recommendations.
Chapter 5: Moving Forward. This chapter provides a high-level roadmap for how the recommendations in the plan will be implemented over time. It includes potential funding sources, priorities for each station area, initial actions, and a list of partners needed to implement the vision and recommendations in this plan.

Appendices

At the end of the report area a series of appendices that provide additional information on the project. The appendices are:

Appendix A: Relevant Policy Documents and Implementation Activity
Appendix B: Corridor Conditions
Appendix C: Station-Area Profiles
Appendix D: Results from Public Workshops
Appendix E: Results from Online Survey
Appendix F: Corridor Working Group Outreach List
Appendix G: GHG and Health Analysis

Footnote

1 Creating Successful Transit-Oriented Districts in Los Angeles: A Citywide Toolkit for Achieving Regional Goals. Center for Transit Oriented Development (CTOD), February 2010.

Olde Town Arvada TOD Request For Qualifications

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:03:04 -0500

(Report website)

Executive Summary

The future Olde Town Station (the Station), scheduled to open in 2016, will be located on RTD’s Gold Line, a fully-funded and under-construction electric commuter corridor component of the FasTracks rail system. RTD projects the Gold Line will serve 16,800 to 20,100 riders on an average weekday by 2030, delivering passengers from the Station to Denver Union Station in just 19 minutes.

RTD’s plans call for the Station platform to be located just west of Vance Street on the north side of the existing rail tracks that run along the northern edge of the Property, with parking and eight bus bays to be accommodated on the Property. Construction of a West 56th Avenue connection will run east-west through the Property and an elevator and stairs will connect transit riders from the Property to Grandview Avenue, where riders will then have an at-grade crossing of the tracks to access the platform.

RTD’s original plan, as approved in the 2009 Gold Line Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), was to construct the required 400 commuter parking spaces as a surface parking lot. The EOC Partner Agencies subsequently agreed to minimize the amount of land used for commuter parking and to earmark significant funding to assist with the design and construction of a 400-space parking structure and related elevator on the Property. The EOC’s objective is to preserve premium land and to catalyze transit-oriented development of the highest and best uses. When build-out is complete, the goal for the Project is to include a mix of uses that will complement and enhance the existing character of Olde Town while creating a unique and modern sense of place for the new development. The EOC is not prescribing a specific development program or site design, but instead desires for the ultimate form and program to be a product of the Master Developer’s collaboration with the EOC and a commitment to market viability, innovation, and quality place-making.