Transit Oriented Development

I have to give Raleigh's planning dept credit - they have put on a great lecture series on topics related to growth. I attended the most recent one on Transit Oriented Development last week. The speakers were top notch and definitely had thought more about TOD than any of us ever could have. The first two speakers were excellent and got everyone excited about the possibilities. Imagine jumping on a train and going to town, having dinner, and taking the train home. No designated driver. Or take the train to work and instead of sitting behind the wheel and you could actually get something done.

By the time the third speaker was ready, everything had been said. There was nothing else to present. So he took the other side. Why wouldn't transit oriented development work in Raleigh? The key to understanding this is to actually understand the full concept of TOD. Park and ride is not TOD. Basically the concept is around mixed use - having offices, shopping and residential in clusters so that there isn't one main commute pattern. Ideally people are always going both ways instead of everyone going one way in the morning and the opposite way in the afternoon. That's my over-simplified explanation.

My calculus teacher in high school always used to complain about how they put in sidewalks. Around our campus the sidewalks were on the perimeter, but the people actually walked across the grass or in other cut-through areas. He would always say "watch where people walk and then pour the concrete." The same could be said of transit. Look at where people are going and try to make it more efficient with transit.

Now, RTP could actually be the best place to build up this type of transit since it is already a big destination and they are starting to develop more residential areas near the commercial stuff. Everything else is just so spread out. There are too many starting points and there really isn't one central destination. As soon as you put the word "transfer" in there, people aren't going to use the system.

I love to daydream about taking the train or even a bus if it were direct. But the cynical side of me says that people are too independent and married to their cars. Take Brier Creek, for example. That was built to be a walkable area. Do people walk? I doubt it. I was at Pier One the other day and a father and son were outside. The son wanted to walk down to another store about 100 yards away. The father said "I'm not walking all the way down there!"

So, after the third speaker had finished telling us why TOD wouldn't work in Raleigh, the reality of Raleigh's sprawl had hit me. There was a chance for redemption, however. During the Q&A they brought up the head honcho of TTA (Triangle Transit Authority). HE could tell us what was really going to happen for Raleigh in the future. I waited for him to speak up. When Director Silver finally asked him directly to comment, he rambled on about something. I don't even know what. But it wasn't anything about what the TTA actually does. I left very disappointed. I do hope that the actual people who do the work in the TTA know a lot more than their leader.