USING A PARK-AND-RIDE STATION FOR NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND REGENERATION

Transcription

1 USING A PARK-AND-RIDE STATION FOR NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND REGENERATION Andreas L. Savvides University of Cyprus, Department of Architecture, P. O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus als@ucy.ac.cy Abstract This paper examines the advantage in the clustering of housing development around transit nodes and more specifically park & ride stations in the case of Nicosia, Cyprus. It looks at the potential for implementing sustainable development strategies with regards to mobility and social mixture and acceptance, as well as to increased ridership, which may result from the integration of work and residence for the local community. The chosen case study will explore the opportunities and challenges provided by an existing site that may be undergoing infill development as a result of the passage of a multi modal transportation corridor in close proximity to it. The investigation will look at appropriate housing densities and their relation to proposed housing typologies that aim at serving diverse socioeconomic strata of the community in a master planning effort that adheres to accepted sustainable urban design and development principles. Keywords: park-and-ride, multi-modal transit station, neighborhood development, regeneration. Introduction Recent transport planning proposals in Nicosia, Cyprus, investigate the integration of a tram infrastructure along major underserved transportation corridors in the capital region. In addition to the inner city stations, a number of stations on the fringes provide the opportunity to look at the regenerative effects of development and the possibility to implement smart growth practices at these multi-modal stations. These would then act as receptors of commuters and would facilitate their diffusion into the wider network through integrated park-and-ride facilities. Parallel housing development associated with these schemes would be in line with the stated principles of smart growth and as Cervero notes... clustering of housing development around rail stations holds promise not only for increasing transit ridership, but also yielding important environmental and social regenerative benefits (Cervero, 1994). Further evidence of this potential is presented by Cervero in his investigations in the San Francisco Bay Area region where he noted that for cities served by transit, their residents living near multi-modal and park-and-ride hubs were around five times as likely to commute by rail transit as the average residentworker in the same city. The strongest predictors of whether station-area residents commuted by rail, was whether their destination was near a rail station and whether they could park for free at their destination. Neighborhood density and proximity of housing to stations were also related to the extent of use of multimodal public transit travel. Moreover, it is also important to consider that if transit-based regeneration is to amount to significant mobility and environmental benefits, it must be accompanied by transit based employment growth and related programs. However, many urban development authorities, including those in Nicosia, often neglect to fully appreciate the potential benefits of multi-modal public transit and focus on highway-served

2 suburban corridors instead. One way then to reverse this trend and to exploit public investments in public transit may be to concentrate more development around these multi modal transit hubs and their related park-and-ride facilities (Cervero, 1989; Pivo, 1990). Incentives for development The importance of the scale of clustered development at both the residential and employment ends of commute trips as an inducement to transit riding and its relation to regeneration needs to be addressed. Cervero notes that interest in clustering housing and commercial development around multi-modal transit stations is growing and local redevelopment authorities are seen to increasingly negotiate public-private ventures with private builders to construct mid-rise housing complexes and structured park-and-ride facilities on existing surface-parking lots (Cervero, 1994). Rising land values and pressures for affordable housing have also prompted redevelopment authorities to convert these underutilized areas of park-andride lots to mid-rise housing (Bernick, 1993). As these contiguous lots do not bear the risk of negotiating land purchases among multiple property owners, developers have been attracted to these sites. In the meantime, redevelopment authorities expect that these projects will eventually lead to vibrant emergent communities around multiple park-and-ride stations. Moreover, communities on the urban fringe that would normally be expected to host these park-and-ride facilities have undertaken steps to attract housing and commercial development around proposed stations. Furthermore, several of them have made transit-based housing the centerpiece of local redevelopment efforts (Bernick et al., 1993). Local area plans propose using an array of development incentives, including higher allowable densities, lower minimum parking requirements, tax increment financing and industrial development bonds to entice potential developers. According to Cervero, such... plans aim to promote strong linkages between transit and land use by facilitating the development of higher residential densities and commercial intensities at transit stops and along transit corridors. These may... support moderate-density housing from between 30 to 100 dwelling units per hectare near light rail stations (Cervero, 1994), as well as in the form of village clusters at mixed densities of dwelling units per hectare that will be served directly by an extension of the proposed Nicosia tram line. The largest development clusters may then result in regional mixed-use nodes, with residential densities reaching dwellings per hectare. Transit-based benefits The primary benefit of clustering housing around rail stations is that transit usage is likely to increase as a result. Secondary benefits if significant numbers of new transit users become former auto drivers may have extensive public health benefits, especially if park-and-ride trips are converted to walk-and-ride or bike-and-ride trips instead. Furthermore, the potential of transit-oriented-development and its potential to cause a reduction in tailpipe emissions is particularly important in urban areas that currently exceed clean air standards for ozone and carbon monoxide (Cervero, 1994). Transit-oriented-development could also cause changes towards an equitable balance between offered market and affordable housing units in the new mixed-use complexes. This in itself is an important fact which would greatly affect the decision making of young families and first-time homebuyers who may wish to reside on the exurban fringes and who seek affordable housing units with non-vehicular access to a broad range of facilities and services in the urban core. Transit-based housing would also provide more live-travel options for retirees and older persons, emptynesters, disabled persons, teenagers and other young people and other public-transit-dependent groups. Other potential secondary benefits include: reduced traffic congestion along roads paralleling rail lines; increased revenues to transit agencies, as from highway joint development programs and air-rights leasing; opportunities for inner-city redevelopment and restoration of the historic core of Nicosia s Walled

