The Portland Metropolitan Area is composed of a well-connected system of bus lines and light-rail (MAX) lines maintained and operated by TriMet, and a few loops comprising the Portland Streetcar maintained and operated by the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Moreover micro-mobility, such as e-scooters and e-bikes, has proliferated near many bus, light-rail and streetcar stops. All of the MAX and Streetcar lines generally run frequently, or about every 15 minutes, and so do many of the high-ridership bus lines. Projects like Portland’s Rose Lanes Project are also seeking to decrease headways and increase frequencies. Micro-mobility furthermore is alleviating the last-mile dilemma between the end of transit routes and commuters’ actual destinations.
Given the wealth of transit options, total transit use in the metro area is still proportionately low in comparison to maximum vehicle seating across all transit services, even when considering the effects of the pandemic. As figures show, the pandemic has had devastating effects on transit ridership, but ridership was already low before the pandemic when considering the number of boardings in relation to the number of available seats across all transit vehicles in service. There are some potential explanatory factors — to name just a few: driving alone was the dominant travel mode for people commuting to work as of 2020; driving alone and carpooling comprised over 70 percent of all trips according to 2014 data; and average non-commute drive times between suburbs and cities significantly outcompetes all relevant transit options.
But what I did not mention above, which is the main focus of this article, is a position held by Renne: “the importance of a quality built environment upon travel behaviour and vehicle ownership.” This now brings us to a conversation about transit-adjacent and transit-oriented developments (TADs and TODs), which may or may not be an original discussion, considering the deep and broad literature on the matter. Renne said “a TOD describes a station-area precinct that is compact, mixed-use, and facilitates transit connectivity through urban design,” whereas “a TAD is ‘physically near transit [but] fails to capitalize upon this proximity … [It] lacks any functional connectivity to transit — whether in terms of land-use composition, means of station access, or site design.’” Renne even goes so far as to mention that “97% of rail stations in the USA would be underdeveloped or in other words — a TAD.”
Renne’s definition for TADs and TODs may remind us of many places in this metro, such as many areas in Forest Grove, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tualatin, Tigard, Sherwood, and Lake Oswego, among other cities, in the case for TADs, and the Orenco, Elmonica, Beaverton, and Convention Center Stations to reference just the few that were mentioned by Dill in the case for TODs. But by no coincidence, notice that the amount of TADs and their relative geographic areas significantly exceed that of TODs. The lack of TODs and rather the relatively disproportionate amount of TADs in the metro are in tandem hurting aggregate transit ridership, including the use of micro-mobility particularly at last-mile junctures.
One option could be for planners to work on shifting the characteristics of station precincts from the TAD- to the TOD-side of the TAD-TOD spectrum, as described by Renne. This would entail redeveloping around existing TAD-like station areas, rather than developing greenfields for new TOD-like station areas — the former would also be much more cost-effective and equitable than the latter. Hess and Lombardi mention “five major impediments to TOD in inner cities,” which generally are the private sector disinterest to locate and invest in such areas, the absence of low-income individuals’ demand for such developments, competitive disadvantage, prejudice (which may include racism and classism in this context), and financing limitations. Hess and Lombardi mention further that “on the subject of local economic and market conditions, note that transit investments redistribute growth (instead of generating it) and that there must be growth to redistribute for development to occur.”
Therefore, redevelopment around existing TADs could include dense mixed-use residential with a range of market-rate and affordable housing for rent and homeownership from 30% of the area median income (AMI) to 80% of the AMI to respectively handle projected growth, with a project financing plan that has a longer time horizon for a reasonable and competitive fixed interest rate that serves as an incentive to developers. This could help with the financing limitations for developers and public agencies and the issues of affordability for low-income individuals. This could then in turn help with issues of prejudice and exclusivity regarding who is actually being served by and benefitting from such transitioning TADs.
Furthermore, such redevelopment could first take place around existing TADs that are closest to their respective central cities’ services, and also giving priority to the largest central cities and their associated TADs in closest proximity. This could help to spur private sector interest to locate and invest in these areas, given the prospective rewards from the capitalization effects of speculative redevelopment, which would in turn induce the prospects for competitive advantage from place to place. This could also help to further increase the demand for transit among choice and dependent riders who already live and will prospectively live in these transitioning TADs.
Equitably and efficiently transitioning areas from TAD- to TOD-like environments will be paramount to increasing non-driving modal share; inducing compactness, mixed-use, and modal connectivity; realizing sustainable development practices; and handling population and economic growth projections. The dominating presence of TADs over TODs illustrates the under-development of our cities and their surrounding areas within the metro.
By Asif Haque
Peer-reviewed literature
Renne, John L. (2009). From transit-adjacent to transit-oriented development. Local Environment. 14(1), 1-15.
Dill, J. (2008). Transit use at transit-oriented developments in Portland, Oregon, area. Transportation Research Record, 2063(1), 159-167.
Hess, D. B., & Lombardi, P. A. (2004). Policy support for and barriers to transit-oriented development in the inner city: Literature review. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1887(1), 26-33.
I would love to see TODs and TADs come back to the spotlight, they held such potential in my mind about 10 years ago, and have since seemed to have faded from plans. During my time in Austin, I lived close to several of the rail line's stops. In the case of the MLK station, initial development centered on office space for nonprofits and housing via duplexes, which were market rate, if I remember correctly. As Austin grew, new housing was built, but with a luxury clientele in mind. Although the single rail line doesn't serve a lot of people, it basically connects central east Austin to the tech campuses in north Austin, which meant that much of the ridership was affluent. Although affordable housing was built across MLK Blvd, a 4 lane busy highway similar to Portland's Cesar Chavez but worse, immediate access to the station was unafforable. Given the location of the station, it was also inaccessible. The station was built next between a creek with no bridges, and one could reach only reach it through the busy highway, or a single local street to a semi-hidden single family housing neighborhood. It wasn't until an urban trail was built to connect across the creek that the station became more accessible by walking and biking to the rest of the neighborhood, but by then the TOD had developed into an exclusive, prohibitively expensive neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteIn any future TODs and TADs, affordability and accessibility need to be built into the design. Exclusive, quasi-gated communities don't really help.