Streetsblog San Francisco

How much extra would you be willing to pay to live near rail transit?

For Minneapolis residents along the Hiawatha rail line, that convenience is worth tacking on an additional 10 percent to housing prices. Chicagoans near the Midway transit line are willing to pay about 19 percent extra. And in Portland, folks are willing to fork over an additional 31 percent for an abode within one-quarter mile of a rail transit station along the Westside extension line.

Selling prices for homes within 1/2 mile rose 31 percent after the addition of light rail in Portland, according to one study. Photo: Wired Autopia

The Center for Housing Policy recently completed a comprehensive review of the existing research on housing prices and proximity to rail. According to dozens of studies over decades, a rail station within a short walk can add 6 to 50 percent to home values.

The center’s analysis shows, however, that not all rail lines are created equal, at least when it comes to housing price appreciation.

Some important considerations for potential investors: Is the station walkable or is it located near highway infrastructure? Does the rail service operate frequently and offer service to desirable destinations? What is the strength of the regional housing market?

All of these factors are important. But ultimately they point to a central conclusion: the premium buyers are willing to pay to live near rail transit correlates roughly to how much accessibility the transit service offers relative to other modes. In a congested city with a strong housing market and robust transit system — New York City, for example — rail transit proximity results in the largest premiums. Meanwhile, weak market cities with poor transit and relatively traffic-free highways — like Buffalo, New York — may see little price appreciation around rail transit stops. In these cases, rail transit has little inherent advantage over highway travel.

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A.B. 710, the Infill Development and Sustainable Community Act of 2011 introduced by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) would mandate that automobile parking in Transit Oriented Developments be limited to one car per residential unit or per 1,000 square feet of retail space. The Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee is scheduled to hear this legislation at their next meeting on April 27.

Nancy Skinner.

The benefits of capping the total amount of car parking, or at least reducing the requirement to build parking, in developments near plentiful mass transit is probably obvious to you if you’re reading this article. Reduced car parking insures that the people living in the T.O.D. will be the one using transit and the new developments will actively reduce the number of car trips made in the area. But there are other benefits as well. By reducing parking mandates, the cost of new development construction goes down, meaning projects for lower-income and transit-dependent populations become more economically doable. AB 710 also provides some flexibility to local jurisdictions that may require higher minimums if written findings are made based upon substantial evidence in the record including a parking utilization study.

Despite the dramatic changes this legislation could bring to development patterns throughout the state, the legislation hasn’t received a lot of attention. An Internet search of the legislation brought up a few bill summaries, a resolution opposing the legislation by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, and a blog post by American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles Chapter’s, Will Wright supporting it.

Wright explains how A.B. 710 supports the state’s smart growth and emissions reduction goals approved by the legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger in recent years:

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A family connects to BART from the 49 bus using the inviting new walkway. Photo: Aaron Bialick

BART riders will no longer be squeezed alongside Muni tracks to get into Balboa Park Station. A new walkway connecting travelers to Ocean Avenue on the north side was unveiled Friday as one project in a host of efforts aimed at improving access to the busiest BART and Muni transit hub outside of the city’s downtown area, though it may be just a baby step in the eyes of some advocates.

“For nearly four decades, we did not have a proper entrance to Ocean Avenue from the station for folks going to City College, or to the Ocean Avenue shopping district, or to Balboa Park,” said BART Director Tom Radulovich. “Now we have a fully-accessible, direct entrance, which is great. I’m happy it’s there.”

The walkway is a welcome improvement to commuters using the station to and from Ocean Avenue who previously had no choice but to squeeze through a narrow passage alongside trains or circumnavigate the station to get inside.

“When the trains are actually running and they go past you, it’s a little dangerous,” said Jocelyn, a BART rider who lives in the neighborhood. “Now it’s a lot easier and safer, I feel.”

Erika, Jocelyn’s friend, said she regularly uses the station to visit her from Berkeley. “I think it’s great if you come home late, because it’s all lit up,” said Erika. “I feel a little bit safer up here where people can see me.”

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Image: David Baker + Partners Architects

The Tenderloin could see a 14-story mixed-use building replace a parking lot within the next few years. Developers hoping to bring new affordable housing and space for a much-needed grocery store to the neighborhood received a $10 million funding commitment from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) today.

“We will transform this part of the Tenderloin,” said Donald Falk, executive director of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC), which is developing the planned Eddy and Taylor Family Housing building. ”This is not just smart growth in the conventional sense. Four-hundred people will have a place to call home, with zero parking, because we’re two blocks from Market Street and Muni.”