3 City; and preservation and integration of open space, as a result of built and natural environmental infill. The extent of these secondary benefits is of course dependent on both the socioeconomic as well as the spatial harmonization that would prompt the hubs residents to maximize their use of the proffered facilities and services. Additional evidence from studies in the San Francisco Bay Area, which compared work-trip modal splits for station-area residents to citywide averages from the 1990 journey-to-work census (Cervero, 1994), indicate that on a city-by-city basis, the ridership benefits of transit-based housing are even more evident. The investigators found that workers residing near multi-modal station hubs patronize public transit far more than their counterparts residing farther away from stations but within the same city. On average, residents living near stations were five times as likely to commute by rail transit as the average worker living in the same city and in some cases as much as seven times as likely. Also, when station-area residents were asked to provide information on how they commuted at their prior residence, many responded that they consciously changed modes of travel once they moved closer to the multi-modal hubs, with about one in three who usually drove alone to work at their previous residence now commuting by rail. The conversion of these trips to public transit and especially the future of a tram infrastructure in the Nicosia Capital Region would seem to represent a real economic benefit measured in terms of, for example, reduced vehicle miles travelled and emissions and their impact on how these factors affect public health and welfare. Neighborhood characteristics and modal splits Part of the high incidence of public transit usage among hub residents especially as it is related to the development of mixed-use complexes around park-and-ride facilities and multi-modal public transit hubs may be due to the fact that they have a desire to utilize public transit more intensively, perhaps as a result of an acquired habit or their personal taste with regards to broader factors implicated in aspects of urban mobility. Additionally, the decision to rent or buy a home near such a hub may have been influenced by a desire to commute more regularly by public transit. Also, trip destination may be an important determinant of public transit utilization. If, for example the residents were to travel to downtown Nicosia and especially the Walled City where parking is usually hard to find and at times expensive or at peak times when highways and arterials suffer from congestion and traffic delays public transit by tram and its correspondence with local bus services may offer a cheaper and more convenient and time saving option. On the contrary, for trips to regional sub centers, studies show that demand for usage drops off significantly and they also show a marked sensitivity to changes in the three strongest predictor variables parking policy, destination and vehicle availability (Cervero, 1994). The fact that probabilities drop the sharpest between paid versus free parking at their destination, e.g. the workplace, underscores the importance of parking policies in influencing mode choice, even among those living within easy walking distance of a station and heading to the fairly dense employment workplace, which is the Nicosia CBD. These same studies actually indicate that... all else being equal, paid parking increases the likelihood of commuting by public parking by around half (and) that this probability falls the fastest when going from a no-car to a one-car household. Further research has shown that density and other features of the built environment strongly influence transit trip-making (Holtzclaw, 1990) and that the two neighborhood characteristics that were found to be the strongest predictors of public transit utilization for all trip purposes combined were: the proximity of the users to the multi-modal public transit hub or the ease with which they could access the park-and-ride facility; and residential density, coupled to a mixture of uses and services offered. Similarly, transit modal

