GEOG 346: Week 10Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)

Transportation Planning in a Growing Region

In developing regions like Metro Vancouver, there is a vigorous debate over how to move the growing population around. The response of the BC government has been to invest in the Gateway Project while Translink, the region's transit agency, faces a major financial crisis.

Gateway is a proposal by Transportation Minister, Kevin Falcon, to twin the Port Mann Bridge, widen Highway 1 from Langley to Vancouver and build a new 4-lane freeway south of the Fraser River, etc.

The Gateway Project

The justification for the project is the massive congestion experienced by commuters at peak hours, and the delays experienced by transport trucks, especially those that are tied in with the container trade with Asia. This trade, formerly booming and projected to greatly increase, is now somewhat in the doldrums of the world's financial ills.

The projected cost for Gateway is at least $3 billion dollars.

The Gateway Project

The Project, which Falcon claims is non-negotiable (this was the case even before the government began 'public consultation' on it), has generated bitter public controversy – with suburban residents and politicians, truckers, port operators, and other shippers supporting it, on the one hand – and environmentalists, transit advocates, and most regional municipal politicians outside the suburban areas opposing it, on the other. (Opposition was one reason why TransLink was forcibly reorganized.)

The Gateway Project

One of the first rules of good planning is to consider and do a cost-benefit analysis of a full suite of alternatives. The government has not done this. You need to adequate analyze the problem before you propose solutions.

There is also the “Field of Dreams” syndrome – '”build it and they will come”: i.e. expand road capacity and the congestion it was intended to relieve will just be generated again. Moreover, Gateway will fuel more suburban sprawl.

TOD: The Alternative

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been proposed as an alternative to endless automobile-dependent development. First developed by Peter Calthorpe, it has evolved from his notion of the “Pedestrian Pocket.”

He proposed this concept – influenced by Howard's garden city concept – and it eventually evolved into TOD. Calthorpe starts from the premise that conventional patterns of suburban and “Edge City” development are not serving the needs of people and ecosystems in the 21st century.

TOD: The Alternative He notes that household types have changed, that

children are becoming overly dependent on their parents as chauffeurs, that seniors are becoming isolated, and that sprawl is gobbling up irreplaceable farmland and habitat at an unconscionable rate.

TOD: The Alternative

Pedestrian Pockets are described as “much smaller than a New Town,” they are “a balanced mixed-use area within a quarter-mile or a five-minute walking radius of a transit station. The functions within this 50- to 100-acre zone include housing, offices, retail, day care, recreation and parks.” Pedestrian Pockets accommodate cars, including on a 'Main Street' that the station and many shops also front on.

Some PPs could be somewhat specialized, and there could be up to 16,000 jobs within four stops on the transit line.

Diagram of a Pedestrian Pocket/ TOD Network

Pedestrian Pockets/ TOD

Pedestrian Pockets/ TOD are intended to address the needs of a wider range of people, provide a greater diversity of housing types, provide more convenience and healthful walkability, address the needs of the new economy, and provide ecological benefits in the form of reduced automobile dependence and more green space in denser urban areas.

It is actually being implemented in Oregon, but especially in California under the “Governator”: http://transitorienteddevelopment.dot.ca.gov/.