This diary is actually going to be titled, Transit Oriented Development 101: Affordability, Mobility, and the Environment. If I leave something out, I'll cover it in a 202.
Daneel has been putting together a series of diaries on rail transit and BruceMcF has written a diary asking that folks don't pit buses against rail. Yes! It's all about networks and I'll tell you why below the fold...
Transit Oriented Development is a development strategy that has been heralded as the savior of the world, however its not quite that simple, and often too much burden is put on a single developer to change the patterns of cities founded centuries ago. But if we have a strategy and do it right, this can be a way for this country to do more with less.
First what is TOD? Transit Oriented Development is a strategy to develop compact mixed use walkable neighborhoods around passenger rail stations. The development and connections such as sidewalks are oriented to the stations so folks can get there easily and its easily recognizable. Generally it's not a single development either, it comprises the district within a half mile of the station. Now lets get to the history.
The first transit oriented developments started showing up in the middle of the railroad boom. With the united states railroads using land grants, towns were built along the rails, many of which still have the original street grid laid off the rails.
In 1888 TOD went into a boom when Frank J Sprague proved electric traction using overhead wires and the streetcar suburb was born. Those who could afford it started moving to these suburbs, including Oak Park Chicago and Culver City near Los Angeles. Land speculators didn't care about transportation as much as they were about selling land. They used the streetcar as a tool, which we now call development oriented transit. This movement continued until just before the second world war. The rise of the automobile was stunted by world war II when transit made its final surge but upon coming back to the states, the Federal highway system was underway. In his book, 20th Century Sprawl, Owen Guetfruend stated
"Between 1921 and 1932 American Governments spent $21 Billion dollars on streets and highways and collected only $5 billion from motor vehicle users. This meant that motorists were directly contributing less than 1/4 of the direct costs of adapting use of the automobile."
Thus began the shift from a privately run transit system to a public one, the money was moving towards the roads. It should also be noted that the railways were being regulated and were forced to keep their fees low, starving them of capital for improvements. Eventually when it came time to replace the decaying infrastructure, there was no money for the capital reinvestment in streetcar or interurban systems. Hence buses took over.
During the 1950's and 1960's some regions had the foresight to build rapid transit subways. This included DC, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Other cities planned but weren't so successful including Denver, Minneapolis and Seattle. The office of technology assessment documented all of these planning efforts and they are located here. Land use planning was almost non-existant with most of these cities seeing these lines as suburb to city commuter lines. Arlington County will be discussed later.
In the 1980's light rail came back as people were starting to get sick of the effects of congestion and wanted something different. In 1981, San Diego opened its first light rail line and in 1992 the landmark ISTEA bill which allowed cities to program money away from highways and into transit. This led to a transit building boom and with concerns about the boring suburban lifestyle and wasteful sprawl growing the idea of transit oriented development was dusted off in 1992 by Peter Calthorpe and Shelley Poticha in a book called The Next American Metropolis. Work in 1977 by Jeff Zupan called Public Transportation and Land Use Policy laid the groundwork for this new work but NAM laid out the first set of rules for TOD to integrate land use and transportation integration. Now that we've seen the history, lets look at the benefits.
Affordability
Recent research suggests that "drive till you qualify" just doesn't work anymore. A study by the Brookings Institute and The Center for Transit Oriented development called the Affordability Index suggests that it's not where you live that is cheap that matters, but rather where you live and how you move around. The average American family spends 18% on transportation and 32.5% on housing. The study states that in areas that are walkable with great transit, the spending on transportation moves below 10%. In sprawling exurban areas, that cost rises to 25% given the need to drive more to get to groceries and services as well as work. And if a family with two cars gets rid of a car, they can save over $10,000 a year
This is corroborated by research done for Portland Metro in 1994. Their travel survey showed that vehicles miles traveled (VMT) in mixed use areas with good transit was just under 10 miles per day per capita versus 21 miles per day in areas without transit in the outskirts of the incorporated counties.
Another study done by the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the Center for Housing Policy says that for every dollar saved moving further away activity centers, 77 cents more is spent on transportation almost negating any savings that comes from the cheaper mortgage. The idea of location efficiency has led to a location efficient mortgage that allows for a bigger mortgage closer to the city in trade for getting rid of a car and taking transit, because money is saved.
All of this shows that by living in neighborhoods that are walkable with good transit greatly increases transportation savings, which can be a major chunk of the family budget. In fact, the difference between the exurban 25% and the well connected urban 9% can result in a 'tax break' of over $5,000 per year. However cities with greater rapid transit networks are more likely to reap the benefits of the network. Just like when you have a phone, everone needs to have one in order for you to talk, destinations need transit connections. One line won't change this, but a network construction such as Denver's or Portland's will get better with each new addition. I discussed the transit space race, an expansion of rail transit across the country in a previous diary.
