Developing Around Transit: Challenges for Cities and Suburbs

by Robert T. Dunphy

Current interest in public transit investments is enormous. The challenge is to create the supporting development that will make the investments work.

The Federal Transit Administration recently approved funding for projects in Phoenix, Arizona, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The two join the ranks of light rail cities, which in recent years have added Houston, Texas; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Minneapolis, Minnesota—regions in which transit had captured only 3 to 5 percent of commuters in 2000.

In spreading from traditional markets such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco to nontraditional markets in the South, Midwest, and West, transit faces a twofold challenge. The first challenge is for advocates to convince the larger community that transit will work—that it will serve middle-class people who are accustomed to driving. The second and more difficult challenge is making the case that compact, urban development around transit will work to generate the ridership necessary to support the new project.

This kind of smart growth linked to transit is also necessary in established markets that have grown up around transit. Ironically, residents in some traditional transit cities such as Boston and Cleveland do not believe that they have any transit-oriented development, which is perceived as more of a West Coast, new urbanist phenomenon—that is, allied with smart growth and walkable communities that are large suburban planned developments.

Aspects of a Conundrum

The conundrum is that much of the interest in new transit investments is occurring in places where transit is a novelty, yet many established transit markets are struggling to maintain services. A national survey, conducted under the Transportation Research Board’s Transit Cooperative Research Program, identified approximately 100 transit-oriented developments in the United States.1 This is a paltry number, which suggests either that not much is occurring or that the size of this market is severely underrepresented in the survey results, considering the vast amount of attention devoted to the topic of transit-oriented development in the planning and transit literature.

A new book by the Urban Land Institute, Developing Around Transit: Strategies and Solutions That Work, avoids the term transit-oriented development but highlights examples that meet the goals, whether or not the developers or the cities acknowledge it.

Another aspect of the conundrum is that from a transit perspective, urban projects yield the greatest leverage in expanding transit ridership and supporting transit services. New housing and offices in neighborhoods with good transit service create additional transit riders, often without the need for adding transit service. Neighborhoods accessible to transit also give options to new residents who would like to avoid driving.

Reshaping Development

Building in established urban areas is friendly to transit, but unfriendly to development. Projects take longer and are more expensive to build. The market is often unproven—the risks are high, and profits are uncertain. In contrast, conventional suburban projects are development-friendly, but transit-unfriendly. Most growth is expected in the suburbs; therefore the challenge is to reshape conventional development to create the kind of vibrant places that offer transit choices.

The market opportunities for urban infill development are excellent in many older areas, with young professionals and empty nesters seeking a more urban lifestyle, and with employers seeking neighborhoods that offer more employee amenities. In the report, Emerging Trends in Real Estate: 2005, the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers ranked the areas near transit highest for development and investment, reflecting the appeal of infill development, as well as the public’s frustration with traffic congestion.

Development, however, does not occur just because of transit. Block 37 in downtown Chicago, for example, has been vacant since 1990, when the city cleared the land for mixed-use development. The location is excellent, but the vagaries of the marketplace have foiled the city’s plans to create a mixed-use development in one phase—the office market lacked sufficient depth when retail business was strong, and vice versa. When the city relaxed the requirement for single-phase development, a new developer with a retail orientation gave the project new momentum. The experience demonstrates that in urban infill development, a strong location cannot make up for soft market conditions or unrealistic expectations.

The first mixed-use transit project in Texas, Mockingbird Station is located adjacent to a Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail station. The developer understood the appeal of in-town living near transit, although the city would not assist with pedestrian improvements and would not relax parking standards because of the light rail. In contrast, Dallas suburbs such as Richardson and Plano have created more urban development around their transit stations.

Markets and Policies

Reinforcing a strong market with consistent public policies can turn individual projects into successful transit districts. One of the best examples in the United States is the Rosslyn–Ballston corridor in Arlington, Virginia. The vision that developed three decades ago with the support of public officials and civic leaders has turned a once-declining strip into a vibrant mix of office, high-density residential, retail, dining, and entertainment. The development is a massive fiscal success, giving Arlington County the region’s lowest tax rate.

Successful development around transit is a challenge for cities and suburbs. The transit project must be attuned to the needs of the real estate development market, and developers in turn must appreciate the special opportunities of transit.

Keys to a smart transit-oriented project

Urban cluster projects have a delicate chemistry. With so many variables, players, financial formulas, and expectations involved, it's easy to end up on the wrong side of the track before the first shovel of dirt is even turned.