The development at 168 Eddy Street would provide 153 new apartments reserved for low-income families and space for a 12,000-foot street-level grocery store. It would help quell some of the high demand for affordable housing in the neighborhood, where valuable lots used to park cars diminish the urban fabric despite very low car ownership. Bringing the first full-sized grocery market to the neighborhood would also provide access to healthy food options within walkable distances.

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The Pearl District in Portland is Often Held Up as an Example of TOD

(This article first appeared in Progressive Planner, the official magazine of the Planner’s Network and is reprinted with the author’s permission. Gen Fujioka is the senior policy advocate with the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. This article was written in collaboration with the Urban Communities of Color Caucus which seeks to advance practices that strengthen existing diverse neighborhoods. For further information contact: gen@nationalcapacd.org)

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has become a leading policy prescription for reversing America’s sprawling path of growth. The Obama administration, through its Sustainable Communities Initiative, state and local agencies and progressive think-tanks all emphasize TOD as a means to achieve housing, transportation and environmental goals, often through public-private-partnerships. But as TOD has been justifiably promoted as the cleaner alternative to auto-dependent development, gaps have appeared in the discourse that understates its costs. This report seeks to fill in some of those gaps with snapshots from four communities of color that have been impacted by various stages of TOD in the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Minneapolis-Saint Paul, respectively.

What Is a TOD?

Non-profit community development organizations were early innovators in building TOD projects, seeking to link affordable housing with transit. Today, TOD projects vary but they can be generally defined as mixed-use, higher density development oriented toward nearby public transit. In its varying forms, TOD is being promoted by a growing range of government programs. The largest federal transit program, New Starts, strongly favors projects that incorporate TOD, and many state and local governments have created expedited approval processes, incentives and zoning and land use policies that foster TOD.
As the concept has been embraced by some market-rate developers, even some TOD proponents concede there may be social costs of such development. The federally funded Center for Transit-Oriented Development and others have published a number of policy toolkits and best practice guides for equitable TOD. While these publications describe individual exemplary projects, missing is an evaluation of the impacts at scale. The experiences described below suggest that much more needs to be done to ensure that TOD does not become a greener version of gentrification.

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Image © Peter Calthorpe & Marianna Leuschel

Editor’s note: This concludes our 5-part series of excerpts from Peter Calthorpe’s book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change.”  Thanks to Island Press, a few lucky Streetsblog readers will be selected to receive a free copy of the book. To enter the contest, fill out this form. We’ll choose the winners tomorrow.

The most important community-scale system dependent on urbanism is transit. It has long been known that density and transit ridership are linked, but it goes much deeper than that. The key to viable transit systems is not just density but walkability and mixed use—true urban places. If people cannot walk the quarter mile to or from a station, chances are they will not use the transit. Conversely, if they can easily run errands and coordinate trips on the way to or from a station, they are more likely to use transit. European data show that the percentage of walk or bike trips always exceeds that of transit trips—often by more than two to one.²⁷ In fact, walking by itself constitutes 30 percent of all trips in Great Britain (versus 9 percent transit), and in Sweden walk/bike trips are 34 percent of the total (versus 11 percent transit). ²⁸ Transit supports and extends the pedestrian environment; transit is pedestrian dependent, not the other way around. The primary alternative to the car and all of its environmental costs is the pedestrian environment and the walkable urbanism that supports transit.

A good transit system has many layers, from local buses to bus rapid transit and streetcars, from light rail to subways and commuter trains. They all feed into and reinforce one another, and they all depend on walkable urbanism at the origin and destination. The quality of the interface from walking to transit, and from one form of transit to the other, is central to displacing car trips and is the greenest technology that urbanism provides.

The relationship among transit, urbanism, travel behavior, and carbon emissions is complex but can be summarized with one key quantifiable metric, vehicle miles traveled (VMT)—effectively, the amount we drive. VMT is determined by the number and distance of trips we take, and our “mode split”—the percentage of trips taken by various transportation modes such as walk, bike, car, carpool, or transit. Each household, depending on its location, income, and size, has an average VMT per year, which when combined with various auto technologies will generate its travel carbon footprint.

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Those looking for hope in this era of transit service cuts took heart from the words of William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), at Rail~volution yesterday. In his keynote speech, Millar reasons to hope for a better future — despite the fact that 84 percent of APTA members were cutting service, raising fares, laying off personnel, or delaying projects this year due to budget cuts.

