Designing Transportation Systems for Active Communities

Abstract

Active communities result from the interaction of many environmental, cultural, political and sociological factors. The design of the transportation system is but one of them. A balanced transportation system -- with appropriate levels of investment in transit, bicycle and pedestrian facilities, in addition to auto-oriented facilities – is an indispensable requirement and catalyst for active communities. In the relationship between transportation and land use, the causality arrow is many times stronger going from land use actions to transportation consequences than vice versa. While transit-and pedestrian-supportive land use changes are hard to attain, especially given local control issues and pressure on local jurisdictions to increase their tax base; there are steps that can indeed be taken to increase the quality of transportation projects and services provided to individual communities. This paper provides a general overview of trends and challenges in urban growth and mobility, discusses areas of opportunity and provides some examples of successful application of such steps. The paper includes a cautionary note about the limitations on the effectiveness of these techniques to radically change the built environment, and on the importance of setting goals that are commensurate with the transportation system’s ability to deliver performance and with the public sector’s ability to deliver transportation projects expeditiously. It suggests that the emerging transportation paradigm, in order to support active communities, may be one where heavy transit investment is concentrated in the core areas that already have appropriate land use densities, carefully sited transit-oriented development is encouraged to absorb the portion of suburban growth it can, and the rest of the growth is given over to the automobile and a hybrid version of transit that behaves more like the automobile than traditional transit. An expanded role is suggested in all three environments for walking and bicycle trips, alone and in combination with transit services.