“From a city's point of view, these transit nodes will become a gateway to the city, and everybody has high expectations of what that gateway should look like,” says designer Chek Tang, principal of Oakland, Calif.-based McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners, which specializes in transportation-oriented developments (TODs). Hence, laying the early groundwork for the TOD is every bit as important as its execution, says Tang.

“City governments have an entrenched lack of familiarity in TOD projects,” adds Austin City Councilman Brewster McCracken, the city's point person for two planned transit villages along its future light-rail line. “So, it's absolutely critical to be transparent from the very beginning and to have shared information and shared goals.”

That's a message that Marilee Utter, a Denver-based national transit consultant for Citiventure Associates, routinely carries to cities, architects and developers. Over the years, Utter has compiled a list of five crucial steps cities should take with developers in the early-planning process of a transit-oriented project:

Map out the objective: Cities should aggressively determine the project's initial vision, instead of the developer, urges Utter. “Who better to know the city's culture than the people who hold office there?” Conversely, communities should cede decisions on design elements such as pedestrian-flow patterns to the architects and developers.

Optimize land usage: Cities should commit to studying and understanding a TOD's requirement for higher-density development and less-than-standard parking ratios. Cities should assist developers with land assembly from the beginning of the project, Utter stresses.

Listen to your neighbors: Nearby residents are the most likely to resist plans for a transit village. Their concerns should be prioritized in TOD master plans, tenant mix and traffic flow.

Use quality materials: Construction materials should be top-of-the-line and help make a statement about the project's staying power, Utter says. Additionally, cities should insist on exemplary street designs, but not demand that every enclave or street have retail.

Understand your customer: Project architects and developers should strongly link the development's access points to its design and theme to further create continuity. “Always think about the consumer,” emphasizes Utter.

Fruitvale: Challanged TOD

from New Urban News

Fruitvale Village in Oakland, California, has become a reluctant symbol of the difficulties that transit-oriented development (TOD) can encounter.

Three years after the $100 million collection of apartments, retail, and community and professional services opened next to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in the Fruitvale neighborhood, four of its 23 retail spaces remain empty. Slowness in filling the stores has been a source of frustration for the Unity Council, which sponsored the project.

The slowness has given developers and transit specialists yet another case to cite when cautioning about putting large volumes of retail space in TOD projects — at least in unproven locations. Dan Parolek, a principal at Opticos Design in Berkeley, says a developer at the Pleasant Hill BART station in Contra Costa County tried to use the example of Fruitvale “as the reason why they should do very little retail within the project plan.”

Fruitvale’s problems do not seem insurmountable — the vacancies are now on the way to being filled, says Jeff Pace, Unity Council’s vice president of finance and business opportunities. But they have sparked discussion about how much spending commuters can be counted on to do in TOD projects. They have also highlighted the need for effective parking strategies.

Pace, who joined Unity Council in 2004, after the retail problems emerged, says Fruitvale Village has been a huge success in most respects. The 3.7-acre development is now a vital center for its predominantly Latino section of Oakland. The Village’s 114,000 square feet of office, professional, and community space include a public library, a Head Start program, a community-based medical clinic, a children’s counseling clinic, and a senior center, as well as the Council’s headquarters. The project’s 47 apartments, ten of them designated “affordable,” rented quickly and have remained in demand.

Jeff Ordway, manager of property development for BART, credits the Council with helping to strengthen International Boulevard, an old commercial corridor nearby. Retail buildings on International “went from 40 percent vacancy in 2000 to less than 5 percent in 2004,” he notes.The one blot on Fruitvale’s achievement is the tortoise-like progress in filling the 40,000 square feet of retail. Some observers fault the design, pointing out that the stores are arranged along a pedestrian plaza — one that the station’s 6,500 daily commuters have no need to traverse. BART more or less mandated that the main commuter parking garage be built where it would create a short and direct route between commuters’ cars and the station, says Pace, noting, “Pedestrians getting out of their cars have no natural incentive to walk through the retail.”

Parolek says that placing the retail along a pedestrian-only plaza and then converting a city street between the plaza and International Boulevard into a pedestrian-only passage probably harmed the retail by making it harder for motorists to become familiar with the Village’s offerings.