Mobility
Everyone loves being stuck in traffic right? Wrong. Well the premise of transit oriented development is to create mixed use mixed income neighborhoods where you can walk to get groceries and use your car less. Notice I didn't say get rid of your car. That is not the point. An anecdote here... I live in the Mission District in San Francisco, a half block away from a muni metro light rail line and a half mile away from the 24th street BART (metro subway)station. I drive about once a week but for all the other days I either walk or take transit. On the weekends I use Muni to go visit my friends and go out while on the weekdays I take BART to work in Oakland. For the once a week I drive, i go visit my grandmother so i fill up my tank about once a week. If I were to drive to work every day, i would have to pay $12 for parking and $4 bridge toll. So since my company pays for transit, i automatically am saving $16 a day. If I work 250 days in a year, thats a savings of $4000. I can do a lot with that money. But the reason I'm able to do that is because i'm able to be mobile through transit and have lots of options. Buses, light rail and heavy metro, I use them all.
The Environment & Security
Recently a report by Brookings for CEOs for Cities touted Portland's green dividend.
This is a good minimum estimate of the aggregate economic benefits—the green dividend—that Portland area residents enjoy as a result of land use planning and related environmental policies. But the benefits don’t stop there. Since Portlanders don’t spend that money on transportation, they have more money to spend on other things. Because so much of what is spent on transportation immediately leaves the state—Oregon makes neither cars nor gasoline—money not spent on transportation gets spent on sectors of the economy that have a much larger local multiplier effect. (Think locally-brewed beer.) According to IRS data, about 73 percent of the retail price of gas (back when it was under $2 a gallon, by the way) and 86 percent of the retail price of cars is the "cost of goods sold," which immediately leaves the local economy. The $1.1 billion Portlanders don’t spend on car travel translates into $800 million that is not leaving the local region. Because this money gets re-spent in other sectors of the economy, it stimulates local businesses rather than rewarding Exxon or Toyota.
The reduction in driving also reduces greenhouse gas(GHG) and carbon emissions. Reports by John Holtzclaw for the NRDC states that a reduction of 120 mBTUs per household is gained when a compact urban form is created. He also states that the increase in density does more than access to transit elevating the need for TOD.
Now density to people is a scary word but modest increases in density can reap rewards but just having access to transit isn't as important as supporting the transit with land use improvements...which means you can walk to more places and infrastructure savings can be gained by shared walls and shared water and sewer infrastructure.
In addition to the reinvestment in community that comes from this land use and transportation strategy, there is also a security dividend. With our war in Iraq becoming more costly and the Australians finally admitting it is for Oil, this also becomes a strategy for security. The reductions in energy use from not just transportation, but land use patterns leads to reduction in the need for oil. So if we add the land use and transit strategy to Alan Drake's freight electrification strategy (his diary here) we can get massive reductions in fossil fuel consumption.
So how do we do it? The first thing we need to do is invest more in transit infrastructure. We have the bus networks in cities to support the rapid transit networks, but we are lacking the rapid transit in most cities. Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, Light Rail, Streetcars, Buses etc all need investment. Once the networks in place, we can start creating new rail suburbs by connecting old town centers and retrofitting strip corridors with TOD. The best example we have is the Rosslyn Ballston Metro Corridor in Washington DC. When the Metro was built, Arlington County refused to have the rail line put down the freeway center and instead put it underground. They planned for future growth (The Wedges and Corridors Plan) by protecting the single family neighborhoods and rehabilitating the strip corridor which was declining. From my own blog, the Overhead Wire...
They put the subway in and limited the growth to the corridor to protect the surrounding neighborhoods. Now they get 32% of the county tax revenue from 7% of the land because of the transit and land use combination. This area densified (to 7,700 people per square mile) and would not have look anything like the famous picture below if it wasn't for the subway (picture is on my page). The most interesting statistic is that 73% of riders walk to the station. I wish people would get real and understand that you don't need to already be like New York and Chicago, but you can grow corridors that have densities to support urbanism.
It should also be noted that this corridor and Arlington county has one of the lowest car ownership rates outside of New York City and unlike other transit dependent areas, has a relatively higher income. This tells us that we can do it and we can make it work. We just need to build the right infrastructure and TOD will come.
This diary has become a little long but in the future I'll cover corridor planning at the federal level, TOD 202 which will probably include design issues and a discussion of the transit oriented district itself and at some point I'll discuss the network effects when I have time.
Finally this is important. This doesn't just relate to transportation legislation, but to the farm bill, the energy bill, any defense bills, Housing bills, and beyond. I believe we can help solve a lot of our problems by creating a huge expansion in national transit infrastructure. No it's not the whole solution, but it's an important part.
A public works project of this magnitude should be able to appease the road building industry, keep manufacturing jobs in the US for all the steel that is necessary, and create skilled jobs for engineers, planners, and urban designers. As stated before this will also save average American's money (Mr. Edwards this fits your poverty platform) and provide for a Secure America (This should fit in the Democratic Platform). The time to act is now, call or write your senator or congressman and tell them transit expansion is important and needed now. Please use any data I've linked to to make the case that this is for the future of our country.