Transit-Oriented Development — By the Numbers
The numbers are in. And they show that transit-oriented development really does get people out of their cars.
A new study of 17 different transit-oriented developments in four metropolitan areas showed that they generated only about half as many car trips as the standard planning reference guide predicts.
It’s research with potential for major impact on the way communities view transit-oriented development (TOD). The findings could drive changes to local building codes, lead to lower development impact fees, and make the numbers work better for communities and home buyers as well.
Shock-horror! Could this really be true? Cullen and his cronies at Transit will be shocked! Not. As Jeanette pointed out in parliament last year, Labour and Transit have been cooking the books for years in favour of more roads over more public transport.
Click here for the original article, and see why after decades of neglect, the US is building light rail at lightening speeds. After a decade of neglect under National and a further wasted decade under Labour, both of them relying on free market ideology to make things happen, isn’t it time we got off our bum and built the best possible public transport for our cities? This is No Country for Old Men, as today’s Dom Post cartoon declares.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
First, the article is a report on a study. The only fact is that people living in homes near public transport drive less. The report quoted appears to be a preaching to the converted study, not exactly objective - I could throw a link in from Public Purpose that would refute this too. The US is not building light rail at lightening (sic) speed, the era of big spending on fixed public transport is over - the public transport trend in the US is now high quality bus corridors. However, for some reason, you’re wedded to rail.
More importantly, what is the cost of this reduction in traffic through massively subsidised public transport? No analysis. You could achieve the same by simply pricing roads better, making public transport more viable at the same time.
The cooking the books is a lie. The different discount rate still treats road and public transport the same. The different value of time reflects the relative earning capacity of road users vs public transport users. Roads are funded primarily by road users, public transport primarily NOT by public transport users. The “relying on free market ideology” by Labour is what, increasing fuel taxes, directing government agencies to spend money on public transport, giving regional councils the power to own and operate public transport services, giving highly preferential subsidy rates to rail over buses?
There is precious little evidence that spending on new rail based public transport will have anything beyond a very marginal effect on congestion in Auckland, and for the cost involved it is a very bad investment (but hey politicians like opening train sets). The truth is that traffic congestion is predominantly due to poor pricing of roads - all of the modelling and analysis work done in the past few years around Auckland makes it plain that NOTHING will address congestion like better road pricing.
and not a single US city with recently built rail transit has seen any discernible reduction in congestion.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
LS, light rail is a hybrid of bus and rail. You could certainly class it as investment in either.
And it’s not a lie to say they’re cooking the books- it’s a difference in philosophy. Labour says we should follow the money to decide where to spend our transport budget. The Greens say we should spend transport funds on the most time-efficient (not only do they lessen congestion, you can also read on public transport. Try doing that while driving) and environmentally-friendly forms of transport- which are all public transport.
Can you give us some good studies that point to public transport being ineffective in combating congestion, LS? In fact, we should probably ask you for ones that show that public transport actually makes congestion worse, as we already know that building new roads at best has little effect on congestion, also.
What are your criteria for rail lessening congestion, anyway? Does it need to reduce per-capita congestion? Because it would be rather unfair to blame rail for population increases. Also, do we set the bar for the lessening of congestion against number of actual passengers or the maximum potential passengers?
Without answering some of those questions, you can pretty much fudge any study you want into giving favourable results either way.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:52 am
Ari, An article in issue #25 of the UC Transportation Centre’s magazine provides a straightforward explanation of why most traffic reduction strategies fail. In short public transport fails for exactly the same reason new roads fail - triple convergence.
http://www.uctc.net/access/access.asp
If you’re more technically minded you check out these two studies:
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~tripp/publications/paper/planning/mukti_metro_k haragpur_05.pdf
http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/revista/noticias/articul oCEPAL/3/20223/P20223.xml&xsl=/revista/tpl-i/p39f.xsl&base=/revista/tp l/top-bottom.xsl
If you visit the UCTC site you will find most of their research papers available in PDFs.
Here are the numbers of some of the papers most relevant to frog’s post:
BART: 307, 308, 309, 310, 742.
Transit & land use: 2, 54, 57, 107, 266, 242, 250, 343, 374, 425, 498, 511, 592, 606, 681, 682, 732, 744, 825.
And most of the ones by Cervero, Robert - co-author of the study this post is all about. His earlier studies have looked into the reasons why TODs have lower vehicle use. His conclusion is that TODs attract people who are already transit oriented. His research has been unable to answer the question: Would TOD residents use transit less if they had to live in a conventional neighbourhood or suburb?
