Research at the University of California Transportation Center
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Research at the University of California Transportation Center SPRING 1999 NUMBER 14 CONTENTS A CCESS No. 14 Spring 1999 2 Middle Age Sprawl: BART and Urban Development BY JOHN LANDIS AND ROBERT CERVERO 16 Access to Choice BY JONATHAN LEVINE 20 Splitting the Ties: The Privatization of British Rail BY JOSE´ A. GOMEZ´ -IBAÑEZ´ 26 Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear BY THEODORE E. COHN 32 Recent Papers in Print 41 THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Gas Tax Dilemma BY MARY HILL, BRIAN TAYLOR, AND MARTIN WACHS The University of California Transportation Center, founded in 1988, facilitates research, education, and public service for the entire UC system. Activities have centered on the Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Santa Barbara campuses. University of California Transportation Center 108 Naval Architecture Building Berkeley, CA 94720–1720 Tel: 510-643-5454 Fax: 510-643-5456 [email protected] http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~uctc Copyright © 1999 The Regents of the University of California Authors of papers reporting on UCTC research are solely responsible for their content. This research was sponsored by the US Department of Transportation and the California Department of Transportation, neither of which is liable for its content or use. Front Cover: Iron Oxide Magnified (2500X). Courtesy General Motors Research and Development Center. EDITORIAL The Land Use/Transportation Connection (cont’d) ACK IN THE 1950S and 1960S, a basic aim for the newly a higher level of region-wide accessibility. The additional proposed BART system was to curb urban sprawl. The accessibility at BART stations was but a small increment and Btrick was to reinforce major metropolitan centers and hence largely inconsequential. create new suburban subcenters. Because land adjacent to (2) In the absence of numerous transit riders living or BART’s station sites would be highly accessible, its planners working at stations, these sites are less attractive to real-estate expected they’d be powerful magnets attracting offices, shops, investors than are dispersed and spacious sites readily acces- and high-density housing. Those concentrations would make sible by automobile. for culturally enriched residential life and a more viable local (3) Unlike Metro’s complex network of intracity lines, economy. In turn, they’d attract riders to BART and thus help BART is essentially a suburban commuter railroad with two reduce traffic congestion. main lines reaching to outlying stations. Those stations are Our mid-’70s assessments of promised land use effects largely surrounded by paved lots offering free parking and were pessimistic, but probably premature, because land use occupying much of the adjacent land. changes are slow to show up. Now, some two decades later, it (4) As Jonathan Levine explains in his accompanying is possible to assess BART’s influence on Bay Area develop- article, so long as land use regulations continue to limit ment with greater precision and confidence. locational choice for families and businesses, the land market John Landis and Robert Cervero have conducted a new can’t respond to induce desired urban and travel patterns. series of land use studies around BART lines and stations, and Suburban centers along Washington Metro’s lines are they summarize their findings here. Their conclusions confirm direct products of active engagement by local governments those of the earlier assessment: Downtown San Francisco’s collaborating with private land developers. Together, they office employment has indeed expanded dramatically near changed land use regulations, exploited urban-redevelopment BART stations, but there has been only modest development options, created joint-development enterprises, and forged tax around other stations—whether urban, suburban, or exurban. and other financial incentives that encouraged high-density They find BART has had little influence on the location of either housing and high-rise office buildings. Metro thus became an population or employment. Indeed, growth rates were lowest in effective instrument for city-building. those suburban corridors served by BART, and suburban office In contrast, it seems that BART saw itself primarily as a construction favored places that lack BART service. railroad rather than as an agent of urban development. So it Patronage has also fallen short of expectations. Initial fore- didn’t actively work with local governments to change the casts expected 258,500 daily riders in 1975. Now, 24 years later zoning, or with real-estate developers and financial institutions and after a 30 percent increase in population, there may not yet to build at stations. The absence of intensive suburban centers be even that many riders on the original lines. then translated into too few riders. In turn, BART’s low patron- Metropolitan areas around the country have been building age was little inducement to concentrated suburban develop- or extending rail systems and, with some notable exceptions, ment. In further turn, continued low density meant continued experiencing similarly disappointing patronage and urbaniza- low patronage. tion effects. One exception is Washington’s Metro, whose Our experience here suggests it’s not enough just to install Orange Line route into Virginia is now a rapidly urbanizing rail transit. It should now be apparent that we can’t rely on corridor with a series of new, high-density subcenters trains alone to restructure the land market so that it sponta- surrounding stations. Although BART is several years older, neously induces desired urban forms or attracts sufficient nothing resembling such dense concentrations has emerged riders. Once again, events have exposed the intrinsic interde- near its suburban stations (see photos on page 12). pendencies between land use and transportation, showing that Four explanations may account for the differences. we can’t treat the one without the other. (1) At the outset, more auto ownership and an extensive network of highways and freeways endowed the Bay Area with Melvin M. Webber MIDDLE AGE SPRAWL: BART and Urban Development BY JOHN LANDIS AND ROBERT CERVERO ART was the first American rail rapid transit system voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties. to be built in modern times, and its arrival was If, as many city planners and transit advocates believe, transit greeted with worldwide attention. BART is famous. investments like BART can substantially alter metropolitan devel- BIts fame is attached to its favorable image as the opment patterns, then transit’s role as “growth shaper” should be answer to the problems of the modern American metropolis. explicitly considered when making transit investment decisions. And the extent to which it has succeeded, or failed, to live up to If, on the other hand, transit’s effects on growth and urban form expectations is an important lesson for other cities wanting to are only marginal, then decisions regarding transit investments emulate it. should be primarily made either to relieve congestion or to BART is now middle-aged and certainly widely recognized enhance accessibility. as a part of the San Francisco Bay Area, but is it an important part? We wish here to summarize the results of a series of Do people in the Bay Area live and work in different locations and inquiries into BART’s effects on Bay Area growth and urban form, in different ways than they would if BART were not there? Can we undertaken as part of the BART@20 project. (Similar studies point to housing projects, office buildings, shopping centers, or were undertaken in the mid-1970s as part of the initial BART public buildings that would not have been built, or neighbor- Impact Study.) We review BART planners’ initial expectations hoods that would not have been revitalized but for BART’s regarding the system’s effects on the Bay Area and ask how presence? Does BART provide more people with more accessi- transit investments influence urban development. We explore bility to economic and social opportunities than they would BART’s effects on regional population and employment patterns, otherwise enjoy? Would the Bay Area without BART be the same residential and office-construction activity near BART stations, place it is today? the quality of BART’s influence on land use change and redevel- The answers to these questions may be more important opment, and BART’s effects on home prices, office rents, patron- today than in 1962, when BART’s construction was approved by age, and retail sales volume. John Landis and Robert Cervero are professors of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1850 ([email protected] and [email protected]). Research assistants on the BART@20 and related projects were Carlos Castellanos, Bruce Fukuji, Wicaksono Sarosa, Will Huang, Subro Guhathakurta, David Loutsenheiser, Sourev Sen, and Ming Zhang. A C C E S S 2 INITIAL EXPECTATIONS AND PROCESSES OF CHANGE Third, BART would serve as a catalyst promoting redevelop- Initial Expectations ment and reinvestment in older areas of Oakland, Berkeley, and The politicians, planners, and business and civic leaders who Richmond, while promoting higher-density residential and advocated building BART in the 1950s and 1960s did so expect- mixed-use development in growing suburban jurisdictions. ing that BART would affect Bay Area development patterns in BART’s success in meeting this last objective would depend on three related ways. First and foremost, BART would relieve supportive land use