4 splits are seen to be comparatively higher for mixed-use projects in close proximity to the transit hub and park-and-ride facility in settings of comparatively higher densities. Ridership gradients in Toronto In studying transit oriented housing developments near Toronto s subway facilities, Stringham found that... within a 1000m radius of a station, rail modal splits ranged from 30 to 60 per cent of all work and school trips (while) the impact zone where residents will walk to stations in significant numbers (may) extend as far as 1250m (and) at 1000m from a station, bus transit eclipsed walking as the predominant mode of access (Stringham, 1982). These distances compare favorably to the ten-minute walking radius Untermann found to be the maximum distance commuters are typically willing to walk to access public transit (Untermann, 1984). Recent studies of commuting in greater Toronto have actually confirmed the importance of proximity to subway as a significant determinant of mode choice (Untermann, 1984; Pivo, 1993) and it has been also been shown that walking distances can be stretched considerably by utilizing the tools of creative urban design in planning for interesting and engaging paths to and from the public transit hubs. A survey from Brussels In the case of Brussels, Sylvie Gayda administered a survey dealing with residential location choice utilizing the stated preference technique (Gayda, 1998). This was deemed appropriate for the study of households behavior when it came to residential choices, especially as the questionnaire was customized for each household. Customization was of special importance in respect to the prices of proposed dwellings and the maximum budget that each household was prepared to devote to housing. The survey showed that households actually make trade-offs in their location choice as indicted in the values of neighborhood and values of home-to-work travel time entries, in terms of housing budget, by households segment. The survey showed that a large number of households were attracted by urban residential neighborhoods, with a very low traffic level and preferably served by railed public transit, which were both quiet and safe, so that children could play in the street. In some segments, it even appeared that households would accept to pay significantly more for such a neighborhood location than an urban residential neighborhood not served by public transit or for properties located in a suburban or rural environment where commute would necessitate the use of an automobile. The Stockholm case study While the benefits of achieving transit based housing or clustered office development are likely to be modest, the effects of such initiatives can be far more substantial, especially when introduced alongside a combination of supportive measures. Experiences in Stockholm are instructive in this regard in that Sweden is one of the world s most affluent countries and has a high automobile ownership rate (2.1 persons/vehicle) (Westin, 1993) and not unlike the state of affairs in Nicosia, Cyprus. Moreover, greater Stockholm is surrounded by vast open spaces and experienced rapid growth following World War II, meaning that it could easily have followed a highway-oriented development pattern. Instead, Stockholm s city council built a number of satellite new towns over the past three decades, most surrounded by greenbelts and connected to Stockholm city by rail. An overriding principle was to distribute industry and offices to satellites roughly in proportion to residential population in order to avoid a dormitory town environment (Hall, 1988; City of Stockholm, 1989) and the impact of this practice on the density of built form and the provision of travel choices has been instrumental in the way in which these hubs developed spatially. In 1990, 38 per cent of the residents and 53 per cent of the workers of Stockholm s rail-served new towns commuted by rail transit. For all of Stockholm County, rail accounted for 42 per cent of commute trips (Cervero, 1993b). Urban development