Obama is a "breath of fresh air," according to APTA President William Millar, but Congress needs to step up. WMATA via APTA

Around the country, Millar said, voters have chosen again and again to raise their own taxes for increased service. And, he added, “it’s a breath of fresh air” to see a U.S. President get behind infrastructure investment the way Obama has.

After Millar, a panel of officials from HUD, DOT, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Portland Development Commission gave another reason for hope: the very “unnatural” action that federal agencies are beginning to take cooperating with each other.

DOT’s Beth Osborne said it’s easier for each agency to stay in its silo – and the challenges to collaboration are often surprising. “It’s not getting your high leadership agreeing to pool money or to relinquish some control over the decision-making process,” she said. “It becomes, your budget systems are different, or your computer systems don’t coordinate and communicate.” But as the TIGER II and HUD Sustainable Communities grant programs show, agencies are beginning to address those challenges and work together.

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For every dollar awarded from the U.S. DOT’s TIGER II grant program, there are more than $30 that applicants are asking for but won’t be getting.

The Tucson Modern Streetcar project was awarded $63 million in the first round of TIGER funding. (Image: Tucson Regional Transit Authority)

That’s the word from the DOT, which announced on Friday that it had received about $19 billion in applications for nearly 1,000 projects “from all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.” The volume of applications, which range from “highways and bridges to transit and ports,” far exceeds the $600 million available in TIGER II funds.

States competing for TIGER II money need to show that their transportation projects will have significant economic and environmental benefits at a city-wide, regional, or national level. Since the money is awarded at the discretion of DOT using set criteria, not disbursed through the rote formulas that govern most transportation funding, it’s been a catalyst for innovative transportation projects.

David Burwell, a co-founder of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, isn’t surprised at the overwhelming response to TIGER II. “It shows the enormous interest states have in discretionary money,” he says. “With formula money, states will tell you, ‘That’s our money; we don’t have to do anything for formula money.’ Offer discretionary money and they’ll do backflips.”

According to Burwell, who now heads up the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the volume of TIGER II applications indicates that state DOTs are willing to reform their focus on highways, but they want something in return for the reforms they make. “Otherwise they’ll spend all their money filling potholes and keeping bridges from falling down,” he says. In other words, if you want states to make real advances on transit and smart urban design, you have to give them some incentive.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made a similar point in last week’s announcement. “The wave of applications for both TIGER II and TIGER I dollars shows the back-log of needed infrastructure improvements and the desire for more flexible funds,” he said in a statement. According to the DOT, the appetite for TIGER II funds is not quite as ravenous as it was for TIGER I, when the department got $60 billion in applications for $1.5 billion in available grants.

This time around, TIGER II includes a partnership between the DOT and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to disburse planning grants. $35 million in TIGER II funds will combine with $40 million from HUD to pay for transit-oriented development. In another sign of the closer collaboration among federal agencies, two other departments – Agriculture and the EPA – are getting in on the action too, helping to evaluate the planning grant applications.

The Senate Banking Committee voted 12-10 yesterday in favor of the Livable Communities Act, legislation that would bolster the Obama administration’s initiatives to link together transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental policy.

Shaun
Donovan, Ray LaHood, Lisa Jackson: Together forever? The Livable
Communities Act would codify the partnership between HUD, US DOT, and
the EPA. Photo: EPA

The administration has been taking steps since last March to coordinate between the Department of Transportation, HUD, and the EPA. This bill, carried in the Senate by Connecticut’s Chris Dodd, would formalize those partnerships and authorize substantially more funding to work with. 

Most of the action would flow through HUD. This year the agency is funding $150 million in grants
supporting regional efforts to improve access to transit and promote
walkable development. The Livable Communities Act promises to scale up
that program significantly, creating a new office within HUD, called the
Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, that will distribute
about $4 billion through competitive grants.

The initial round of grants would fund comprehensive plans — local
initiatives to shape growth by coordinating housing, transportation,
and economic development policies. Most of the funding — $3.75 billion
– would be distributed over three years to implement projects
identified in such plans.

While some Senators from rural states had expressed skepticism
about the benefits of the bill for their constituents, yesterday’s vote
split strictly along party lines, with Democrats Jon Tester of Montana
and Tim Johnson of South Dakota both voting in favor.

To make the case for the bill to his rural and Republican counterparts, Dodd singled out Envision Utah,
a campaign that has built public support for smart growth policies in
one of the country’s reddest states. Not a single GOP Senator voted for
the bill, however, even Utah’s Bob Bennett, who told UPI, "I think the overall philosophy is wise, but I will be voting against it."

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