Salt Lake City Tribune Editorializes on the Benefits of Transit Oriented Development
In our new "energy-restricted" economy, condos and high-rises will become the new "McMansions." Train tracks and sidewalks the new highways. Buses and bicycles the new SUVs.
Many of us will abandon our big gas-guzzling vehicles and forsake new land-guzzling, auto-dependent suburban developments in favor of commuter hubs and "new urbanism" communities clustered near mass-transit stations.
We'll live sensibly for a change. We'll walk to the market and the park and the restaurant, and we won't have to walk far in our mixed-use neighborhoods.
We won't go kicking and screaming, either. Just give it a little more time. Let the air pollution and traffic congestion and gas pumps that ring up $50, $60, $70 in a blur sink in, and we'll embrace smart growth and new urbanism and commuter hubs like grandmas hug babies and babies hug puppies.
It's already starting to happen in Murray and Midvale, Farmington and South Salt Lake, where transit-oriented communities are planned or under construction; developments where you won't have to jump in the car every time you leave home.
But there's still one big obstacle, developers and planning experts told local officials at a transit-oriented development seminar this week in Salt Lake City. If commuter hubs and bus stop/train station developments are going to become the norm, if we're going to change our wasteful ways and ease the burden on our environment and pocketbooks, local governments have to lead, or at least get out of the way.
"High density" can no longer be dirty words. Commercial and residential zones must be melded. Those tired old requirements of two parking spaces for every doorstep have to go. Transit-oriented, new urban and infill developments must be supported with tax credits, expedited permitting and generous infrastructure assistance, while developers who promote sprawl and three-car garages, and people who settle in those communities, must pay a premium.
Obviously, we won't all want to live this way. There will still be Drapers and Bluffdales, places where the old American dream - big house, big yard, RV and SUV - hangs on, or dies hard.
But eventually, that lifestyle will be as outdated as last year's calendar. Pressure - financial, ethical, environmental, governmental - will be brought to bear. Change is inevitable. It's up to government to make it happen sooner, not later.
Many of us will abandon our big gas-guzzling vehicles and forsake new land-guzzling, auto-dependent suburban developments in favor of commuter hubs and "new urbanism" communities clustered near mass-transit stations.
We'll live sensibly for a change. We'll walk to the market and the park and the restaurant, and we won't have to walk far in our mixed-use neighborhoods.
We won't go kicking and screaming, either. Just give it a little more time. Let the air pollution and traffic congestion and gas pumps that ring up $50, $60, $70 in a blur sink in, and we'll embrace smart growth and new urbanism and commuter hubs like grandmas hug babies and babies hug puppies.
It's already starting to happen in Murray and Midvale, Farmington and South Salt Lake, where transit-oriented communities are planned or under construction; developments where you won't have to jump in the car every time you leave home.
But there's still one big obstacle, developers and planning experts told local officials at a transit-oriented development seminar this week in Salt Lake City. If commuter hubs and bus stop/train station developments are going to become the norm, if we're going to change our wasteful ways and ease the burden on our environment and pocketbooks, local governments have to lead, or at least get out of the way.
"High density" can no longer be dirty words. Commercial and residential zones must be melded. Those tired old requirements of two parking spaces for every doorstep have to go. Transit-oriented, new urban and infill developments must be supported with tax credits, expedited permitting and generous infrastructure assistance, while developers who promote sprawl and three-car garages, and people who settle in those communities, must pay a premium.
Obviously, we won't all want to live this way. There will still be Drapers and Bluffdales, places where the old American dream - big house, big yard, RV and SUV - hangs on, or dies hard.
But eventually, that lifestyle will be as outdated as last year's calendar. Pressure - financial, ethical, environmental, governmental - will be brought to bear. Change is inevitable. It's up to government to make it happen sooner, not later.
posted by CMT at 7:20 AM
2 Comments:
Thus my astonishment that CMT in this week's newsletter promotes Carrington Place, an "upscale, gated community" near a MetroLink station in Swansea.
Upscale gated communities?? This is low-density sprawl. It's wasting the most valuable land we have--that within 1/4 mile of rail stations. Many times more people, of different economic and other backgrounds, could easily be housed on the same amount of land, with fewer cars and less land spent on them, reducing travel times and costs as well as greenhouse emissions. What will these residents be able to get to without a car other than work? Carrington Place doesn't sound like TOD at all; rather greenwashing by developers who think doing the same thing they've been doing for decades, only closer to light rail, is somehow good for the environment. I'm really disappointed that CMT would be championing this instead of fighting it. Look at Vienna, VA where over 1000 homes are going in where 56 stood. Such low-density development should be happening much further from transit, if at all. Market demographics don't even demand this kind of housing anymore--more Americans are now single than married, and only a shrinking minority have kids. Empty nesters are looking to downsize while my generation, some married but many still single, want urban lives. Where's the mixed use? Where are the height and density? Where are the walkability and bikeability? Where are the shops and offices in this gated "community"? This adds few riders to the rail system, instead of adding far more which would make it more efficient--and collectively lead to shorter headways that further squeeze more riders out of the same areas. If suburban MetroLink stations are only used for suburbanites commuting to work, you're wasting half the system's capacity by running empty trains outbound in the morning and inbound in the evening. A good gauge of this is to graph ridership by hour of the day. Each station needs to be a destination in itself which attracts people to arrive and leave from it as equally as possible throughout the day, e.g. Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. This sounds like a waste of land, train capacity, Metro's labor budget, and the fundamental infrastructure investment. Better development around MetroLink stations might obviate the need for yet another regressive, anti-environment fare increase.
Carrington Place pre-dates MetroLink expansion into St. Clair County. You're right, its not the type of development that should be occurring around stations. But as long as it's there, hopefully people who live there will use Metro. The biggest challenges is to get the 18 or so municipalities that have stations to adopt zoning codes friendly to transit.
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