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Lessons from Sustainable Transit-Oriented Cities

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Traditional transport planning methods are costly and require an advanced degree of understanding not only from the involved transport planning professionals, but also the politicians who must approve the resulting outcomes and transport interventions proposed that are based on these traditional methods. A different approach is proposed for small and medium-sized cities in developing countries that have less technical expertise and fewer financial resources to improve their public transport situation. This approach was trialed in a medium-sized city in West-Asia (Batumi, Georgia) and also in Central Asia, in a larger city (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The planning interventions suggested in the medium-sized city were validated by an independent consultant at the request of Batumi City planning agency, using traditional transport planning methods, which shows promise for the new low-cost method proposed. With additional validation and research, it may be possible to expand and apply this method to South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and any other area of the world suffering from similar transport planning constraints to these developing regions. If successful, these planning methods could rapidly transform such cities and urban areas to become less carbon intensive and concurrently more efficient and comfortable for public transport users.
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Local and state governments provide 75 percent of transit funds in the United States. With all levels of governments under significant fiscal stress, any new transit funding mechanism is welcome. Value capture (VC) is one such mechanism. Based on the “benefits received” principle, VC involves the identification and capture of public infrastructure-led increase in land value. While the literature has extensively demonstrated the property-value impacts of transit investments and has empirically simulated the potential magnitude of VC revenues for financing transit facilities, very little research has examined the suitability of VC mechanisms for specific transit projects. This report aims to fill this research gap by examining five VC mechanisms in depth: tax-increment financing (TIF), special assessment districts (SADs), transit impact fees, joint developments, and air rights. The report is intended to assist practitioners in gauging the legal, financial, and administrative suitability of VC mechanisms for meeting project-specific funding requirements.
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Transportation investments often increase nearby land values. This can choke off development, pushing new growth to cheaper sites remote from these investments. This "leapfrog" development creates a demand for infrastructure extension that starts the process over again. Transportation infrastructure, intended to facilitate development, thus chases it away. Resulting sprawl strains the transportation, fis- cal, and environmental systems upon which communities rely. Several jurisdictions around the country utilize a value-capture technique embedded in their property tax to help finance infrastructure and motivate affordable compact development. They reduce the tax rate on assessed building values and increase the tax rate on assessed land values. The resulting compact development should facilitate better transportation and accommodate economic growth with reduced fiscal and envi- ronmental costs. This technique's ability to foster affordable compact development might help bridge the gap between those who advocate growth boundaries and those who fear the impact of growth boundaries on affordable housing.
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Hong Kong has aggressively pursued transit value capture to finance railway infrastructure through its ‘Rail + Property’ development programme, or R+P. More than half of all income to the railway operators comes from property development. Most R+P projects focus on housing although all have some commercial development. Recent generation R+P projects have stressed pedestrian quality. This research shows this has in turn increased ridership and housing prices. An R+P station with a transit-oriented design averages 35 000 additional weekday passengers. Housing price premiums in the range of 5—30 per cent were found. Hong Kong’s R+P model, it is suggested, is well suited for financing rail infrastructure and advancing transit-oriented designs in the rapidly growing cities of mainland China.
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Transit Oriented Development: Making it Happen brings together the different stakeholders and disciplines that are involved in the conception and implementation of TOD to provide a comprehensive overview of the realization of this concept in Australia, North America, Asia and Europe. The book identifies the challenges facing TOD and through a series of key international case studies demonstrates ways to overcome and avoid them. The insights gleaned from these encompass policy and regulation, urban design solutions, issues for local governance, the need to work with community and the commercial realities of TOD. http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&title_id=8710&edition_id=11109&calcTitle=1
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Transit-oriented development (TOD) and green urbanism have gained attention as development models for charting a more sustainable urban future. These two built forms, however, are often dealt with separately, as distinct topics. This paper explores synergies that are created when neighbourhoods are designed as both green and transit-oriented and how ‘Green TOD’ can reduce a project's environmental footprint more than each strategy can achieve individually. Experiences with Green TODs are reviewed for urban regeneration projects in Sweden, Germany and Australia. These projects optimally combine sustainable building, energy and waste practices with high-quality transit access. ‘Green’ transit-based urbanism can substantially shrink the environmental footprint associated with car-oriented suburban development. We estimate that carbon emissions and energy consumption of Green TOD can be nearly 30% less than that of conventional development. Synergies that are created by combining TOD and green urbanism include increased densities, which promote transit usage, conserve heating/cooling expense and enable waste reuse techniques contingent on high volumes; mixed land uses, which promote non-motorised transportation and match the differing heat and energy needs of commercial and residential uses to enable maximum reuse of waste heat; reduced impervious parking surfaces replaced by increased open space and community gardens; opportunities for generating solar power for use in buildings from photovoltaics (PVs) atop rail-stop canopies and remote parking structures; and using renewable energy/fuels produced from the built environment to power transit vehicles.
