Transportation & Land Use – Page 3

A New Tool for Land Use and Transportation Planning

John Landis

Transportation planners have traditionally considered land use policy to be outside their purview and have generally accepted existing (or proposed) land use policies and patterns as a given. That attitude changed, however, with the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. For the first time, the law required planners to explicitly consider the effects of alternative land use policies on local land use patterns and thus on transportation system performance.

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Reviving Transit Corridors and Transit Riding

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

When parts of their freeway network were damaged by the recent earthquake, many Los Angelenos were forced to "take to the streets"-to drive on the numerous arterials and transit corridors that interlace the city. They discovered a forgotten commercial landscape of small retail establishments mixed with office and residential buildings, automobile dealerships, junkyards, parking lots, and vacant space. These corridors are not unique. They are typical urban landscapes that can be found in virtually all American cities. Prior to the construction of freeways they were the principal traffic and transit arteries of the city, and they still carry the largest share of transit traffic. Urban arterial corridors are the "in-between" spaces of the city. They connect centers with subcenters, and the latter with one another, in the multicentered urban expanse that is typical of the post-industrial American city. But these transit corridors have become unfriendly to transit riders.

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2018-02-07T22:27:36+00:00Categories: ACCESS 04, Spring 1994|Tags: Bike & Pedestrian Planning, Transit, Transportation & Land Use|

Great Streets: Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia

Allan B. Jacobs

Streets are more than public utilities, more than mere traffic conduits, more than the equivalent of water lines and sewers and electric cables, more than linear physical spaces that permit people and goods to get from here to there. To be sure, communication remains a major purpose, along with unfettered public access to property. These roles have received abundant attention, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century. Other roles have not.

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2018-02-07T23:57:01+00:00Categories: ACCESS 03, Fall 1993|Tags: Design‚ Development‚ and Housing, Transportation & Land Use|

Surviving in the Suburbs: Transit’s Untapped Frontier

Robert Cervero

Living in suburbia, owning a house, and watching the kids play on a green lawn was the American dream as early as the 1800s. At first, mass transit was crucial to suburban life, with streetcars and rail lines providing access to new residential areas outside of cities. After World War II, as automobiles became even more popular and the pace of suburbanization accelerated, the American dream expanded to include two cars in every garage. For the mass transportation industry, this spelled disaster.

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2018-02-09T22:53:49+00:00Categories: ACCESS 02, Spring 1993|Tags: Transit, Transportation & Land Use|