March 1st, 2008 at 5:42 pm
The original article, waxes lyrical about Denver’s FasTracks plan. The antiplanner pours cold water on the plan
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=372#more-372
The reality, as usual, lies somewhere between these extremes. Fastrack’s cost increases of 20% and level of service reductions of 25% are consistent with the Federal Transit Administration’s major projects review. This is pure political expedience. Cost blowouts of 20% seem reasonable, 50% or 100% get opponents and the newsmedia in a lather. Reducing the number or size of stations and the amount of double tracking can reduce potential ridership by more than a third but this is rarely noticed by opponents or the newsmedia hence it is a popular method of dealing with cost blowouts. The combination of a 20% underestimate of costs and a 30% overestimate of benefits inflates the BCR by 50%. Freeway costs rarely blowout to this extent now that environmental and civic considerations are factored in at the initial evaluation stage. The urban freeway backlash that began in the late 1960s caused so much delay and mitigation that costs frequently doubled or tripled or worse. American cities are littered with freeways that stop in mid air. The example that featured in the Blues Brothers was recently torn down and the land used for urban redevelopment. The same fate could befall porkbarrel light rail schemes.
The latest FasTracks annual report can be found here
http://drcog.org/documents/Final%20%201-29-08.pdf
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
Triple convergence isn’t a problem with public transport, per se, it’s just a problem with any favourable service adjustment that depends on low load- I’m familiar with a similar principle from game theory where when an effective new strategy becomes publicised, it may be used more than its effectiveness warrants. Essentially, this is one way in which public transport isn’t better, but it’s certainly not a way in which it is worse, or a suggestion that public transport as a whole is worse. I certainly agree we need to watch for many of the same problems as we see in other traffic developments, and I acknowledge that traffic management is not exactly my specialty
Now, whether Light Rail would be too costly depends a lot on the hows and wheres and such of its implementation. In principle, Light Rail combines the advantages of rail and bus networks, with its flexibility covering over most of the weaknesses it takes on from this approach.
Public transport still has numerous advantages, some of which will aid congestion:
1) It’s under-utilised in New Zealand. Drawing a little attention to public transport via triple convergence would not be a bad thing.
2) It’s more fuel-efficient per person, which staves off the necessity of alternative fuels assuming the number of people travelling stays equal.
3) It’s more time-efficient, as the driver:passenger ratio is much, much lower, allowing people to catch up with documents or read the news etc… while they are travelling.
4) It can synchronise well with special events or connections to other types of transport to reduce temporary congestion, especially when used in conjunction with roads rather than in opposition to them.
5) It allows young people more independence in getting about, and thus reduces the time- and fuel-costs of parents ferrying their children to various social/sporting/academic events by car.
6) It’s easier to use cost-adjustment to disperse usage of public transport, as most networks already charge peak prices during busy times of the day, while tolling is unused and unpopular for road traffic.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
“The Greens say we should spend transport funds on the most time-efficient (not only do they lessen congestion, you can also read on public transport. Try doing that while driving) and environmentally-friendly forms of transport- which are all public transport.”
What nonsense Ari, driving is almost always faster than public transport - which is one reason why people prefer it. Public transport only beats driving on travel time if it is virtually non stop and pretty much door to door, and it has a faster corridor than the car - pretty damned rare conditions.
Secondly, it is also nonsense that public transport is more environmentally friendly - a car with two or more occupants is more environmentally friendly than any bus. Public transport beats cars on emissions if well patronised ON AVERAGE (i.e. both directions for more than half of a trip).
Try the CS First Boston report on Auckland rail, which showed that Auckland rail would increase average speeds at peak periods on Auckland roads by less than 0.5 km/h.
You say “we already know that building new roads at best has little effect on congestion”. No that is simple propaganda - for example you only need to look at the Newlands Interchange, Mana-Plimmerton improvements in Wellington to see significant reductions in delays at those locations. How about the Upper Hutt bypass which has kept Upper Hutt relieved from through traffic for 20 years, or the Tawa bypass (motorway) which has done the same to Tawa. Yes you shouldn’t just build roads without cognisance of cost and pricing, but building roads isn’t ineffective per se.
Congestion is quite simply a measure of marginal costs (delay) compared to free flow conditions. Some congestion is economically efficient, but beyond a certain point is it economically and environmentally destructive.
The primary solution is NOT build, but price.
Light rail arguably has the worst of both worlds of rail and bus - it has the inflexibility of rail (can hardly change routes quickly or cheaply or bypass incidents), and lacks the capacity of rail (it needs a dedicated grade separated corridor for that, in which case you may as well build heavy rail!).
The MoT Surface Transport Costs and Charges study demonstrates that per person, buses need to have around 18x the patronage of a car to have the SAME level of emissions. Poorly patronised public transport is an environmental disaster. Unfortunately the Greens have bought into an ideology of solutions, not outcomes. The best outcome is for traffic to be free flowing and for all transport users to be paying according to the fixed and marginal costs they impose. That wont come by worshipping at the altar of rail based transport. It shouldn’t be forgotten than the Greenest transport (cycling, walking) is the mode that competes most fiercely with public transport.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:22 am
libertyscott, well argued on most points.