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While urban sprawl has been the general growth pattern in most developing cities worldwide, the city of Bogotá has undergone a process of densification in specific areas in the past decade. Using a differences-in-differences methodology, we have shown that the bus rapid transit (BRT) network, Transmilenio, built in this period is one of the variables that account for this higher density. Areas served by Transmilenio, especially those in the periphery that have been provided with feeder bus routes, have a higher growth than zones without access to this system. Using a similar methodology for assessing the growth of newly built areas, we have not found a clear relation between the BRT and recent evolution of residential, commercial, or work areas. However, recent scientific literature confirms an impact of the BRT on land value.
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This article shows how the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have made bicycling a safe, convenient and practical way to get around their cities. The analysis relies on national aggregate data as well as case studies of large and small cities in each country. The key to achieving high levels of cycling appears to be the provision of separate cycling facilities along heavily travelled roads and at intersections, combined with traffic calming of most residential neighbourhoods. Extensive cycling rights of way in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are complemented by ample bike parking, full integration with public transport, comprehensive traffic education and training of both cyclists and motor-ists, and a wide range of promotional events intended to generate enthusiasm and wide public support for cycling. In addition to their many pro-bike policies and programmes, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany make driving expensive as well as inconvenient in central cities through a host of taxes and restrictions on car ownership, use and parking. Moreover, strict land-use policies foster compact, mixed-use developments that generate shorter and thus more bikeable trips. It is the coordinated implementation of this multi-faceted, mutually reinforcing set of policies that best explains the success of these three countries in promoting cycling. For comparison, the article portrays the marginal status of cycling in the UK and the USA, where only about 1% of trips are by bike.
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Bus rapid transit (BRT) has gained popularity as a cost-effective alternative to urban rail investments; however, relatively little is known about its impacts on land-use changes and land values. This paper examines the land-market effects of converting regular bus operations to median-lane bus services in Seoul, Korea, one of the densest, most congested cities in the world. Multilevel models reveal BRT improvements prompted property owners to convert single-family residences to higher density apartments and condominiums. Land price premiums of up to 10% were estimated for residences within 300 m of BRT stops and more than 25% for retail and other non-residential uses over a smaller impact zone of 150 m. The research findings underscore the importance of introducing zoning and other land regulatory changes prior to the initiation of BRT improvements as well as applying value-capture tools to help finance investments and redress inequities.
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Concerns over rising fuel prices and greenhouse-gas emissions have prompted research into the influences of built environments on travel, notably vehicle miles traveled (VMT). On the basis of data from 370 US urbanized areas and using structural equation modeling, population densities are shown to be strongly and positively associated with VMT per capita (direct effect elasticity =-0.604); however, this effect is moderated by the traffic-inducing effects of denser urban settings having denser road networks and better local-retail accessibility (indirect effect elasticity =0.223, yielding a net effect elasticity =-0.381). Accessibility to basic employment has comparatively modest effects, as do size of urbanized area, and rail-transit supplies and usage. Nevertheless, urban planning and city design should be part of any strategic effort to shrink the environmental footprint of the urban transportation sector.
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This paper examines the effects of residential relocation to Shanghai’s suburbs on job accessibility and commuting, focusing on the influences of proximity to metrorail services and neighborhood environments on commute behavior and choices. The policy implications of the research findings on the planning and design of suburban communities in large cities like Shanghai are addressed in the conclusion. Our research suggests that TOD has a potentially important role to play in placing China’s large, rail-served cities on a more sustainable pathway.
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This paper studies expectations formation and forecasting of vehicle demand in Singapore under the vehicle quota system. Under the system, a car buyer must first bid for a vehicle license in monthly auctions in order to purchase a new car. We construct an econometric model to test the hypothesis that past bid distributions of the license auctions contain information that car buyers can use to update their expectations about the intensity of market demand, forecast license premiums and formulate their bidding strategies in future auctions. Our empirical analysis indicates that past bid distributions have a good degree of predictive power for the vehicle license premiums.
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The typical urban household in China owns a TV, a refrigerator, a washing machine, and a computer, but does not yet own a car. In this paper, we draw on data for a panel of countries and detailed household level surveys for the largest emerging markets to document a remarkably stable relationship between GDP per capita and car ownership, highlighting the importance of within-country income distribution factors: we find that car ownership is low up to per capita incomes of about US$5000 and then takes off very rapidly. Several emerging markets, including India and China, the most populous countries in the world, are currently at the stage of development when such takeoff is expected to take place. We project that the number of cars will increase by 2.3 billion between 2005 and 2050, with an increase by 1.9 billion in emerging market and developing countries. We outline a number of possible policy options to deal with the implications for the countries affected and the world as a whole. — Marcos Chamon, Paolo Mauro and Yohei Okawa
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