5 patterns, alone, did not produce these results, however and cities like Stockholm are testaments to how integrated rail and land-use planning in combination with transit demand management efforts can reduce auto-dependency. Recent experiences in Sheffield The research in Sheffield saw four groups of actors as potentially being influenced by park-and-ride and multi-modal transit infrastructure investment and parallel road schemes in the study area, namely: households and individuals, particularly in the context of their shopping habits and their participation in the local labor market; companies, also in the labor market, but in addition their use of the road system to bring in supplies, to offer access to customers and to transport manufactured goods; investors, particularly non-local property companies and their agents; and lastly, enablers and regulators, in promoting new investment, and in operating the local land-use planning system. These actors were seen to interact and to compete in three market places: for land and property; for labor; and for goods and services, while the operational framework enabled the identification of the key dimensions of the relationship between transport investment and urban regeneration: image; property values; land-use impacts; business operation and location issues; and employment considerations. Original data sources were involved (Lawless and Gore, 1999), covering each of these five main regeneration factors and `before and `after surveys were used to create relevant databases covering streams of comparable values. With this investigators and proponents were able to identify the degree to which change might reasonably be attributed to new transport investment as it applies and is derived from the development proposal. City branding The survey indicated that the city s image improved quite markedly between 1993 and 1996, by which time external agents identified transport infrastructure as a key element in the city s improving image. However, it was harder to identify any consequential behavioral changes and other promotional activities and facilities are likely to have as much if not a larger impact on `selling the city than its transport infrastructure (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990). Property Values Other analyses of the relationship between dwelling characteristics and asking prices, were able to estimate the discrete impact of transport investment, so that the nearer the transit route and park-and-ride facilities were, other things being equal, the slightly higher the price. Moreover, the opinion of professional practitioners was positive rather than negative, as they predicted that with time and increasing ridership levels it is expected that a positive price effect may be observed. Land Use Land-use surveys were undertaken along the tram and road corridors and also in the city centre, on a before and after basis, which showed that road construction at least in the period after project implementation had a more positive effect on development and regeneration than did rail transit. Thus, planning applications within the road corridors rose considerably between the two study periods. Following other studies examining the relationship between transport and economic development (Parkinson, 1981), the emphasis was placed on business location and operations, together which such factors as telecommunications and sites and premises, which proved more important than road access and public transport. However, a number of respondents expressed the opinion that trams and the park-andride schemes within the city should be expanded along with the necessary road improvements, so as to

6 help to improve the environment and improve access around the city, in what many termed as an... idea (which) is visionary, pollution free and user-friendly. Employment impact Empirical work on the proximity of employment to the transport network has been focused on recruitment problems (Elias and White, 1991), on the relationship between jobs and housing tenure (Congdon, 1988) or the operation of urban labor markets as a whole (Simpson, 1992). Yet the proponents anticipated that any transport improvements would influence patterns of individual mobility and a number of route residents suggested that it had helped them to look for work in other areas. The results of the research activity, however, indicated that there is no systematic relationship between changes to employment status and proximity to the park-and-ride and multi-modal transit hub. Indeed, for people to seek out new opportunities for residential relocation and employment, these efforts should be well integrated with the new spatial patterns proposed by the park-and-ride and multi-modal transit hub. Regeneration effect The Sheffield case study stakeholders mentioned the apparent difficulty in re-orientating attitudes towards transport at that interface between urban regeneration initiatives and transport policy. They noted that... in the light of declining mainstream income, local authorities and their partners are increasingly perceiving that urban regeneration resources need to be secured through a closer integration of regeneration funds with transport infrastructure. This is especially true of investment in areas under consideration to be allocated housing components and also to be designed to achieve further socioeconomic benefits from transport investment. To further this aim, redevelopment and planning authorities need to increasingly adopt an enabling function in regulating or co-coordinating a range of services related to providing better access to housing, employment and transport options. This is especially true of areas where suitable sites exist close to the proposed public transit line and its park-andride and multi-modal transit stations. Concluding thoughts... planning considerations for Nicosia In considering the way ahead for the adoption of new tram routes in Nicosia and given the lessons learned from the case studies above, it may be indicated that the multi-modal public transit hubs with associated park-and-ride facilities should function as commuter nodes. These may then draw a large share of system users beyond walking distances, who may well extend their stay at the hub as a result of uses and services offered at these locations. Additionally, such factors as higher average residential densities, higher connectivity, better bus and bicycle correspondence and last but not least connecting corridors designed to a high standard so as to encourage users to use their bicycles, to walk and / or to linger and their possible influence of such factors in park-and-ride integrated mixed-use developments must be considered carefully. Moreover, if concentrating residential growth around stations is to yield substantial social benefits, it must be accompanied by linkage agreements with the other stakeholders so as to transfer true costs to motorists, such as inner city tolls and parking charges. Also, transit-based housing will not attract many people to these hubs if the possibility of employment related to the transport network is small or if workplace destinations are scattered throughout a metropolitan area. As Downs notes... for transit-based housing to reap mobility and environmental dividends there must be transit based employment centers... (Downs, 1992). Moreover,... these should occur both at the origin and destination ends of commute trips (and they) need to be in reasonably close proximity to (transit hubs) for there to be high levels of travel utilizing public transit. Rail bus connections may also be used to access the transport network to