Just this one exception. “we already know that building new roads at best has little effect on congestion”. Actually there is a solid body of evidence to support that notion, with growing evidence of the importance of land use on traffic growth. Which means that triple convergence is actually quadruple convergence. In short, if new roads don’t produce new land uses then they don’t produce new traffic. In addition to the three common tactics used by drivers to avoid peak congestion (other times, other routes, other modes - triple divergence) there is also a tactic businesses use - other location. When capacity is expanded businesses respond as soon as funding is committed. In anticipation of reduced congestion they will start developing or redeveloping land along that corridor. When the project is completed and the extra capacity reduces congestion some drivers will abaondon their avoidance tactics. This triple convergence of drivers back to the formerly congested route can see peak period congestion return to preimprovement levels within weeks or months. This exact same effect has been observed with BART and the various LA “Lines”. The new lines intiallly reduce peak congestion but then the same triple convergence kicks in and the roads and freeways quickly fill up at peak periods. It is this response to the stimulus of reduced time cost that precludes building our way out of congestion, either with roads or PT. Congestion pricing for both raods and parking is needed to eliminate the stimulus of reduced time costs.
The fourth convergence is largely reponsible for total traffic volumes growing faster than expected and frequently consuming all of the expanded capacity within a decade. In California this effect is noticeable in both corridor comparisons and county comparisons. Above average amounts of land use development occur where there are above average amounts of freeway development. The same effect is not observable on commuter rail corridors, ie contrary to the claims of promoters commuter rail does not stimulate urban redevelopement. Not surprising really, similar claims were made about freeways but the evidence is that they only stimulated commercial redevelopment of industrial wastelands whereas the promised urban redevelopment and CBD revitalisation is pretty much the exact opposite of what actually happened.
Precisely this same effect was observed in Britain during the Victorian era. Not because motorways were being built but because railways were being built.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Incidently, the STCC studies 18 times seems to be a high end estimate. But even a mid-range estimate of 10x is out of reach for any bus service that loses the arterial portion of the route to light rail.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Yes Kevyn, essentially the problem is one of price. If all new road and public transport capacity was justified as a commercially sound investment then it would address this - suddenly transport users would face the costs of living in the suburbs, and peak commuting. Sadly the Green Party approach is the same addiction that the AA has, but instead of road building it is about public transport. Ideology not economics.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
libertyscott said:
“The MoT Surface Transport Costs and Charges study demonstrates that per person, buses need to have around 18x the patronage of a car to have the SAME level of emissions.”
However this would be comparing cars to standard diesel buses, wouldn’t it? The comparison is quite a bit different if you compare the cars to electric buses (battery, FES or trolley - or even hydrogen powered) and assume renewable generation.
Trevor.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:56 am
“Click here for the original article, and see why after decades of neglect, the US is building light rail at lightening speeds.” I clicked and couldn’t find a single reference to ISTEA (1991) or Section 5309 of TEA-21 (1998). If you don’t see that you don’t see why the US is building light rail at lightening speeds and the horrible similarities with why the US was building freeways at lightening speeds in the 1950s and 60s.
Essentially ISTEA provides federal transit funding on the basis that federal highway funds have been provided. With one crucial difference. Where the federal highway funding mechanisms have always included regional equity formulas to restrict pork barrel politics the federal transit funding mechanisms encourage pork barrel politics, especially Section 5309 for Fixed Guideway New Starts Program which requires a “project sponsor”.
What transit funding and highway funding have in common is the rate of assistance to state and local governments for new construction is much higher than for maintenance or improvement of existing transit or highways. In the 50s and 60s that meant it was easier to get federal funds to build a freeway than it was to get funds to improve existing roads. In the 90s and 00s it has been easier to get funds to build light rail than to get funds to improve bus services. Especially if your congressman or senator is on the right committees or is an experienced pork barreller.
Politicians love monumental projects and it is no coincidence that many freeways are named after politicians. So when given the choice between expanding a successful bus system or building an expensive but “sexy” light rail system you can guess which one politicians will throw their weight behind especially when they don’t have to worry too much about where the money will come from.
The really big problem with light rail is that it relegates buses to feeder routes which devastates their revenue per mile, emissions per passenger mile and basicly everything that made the bus system popular and successful. While light rail is very successful at stealing travellers from buses it is not very successful at stealing travellers away from roads. Light rail is able to do the former because light rail owners are uniquely qualified to make it happen. Owning both modes means they can ensure buses can’t compete with light rail. Unless politicians are prepared to introduce tolls on all roads they simply cannot stop roads from competing with light rail, and from winning hands down on time cost.
Without federal funding biased towards new construction there would not have been a freeway boom in the 50s and 60s nor would there be the current light rail boom.
Of course the other disturbing similarity between the freeway frenzy and the light rail frenzy is the type of arguments used by supporters of each “solution”. It will solve traffic congestion. All the leading cities have them. It will attract new developments and create thriving prosperous communities. It is the modern way. It uses cheap and plentiful energy. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Two reasonably simple but rather brief explanations of the TEA-21 S5309 funding processes can be found here:
http://www.pbworld.com/library/technical_papers/pdf/44_FTA_New_Starts. pdf
http://spider.apta.com/lgwf/legtools/funding_guarantees.pdf