1. Enabling High Performance
Transit-Oriented Development
September 2006
Michael Replogle

2. The walking city

3. The public transport city

4. The automobile city

5. Many factors make
them what they are
 Quality, connectivity of
public transportation
 Development density
 Urban form
 Mixture of uses vs.
separation of retail,
housing, industrial,
recreation land uses
 Street space management
for non-motorized users
 Parking management
 Block size, street
connectivity
 Transportation pricing

6. Density is one factor in
transit oriented development
Vehicle distance
traveled per person vs.
population density: 46
cities worldwide
Kenworthy JR, Laube FB, Barter P, Raad T,
Poboon C. An International Sourcebook of
Automobile Dependence in Cities, 1960 –
1990. (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of
Colorado, 1999.)

7. Appropriate urban form is even more
vital to transit oriented development

8. Appropriate transport services &
pricing make TOD effective
 High frequency, high quality public transport
 High quality non-motorized access near TOD
 Sound pricing of parking, roads, public transport
 More motorways will reduce success of TOD

9. Automobile dependent urban form
separating uses: the opposite of TOD
SHOPPING
CENTERS
IMPREGNABLE
BORDER
HOMES

10. Traffic cells: making TOD,
walk and bike access central
 Highest density near central
public transport station
 Direct paths for walking,
cycling, & transit
 80% internal trips by
walk/bike
 Examples: Houten, Delft,
Gronigen (Neth.); Japan,
Gottenberg (Sweden); Davis,
California, Boston (USA);

11. A smart growth transportation
system includes
 Multiple route choices between  A network of dense, frequent
points public transit service
 Short blocks & frequent opportunities
to cross streets on foot
 A wide variety of street types that
provide both access and mobility
 Sidewalks and bicycle facilities that
provide direct and safe travel routes
 Use of access management; e.g.,
highways linking towns, but not
bisecting or bypassing them, and
driveways strategically located on
commercial arterials
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Characteristics and Performance of Regional
Transportation Systems, 2004, Washington, DC

12. Pattern and scale of streets
Attention to
street network
design is vital to
transit oriented
development

13. Role of smart growth
transportation in TOD
Study of 10 US regions considered vehicle
travel, congestion, pollutant emissions, and
vehicle fatalities system performance:
Higher density regions that do not have a transportation
system with smart growth characteristics tend not to
perform as well as areas that effectively combine density
with a smart growth transportation system.
The effects of density and a smart growth transportation
system on performance are not additive but synergistic,
creating enhanced performance when the two are
combined.
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Characteristics and Performance of Regiona
Transportation Systems, 2004, Washington, DC

14. Measuring smart growth
transportation characteristics
Connectivity and Pedestrian Orientation
 Block faces length: shorter is more convenient
 Density of street network: shorter distances between
intersections improves pedestrian connectivity
 Higher intersection density and street connectivity
 Share of four-way intersections: grid street networks favor
walking more than cul-de-sacs
 Share of major-minor intersections: greater connection of
arterials to local streets favors walking
Public Transportation Service Quality & Connectivity
 Greater public transport revenue-hour density
 Greater public transport stop density
 Connectivity between regional activity centers

15. Brownfield redevelopment
presents TOD opportunities
Brownfields are decayed older properties that
often face environmental challenges due to
past industrial pollution or use of building
materials now considered hazardous
Source: Smart Growth and
Neighborhood Conservation, Maryland

16. Pricing boosts TOD effectiveness
40 US/EU studies show
 Most effective to combine TOD with expanded
public transport and no expansion of roads
 High fuel taxes, work trip parking charges, all-day
tolls boosts effectiveness of TOD
 Peak-period tolls by themselves spur travel
 Expanding road & public transport capacity
without pricing for efficient use of existing roads
& parking yields costly transit with low ridership
Source: Robert A. Johnston, Review of U.S. and European Regional Modeling Studies of Policies
Intended to Reduce Motorized Travel, Fuel Use, and Emissions, Environmental Defense, August 2006.

17. Parking management another
key to effective TOD
 High cost of free parking
 Limits set on parking supply in
Boston, San Francisco, Portland
 Bollards installed to limit
sidewalk parking (Bogota)
 Cash-in-lieu-of-parking
incentives
 Parking excise taxes
 Information-based parking
management

18. TOD helping air quality:
Charlotte moves towards TOD
Air quality conformity law revealed
transportation plan caused 4%
annual traffic growth and violation
of emission limits designed to
protect public health
Charlotte adopted 1998 Integrated
Transit Land/Use plan to cut
forecast traffic growth by 1/4:
 Multi-family housing at stations,
transit-oriented development
 Rail & Bus Rapid Transit
 Sales tax funds plan
15

19. Oregon: integrated planning process
leads to very successful TOD
Facing air quality problem, in
1970s Portland tears out
freeway, converts funds for
another freeway to instead
create busway, light rail, and
urban growth boundary
Before After
From This