7 a higher degree at the destination end of the trip and the park-and-ride facility may then also function as a feeder connection. What is also evident is that for regeneration to occur the symbiotic association of the transportation hub and park-and-ride facility with the transit-based housing and mixed-use development component must provide significant mobility and environmental benefits. However, this will occur only if accompanied by land-use measures, which attract employment growth in and around the transport hubs (Hall, 1988). Additional measures may include and incorporate transportation demand management programs, such as inner city access tolls and parking charges, mentioned above. As is true elsewhere, so it holds true in the case of Nicosia that in order for the tram routes to compete with private automobile use, the urban fabric investigated herein needs to resemble closely the characteristics of places with high shares of public transit commuters and significant concentrations of housing, employment and services within walking distance of the transport hub. In the current economic climate in Cyprus, tight credit, questionable market viability and the potentially high development costs of clustered housing will undoubtedly prove to be significant barriers to transit-based regeneration and the transportation planning initiatives proposed in achieving a transit supportive built environment remains as much a question of spatial implications as political ones. References Ashworth, G. J. and Voogd, H. (1990). Selling the City. London: Belhaven Press. Bcrnick, M. (1993). The Bay Area s emerging transit-based housing. Urban Land, 52(7), pp Bernick, M., Hall, P. and Schaevitz, R. (1993). Planning strategies for high-density housing near rail transit stations in northern California, California Policy Seminar Brief, 5(2), pp. l-5. Cervero, R. (1989). America s suburban centers: the land use transportation link. Boston: Unwin-Hyman. Cervero, R. (1993). Transit-supportive development in the United States: experiences and prospects. Washington, DC: Federal Transit Administration, US Department of Transportation. Cervero, R. (1994). Transit-based housing in California: evidence on ridership impacts. Transport Policy, 1(3), pp City of Stockholm (1989). The development of Stockholm. Stockholm: City of Stockholm. Congdon, P. (1988). The interdependence of geographical migration with job and housing mobility in London. Regional Studies, 22(2), pp Downs, A. (1992). Stuck in traffic: coping with peak-hour traffic congestion. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Elias, P. and White, M. (1991). Recruitment in local labor markets: employer and employee perspectives. RP-86, Employment Department, London. Gayda, S. (1998). Stated preference survey on residential location choice and modal choice in Brussels. Presented at WCTR in July 1998, Antwerp, Belgium. Hall, P. (1988). Cities of tomorrow: an intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Holtzclaw, J. (1990). Manhattanization versus sprawl: how density impacts auto use comparing five Bay Area communities. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Pedestrian Conference, Boulder, CO, pp

8 Lawless, P. and Gore, T. (1999). Urban Regeneration and Transport Investment: A Case Study of Sheffield Urban Studies, 36(3), pp Parkinson, M. (1981). The effect of road investment on economic development in the UK. WP- 43, Government Economic Service, Department of Transport, London. Pivo, G. (1990). The net of mixed beads: suburban office development in six metropolitan regions. Journal of the American Planning Association, 56(4), pp Pivo, G. (1993). A taxonomy of suburban office clusters: the case of Toronto. Urban Studies, 30(1), pp Simpson, W. (1992). Urban Structure and the Labor Market. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stringham, M. (1982). Travel behavior associated with land uses adjacent to Rapid Transit stations. ITE Journal, 52(4), pp Untermann, R. (1984). Accommodating the pedestrian: adapting towns and neighborhoods for walking and bicycling. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Westin, K. (1993). Sweden: moving towards a safer environment. In Salomon et al. (eds) Billions of trips a day. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp