| Land Use and Growth Management |
| Land Use and New Starts: A National Assessment |
| By G.B. Arrington, Portland, Oregon 1-503-274-2298, arrington@pbworld.com
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| An early advocate of strengthening
the links between land use and transit, the author worked with Congress
and with the U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to help craft
FTA's land use criteria. In this article, he provides a comprehensive
review of how the transit industry views these criteria. |
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Transit and land use planning is a great example of that old saying:
Watch out what you wish for, it might come true. Transit agencies
have long postulated that new rail starts combined with supportive
land use policies can have a positive impact on both shaping development
around transit stations and shaping our communities.
Until the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act (ISTEA) of 1991 in the U.S. and related lobbying by the transit
industry, land use could be talked about locally, but it was not taken
into direct consideration in the Federal Transit Administration's
(FTA's) rating of proposed new starts projects. This situation began
to change officially in 1994, and in the FY 2000 Annual Report on
New Starts, 42 projects from across the country saw land use help
determine their fate in the federal funding game. Aside from adequate
local financial capacity, land use is the most important factor FTA
considers when recommending to Congress which projects merit federal
funding. I have seen projects move to the front of the federal funding
queue because they include comprehensive land use planning.
Land use performance is rated on a five-point scale based on six factors:
- Existing land use
- Containment of sprawl
- Transit-supportive corridor policies
- Supportive zoning near transit stations
- Tools to implement land use policies
- Track record of performance.
National Survey: Does The Policy Make a Difference?
In March 2000, in cooperation with FTA, we developed a survey that
the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) distributed
to all 42 projects that were in FTA's new starts pipeline. The survey
sought to determine:
- What difference the land use criteria have
made
- With the door open to land use, if transit
projects were living up to the promise
- What FTA and local agencies could do to improve
the rating criteria and the rating process.
The 19 respondents to the survey indicated that the land use criteria
are having their desired effect. By better than a 9-to-1 margin, transit
agencies believe that the land use rating they received was fair and,
just as hoped for, 84 percent believe that their ability to undertake
and implement land use has been enhanced by including land use in
the new starts process.
| Eighty-four percent
of respondents to an American Public Transportation Association
survey believe that their ability to undertake and implement
land use has been enhanced by the Federal Transit Administration
including land use in the new starts process |
The survey showed significant differences in the level of transit-
friendly land use planning and development between systems seeking
to extend an existing rail line and those working on their first line.
It highlighted that where new rail systems are planned, a big learning
curve exists to get the technical and political capacity needed to
reshape land use in place. One implication may be the need to start
paying attention to land use earlier in the project development cycle
so that when FTA is making funding recommendations, those systems
have a better chance of getting the "special consideration"
that comes with good land use.
Areas
for Attention
The survey also proved valuable in highlighting some ways that FTA
and local agencies can improve the rating criteria and the rating
process, particularly as they apply to:
- Giving greater consideration to changes in
land use policy and performance when rating projects
- Emphasizing the importance of micro level
design to integrate transit facilities into the communities they
are designed to serve.
Where to Put the Emphasis: Current or Future Land Use? There
was some concern that the criteria inherently had an East Coast bias
because they heavily weigh existing land use patterns for making the
rating. That concern raises an interesting policy trade-off. Is the
policy intended to encourage shifts in land use to make it more transit-friendly
or reward existing land use conditions that already favor transit?
A majority of the cities in the new starts pipeline are growing western
and Sunbelt (southern and southwestern U.S.) cities where land use
patterns are often not transit-friendly, so the case could be made
that the policy should give more weight to reshaping future land use.
After all, if the majority of new projects will be in these communities,
doesn't it make sense in choosing between a Phoenix, a Houston or
a Charlotte? When rating land use in the context of rail, the main
point is the future-building communities. By thinking about future
patterns, the places that have policies that will most likely create
strong transit land use patterns are the ones that should be rewarded.
Need to Look at the Micro Level. Part of the challenge
in rating land use is that one rating applies to the entire system.
The corridor- wide view misses the micro level, where transit and
land use integration is the most critical and largely in the control
of the local transit agency. For example, transit station design arguably
is as important as corridor land use, yet it gets no attention in
the evaluation. There is a real opportunity for FTA leadership in
emphasizing the importance of pedestrian connections, the integration
of transit stations into adjacent communities, and the location of
parking in the design of transit facilities. Those micro level conversations
can help to set the tone for success on a broader scale.
| 
Figure 1: FTA Land Use Policy helped advance these programs
and policies.
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Implications for the Future
Transit agencies report they are undertaking a broad range of activities
in response to the new starts land use criteria. All the systems with
an existing rail line and 86 percent of the aspiring new starts' cities
have something underway. A breakdown of the active transit agencies
have underway in response to the FTA criteria is shown in Figure 1.
According to the transit industry, FTA's land use evaluation is on
target and starting to produce the desired results. At the same time,
there is a disparity between the "have" and "have not"
systems-those that are planning extensions and those that are planning
their first line ever-that needs to be addressed to make sure the
process works for everyone. Part of the answer lies in starting the
examination of land use earlier in the project development process.
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| G. B. Arrington was an early advocate of strengthening
the link between land use and transit. He worked with Congress to
help craft the relationship of transit and land use, and took the
lead for the transit industry in working with FTA, helping to write
what is now the FTA's land use criteria. G.B. has been with PB since
October 1999. He is the Land Use Program Manager for the Land Use
Resource Center and is a national resource for transit oriented development. |
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