20. Portland 2040 Plan
 promotes transit oriented development
 links local and regional comprehensive plans
 protects growth boundary
 promotes transit priority, boulevards
 removes another freeway from old plan
 established limit on parking supply
Before After

21. Portland: Focus on
outcomes not outputs
 Plan accommodates 720,000 more residents and 350,000
more jobs in area with 1.8 million residents
 Cuts non-residential parking by 10% by 2015 and reduces
VKT per capita by 10% by 2015 and by 20% by 2025, as
required by state Transportation Planning Rule
 Plan designed to meet non-driver mode share targets:
 60-70% center city
 45-55% regional centers, town centers, main streets,
station communities and corridors
 40-45% industrial areas, intermodal facilities, and inner
and outer neighborhoods
 Protects open space, boosts density of developed land

22. Oregon’s legal frameworks
support TOD
 Portland urban design code bans blank walls at
street level, limits parking supply
 Oregon Transportation Planning Rule integrates
performance goals/planning for traffic
reduction, land conservation
 Air quality plan enforces TOD land use changes:
funding contingent on local zoning changes
 Interagency collaboration links transportation,
land use, natural resource plans

23. TOD as defined by
Washington, DC
Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is a land use strategy to
accommodate new growth, strengthen neighborhoods, and
expand choices and opportunities by capitalizing on bus
and rail assets to stimulate and support vibrant, compact,
diverse and accessible neighborhood centers within an
easy walk of transit.
- District of Columbia

24. District of Columbia TOD
 Generally occurs within a 800 m
of a public transportation stop
 Is linked to a grid of walkable and
bikeable streets
 Contains a rich mix of uses –
residential, retail, and workplaces
 Has appropriate treatment of
parking – at rear, away from
sidewalks, and reduced
requirements
 Contains a mix of housing types
and sizes
 Has densities appropriate to its
setting

25. Creating an inventory of
opportunities for TOD in DC
 Identified vacant, abandoned or
underutilized land near transit
 568 acres are within 5 minutes of metro
 1,150 acres within 10 minutes of metro
 Over 2,000 acres are within 5 minutes
of a major bus corridor
 Identified Joint Development opportunities
1,621,641 square feet of land
 Identified publicly controlled developable land
Over 2.6 million square feet of land
 Total potential build-out
Office: 36 million sq.ft.
Retail: 27.5 million sq.ft
Residential: ~35,000 units

26. Key actions to implement TOD
 Community Education
 Priority preference for public
investment/incentives
 TOD coordination and permit
streamlining
 Station-Area Planning, design
guides, and zoning
 Regional Partnerships and
collaborations
 Employer-assisted “Live-Near- Now planned
as BRT
Where-You-Work” corridor
 Transit enhancements

27. An ecology of roads
Grid roads are like wetlands: absorbing,
distributing loads fluidly
Diverse transportation systems are like
diverse ecosystems: more niches mean more
efficient resource use, system resilience

28. An ecology of roads
Freeways are like channelized streams:
traffic gets stuck in an impermeable ditch
until it can find an exit

29. Expanding motorways
reduces TOD opportunities
Milwaukee Before Motorways
 Areas bypassed by freeways
may decline economically as
growth pushes to metro edge
 Doubling of road capacity
yields 30%-120% increase in
traffic (with 80% typical)
 Expanding roads to solve
Milwaukee After Motorways congestion: like buying
bigger pants to cure obesity
 Removing road capacity:
much traffic to disappears

30. Milwaukee tore down freeway
to promote TOD
Milwaukee, Wisconsin spent $20 m
to replace I-43 freeway with
boulevard, saving $60 m over
rebuild cost
Spurred core revitalization

31. Seoul reallocated
street space for TOD
To This
From This
To This

32. Bicycle access supports TOD
 Expands walk access
35 X at both trip ends
 10-100 times cheaper
than park-and-ride
 California, Holland,
Oregon as models
 Program guarded bike
parking, racks, paths
for stations, P&R lots

33. Los Angeles-Long Beach
linking TOD, BRT, bikestations

34. The way to the station
 Direct priority routes for cyclists and
pedestrians
 Information infrastructure
 Channelized traffic with medians,
traffic calming
 Good models: Delft, Leiden, Den
Hague, Hannover, Copenhagen,
Malmo, Bogota, Curitiba

35. TransJakarta: growing success
Opened 2004,
Corridor II & III
Opened 2006
Daily ridership:
100,000+
Mode shift from
cars:
19% (JICA)

36. TransJakarta:
future TOD success story?
Many opportunities to
channel growth near BRT
stations

37. TransJakarta: access
improvements key to TOD
Before After
Each Corridor has sidewalks widened and reconstructed

38. For more information
www.itdp.org
www.environmentaldefense.org
mreplogle@environmentaldefense.org