Unity Council, like many nonprofit organizations with a social mission, was inexperienced at managing a retail center, and made mistakes in signing up merchants. National retailers were turned away while independent local merchants were favored. A locals-first policy can, of course, enhance local character. In Fruitvale, though, it led to selecting some merchants who were inexperienced and undercapitalized — unable to survive when pedestrian traffic fell short of expectations. “We turned away Starbucks twice,” says Pace. “That’s a really stupid thing to do.”

The Council did not obtain adequate legal protections. Its standard lease lacked a “going dark” clause, which would have stipulated that if a tenant did not get its business operating by a certain date, the agreement would terminate. “We have someone who has been paying rent for 21 months and is still not open,” Pace acknowledges. That business is now expected to open late this year. Leases contained no ban on retailers having other locations close by. “A record store had one store a block and a half away; they couldn’t make them both work,” says Pace, who is articulate and candid on what to do and what not to do.

FINDING REMEDIES
The Council has sharpened its leasing strategy in the past two years, and is now giving people more reasons for exploring the plaza. “We’ve been running a farmers’ market right in front of the BART patrons,” Pace says. “Our plan is to extend it through the main Fruitvale plaza.” In the summer, an outdoor cinema operates on Friday evenings in the plaza. “First Thursdays,” an event featuring food and mariachi music, operated until early October and will return in the spring.

The Council has introduced seating, better lighting, and other improvements to the passage from the plaza to International Boulevard. A public market will soon occupy one of the buildings along the passage, and there will be places for permanent outdoor stalls as well as stalls that can be assembled and disassembled each day, Pace says. Small merchants will sell arts and crafts and handmade foods such as tortillas.

At the end of October, negotiations were under way to fill the plaza’s four remaining vacancies. “We think we’re really turning the corner,” he says. Architect Ernesto Vasquez, a principal in McLarand, Vasquez, Emsiek & Partners, involved in the project for years, says Fruitvale Village is becoming a destination for people seeking Latino products and services. He urges developers: “Be patient; you need to avoid being rushed into getting tenants, and not getting the right tenants.” Delaying the retail component of a project or building it in phases may reduce the risk of its failing. Vasquez thinks conditions at Fruitvale will improve when the project’s second phase, containing approximately 300 to 450 housing units, is built.

“Retail is the Achilles’ heel of TODs,” warns Richard Cervero, a transportation specialist who teaches at Berkeley. “If not done right, it can really stigmatize a development as a loser.” Richard Willson, a Cal Poly Pomona planning professor who has advised BART on parking policy, says, “Among developers, I find a bit of naiveté about how people use transit facilities.” They often don’t realize that many commuters rush through, not buying much, Willson says. Ordway says commuters generally constitute a tertiary market — less important than the people who live in the surrounding community and individuals who live or work in the project area.Ordway says developers would be wise to study a TOD project that Calthorpe Associates was involved in planning next to a BART station in Richmond, north of Berkeley. There, buildings along a pathway to the station were constructed so they could start as wholly residential and be converted to live/work — with street-level offices or retail — after the location proves itself.

RECONSIDERING PARKING
BART has abandoned its policy of providing free parking at many of its East Bay stations. BART has also modified its requirement that when parking lots at a station are built upon, an equal number of new parking spaces must be provided, typically in garages or decks. The changes bode well for future TOD, by eliminating major financial hurdles.

Patrick Siegman at Nelson\Nygaard consultants in San Francisco, says the next step should be the establishment, by municipalities, of “parking benefit districts” in neighborhoods around transit stations. Commuters could pay to use designated on-street spaces. The revenue would be devoted to public improvements desired by the neighborhood, such as better sidewalks, lighting, and landscaping. “At $4 each for 250 cars, you’d have $1,000 a day in revenue to spruce up the neighborhood,” Siegman calculates. Parking benefit districts are being considered at two Oakland stations, Ordway says.Despite challenges, TOD is gaining momentum. On land owned by BART, nearly $2 billion of capital has already been invested in TOD or is in process or in negotiations, according to Ordway. At Pleasant Hill, which contains substantial housing and employment, approximately 40,000 square feet of space is expected to be available for retail. “It’s not just pure retail,” Parolek emphasizes. “It’s allowed to be used for professional services such as a dentist or optometrist.”

Sustainable Building Checklist

workinproperty.com 06 March 2007

A checklist has been prepared by Checklist South East to help all parties in the development process consider the true impact of any project.

The checklist is intended for the use of developers to ensure that they have tackled the critical issues in their proposal. Similarly it is adopted by planners when considering an application.
The Checklist takes into account industry standards such as BREEAM, Ecohomes, Urban Design Compendium, National Standards Framework.

