Transportation Oriented Development
Alliance Position:
The Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance supports land use policies that encourage higher density, mixed use development near major intersecting transportation corridors and public transit hubs to maximize past and future transportation investments and better focus projected population and employment growth.
Background:
It is fashionable today to promote the notion that land use should dictate transportation policy and that transit-oriented development is the ultimate solution to transportation and land use issues.
Organizations like the Sierra Club, Smart Growthers and their followers have waged an aggressive, multi-year, well-financed, full-court press to convince elected officials that land use policy changes can largely eliminate the need for new transportation infrastructure – with the possible exception of rail extensions and buses.
In fact, far from precluding the need for transportation investments, planners have long recognized that a well-articulated transportation structure of roads, bridges and public transit is key to better mobility and land use.
“The urban region can be looked at as a group of land use cells, defined by the transportation network….
“Radial freeway interchanges and rapid transit stops (planned to be in place by 2000)… would serve as ‘nodes’ or intensive centers of commercial-office-industrial activity… Two additional beltways are proposed. By allowing circumferential freeway interchanges to connect only with radial freeways, flexibility of movement is promoted and the wedges and corridor (open space protection) concept is strengthened.”
“Radial freeway interchanges and rapid transit stops (planned to be in place by 2000)… would serve as ‘nodes’ or intensive centers of commercial-office-industrial activity… Two additional beltways are proposed. By allowing circumferential freeway interchanges to connect only with radial freeways, flexibility of movement is promoted and the wedges and corridor (open space protection) concept is strengthened.”
The Regional Development Guide 1966-2000
National Capital Regional Planning Commission, June 1966
Transit-Oriented Development Only Partial Solution:
The American Public Transportation Association defines transit-oriented development as compact, mixed use development near new or existing public transportation infrastructure that serves housing, transportation and neighborhood goals. Its pedestrian-oriented design encourages residents and workers to drive their cars less and ride mass transit more. The Alliance has always supported land use policies to maximize growth around public transit infrastructure, but recognizes that such focus is not enough given existing and future settlement patterns that are not oriented towards or focused around public transit and that 80-90% of all daily trips are by automobile.
Transit oriented development alone is not a cure for all of traffic congestion.
To learn more about Transportation Oriented Development, click on the links below:
Land Use Reality
Transportation Reality
The Bottom Line