“San Jose, for example, has determined that LOS will fail in a large swath of their downtown development area but that the value of adding dense housing and commercial space near transit trumps the inconvenience to motorists of waiting in traffic.” The added convenience to the people living in these new walkable neighborhoods balances the inconvenience to drivers; it would be much more difficult to build these new walkable neighborhoods with LOS standards.

“ATG avoids intersection-specific analysis, instead evaluating new developments based on the number of car trips they would add to the aggregate traffic picture and assessing a transit mitigation fee based on the total number of additional trips.” The transit mitigation fee makes transit more convenient, balancing the inconvenience to drivers. (I would make it a transportation mitigation fee that could go to bicycling and pedestrians as well as transit.)

With these two policies, it should actually become more convenient to get around on the balance – drivers have to wait longer, but there is better transit service and there are more walkable neighborhoods around the transit stops where people don’t have to drive.

This involves gradually changing the form of the city to make it more pedestrian and transit oriented, rather than being stuck with the current auto-dependent city form because we have to keep the automobiles moving at high speed.

Look forward to tomorrow’s piece.

But for others, in a place not as ideal (built-out/surrounded by water= San Diego) how can these LOS reforms be pushed through. The transit is not there to support it. And it is very dispearsed and hilly here, so less ability to get walking/riding to most places.

Thoughts?