The Checklist is divided into sub sections, as taken from their website:

• Climate Change and Energy To ensure that new developments are appropriately adapted to the impacts of present and future climate change and to minimise their own impact on greenhouse gases, flooding, heat gain, water resources and water quality.
• Community
  To ensure that the development supports a vibrant, diverse and inclusive community which integrates with surrounding communities.
• Place Making To ensure that the most sustainable sites are used for development and that the design process, layout structure and form provide a development that is appropriate to the local context and supports a sustainable community.
• Transport and Movement To ensure people can reach facilities they need by appropriate transport modes, encouraging walking and public transport use and reducing the use of private cars for shorter journeys.
• Ecology To ensure that the ecological value of the site is conserved and enhanced maintaining biodiversity and protecting existing natural habitats which can contribute to and enhance the amenity of the area.
• Resources To promote the sustainable use of resources, including the reduction and re-use of wastes, related to both the construction and operation of new developments.
• Business To ensure that the development contributes to the sustainable economic vitality of the local area and region.
• Buildings To ensure that the design of individual buildings does not undermine the sustainability of the overall development.
  Checklist South East allows the various parties to answer the numerous questions on-line, providing policy guidance as well as the relative importance of each question.

An important tool in an ever changing (planning) climate..

TOD...Why Now?

From Reconnecting America

Housing Preferences Are Changing:

Demand is changing dramatically because of profound demographic shifts, including the aging of baby boomers, the number of new immigrants, and the fact that younger adults prefer urban, mixed-use environments. While two-thirds of demand is still for large single-family dwellings, a third is for smaller housing choices, including apartments, townhomes, live-work spaces, and bungalows. The market isn’t meeting this demand, and the increasing competition for units in denser, mixed-use neighborhoods has caused a cycle of price increases, displacement and gentrification. There is an urgent need to increase this housing stock in order to meet market demand and protect and grow the affordable housing inventory.

Workers and Firms Prefer "24-Hour Neighborhoods":

In the past companies have preferred suburban campus environments near freeways, and regions have lured employers without regard to bigger picture development goals. But other issues are coming into play, including the rise of the "creative class," and the increasing importance of talent, technology and tolerance in a region’s economic development strategy. Because firms are chasing talent, which is choosing to locate in diverse, lively urban regions, firms now prefer these locations. A recent Jones Lang LaSalle survey found access to mass transit is very important to 70 percent of New Economy companies. And, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' respected Emerging Trends publication, 24-Hour places are the best real estate investment locations.

Rail and Bus Systems Are In A Building Boom:

More regions are developing mass transit and more consumers are choosing mass transit over driving on congested roadways. Whereas public transit had existed primarily in older Northeastern cities, new systems have begun service in cities like Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Charlotte, San Diego, Portland and San Jose. In fact, new rail or rapid bus systems are planned or under construction in all but three of the top 30 metropolitan areas.
At the convergence of these three trends is an opportunity to create the armature for a new growth and development strategy that meets the demand for location-efficient mixed-use places, supports regional economic growth strategies, and increases housing affordability — by increasing supply in neighborhoods with lower transportation costs. TOD occurs within a half mile radius of rail or rapid bus stations, encourages walking and cycling, has a mix of retail, commercial and residential uses, and a diversity of housing types suited to a mix of generations and incomes. It is the one strategy that promises to simultaneously meet these seemingly disparate goals.

Indeed, transit-oriented development has been touted as the palliative to traffic congestion and air quality problems, the high cost of housing, and Americans’ need for physical activity. But analysts have looked at projects on the ground nationwide and found few that deliver on this promise, and they’ve concluded TOD offers few advantages. In fact, the truth lies somewhere in between. Most so-called transit-oriented projects are simply conventional development located adjacent to transit, and cannot live up to the potential of truly effective transit-oriented development.

Municipalities Adopting TOD Policy

By Amy Gardner and Bill Turque
Washington Post,March 13, 2007

Fairfax County embraced a new policy yesterday encouraging dense, pedestrian-friendly development near current and future transit stations, continuing the transformation of car-friendly suburban neighborhoods.

The policy, approved unanimously by the county Board of Supervisors, will promote "compact" development with a mix of housing, office space and retail stores within a half-mile of rail stations. The most intensive development would lie within a quarter-mile of stations. Fairfax is home to 10 transit stations, five for Metro and five for Virginia Railway Express.

The point, supervisors and the new policy say, is to create communities that encourage walking, biking and transit use to reduce sprawl and automobile travel.

Another purpose is to create a clear definition of so-called transit-oriented development -- a term that means different things to different people.

Last June, for example, the county approved MetroWest, a development of 2,250 homes as well as office and retail space at the Vienna Metro station, over the objections of residents who said the proposal lacked the mix of uses and neighborhood input needed for successful transit-oriented development. Previously, the county blocked a nearby neighborhood from selling to a developer who planned to build a high-rise project, on the grounds that the community was too far from the Metro station to qualify for the label.

TOD or Transit-Adjacent Development

by Patrick Siegman, in Tumlin and Millard-Ball


What’s the difference between a true transit-oriented development, which will deliver
promised social and economic benefits, and a transit-adjacent development? A true TOD will include most of the following:

• The transit-oriented development lies within a five-minute walk of the transit stop, or about a quarter-mile from stop to edge. For major stations offering access to frequent high-speed service this catchment area may be extended to the measure of a 10-minute walk.

• A balanced mix of uses generates 24-hour ridership. There are places to work, to live, to learn, to relax and to shop for daily needs.

• A place-based zoning code generates buildings that shape and define memorable streets, squares, and plazas, while allowing uses to change easily over time.

• The average block perimeter is limited to no more than 1,350 feet. This generates a fine-grained network of streets, dispersing traffic and allowing for the creation of quiet and intimate thoroughfares.

• Minimum parking requirements are abolished.

• Maximum parking requirements are instituted: For every 1,000 workers, no more than 500 spaces and as few as 10 spaces are provided.

• Parking costs are “unbundled,” and full market rates are charged for all parking spaces. The exception may be validated parking for shoppers.

• Major stops provide BikeStations, offering free attended bicycle parking, repairs, and rentals. At minor stops, secure and fully enclosed bicycle parking is provided.

• Transit service is fast, frequent, reliable, and comfortable, with a headway of 15 minutes or less.

• Roadway space is allocated and traffic signals timed primarily for the convenience of walkers and cyclists.

• Automobile level-of-service standards are met through congestion pricing measures, or disregarded entirely.

• Traffic is calmed, with roads designed to limit speed to 30 mph on major streets and 20 mph on lesser streets.

Transit Oriented Development: Defined

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) refers to residential and Commercial Centers designed to maximize access by Transit and Nonmotorized transportation, and with other features to Encourage Transit Ridership. A TOD neighborhood has a center with a rail or bus station, surrounded by relatively high-density development, with progressively lower-density spreading outwards. For example, the neighborhood center may have a transit station and a few multi-story commercial and residential buildings surrounded by several blocks of townhouses and small-lot single-family residential, and larger-lot single-family housing farther away. TOD neighborhoods typically have a diameter of one-quarter to one-half mile (stations spaced half to 1 mile apart), which represents pedestrian scale distances. It includes these design features (Morris, 1996):

• The neighborhood is designed for Cycling and Walking, with adequate facilities and attractive street conditions.


• Streets have good Connectivity and Traffic Calming features to control vehicle traffic speeds.


• Mixed-use development that includes shops, schools and other public services, and a variety of housing types and prices, within each neighborhood.


• Parking Management to reduce the amount of land devoted to parking compared with conventional development, and to take advantage of the parking cost savings associated with reduced automobile use.

Transit Oriented Development generally requires at least 6 residential units per acre in residential areas and 25 employees per acre in Commercial Centers, and about twice that for premium quality transit, such as rail service (Pushkarev and Zupan, 1977; Ewing, 1999; Robert Cervero, et al, 2004). These densities create adequate transit ridership to justify frequent service, and help create active street life and commercial activities, such as grocery stores and coffee shops, within convenient walking distance of homes and worksites. However, other factors are also important beside simple density. Transit ridership is also affected by factors such as employment density and Clustering, demographic mix (students, seniors and lower-income people tend to be heavy transit users), transit pricing and rider subsidies, Parking Pricing and Road Tolls, the quality of transit service, the effectiveness of transit Marketing, walkability, and street design. A particular density may be inadequate to support transit service by itself, but becomes adequate if implemented with a variety of Transit Encouragement and Smart Growth strategies. The assumption that transit cannot be effective except in large cities with high population densities can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it results in transport and land use decisions that favor automobile travel over transit.