From: fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Taxes, Development, and Transit
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:32:26 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz (College Eight)
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


In article <pd9d8as@sgi.sgi.com> jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon) writes:
>In article <17s63kINNctq@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven) writes:
>> 
>> The difference, I think, is that I feel strongly that we
>> *must* start planning high-density development around transit, and
>> thus I am willing to see a little inefficiency in the transit if
>> eventually we're going to get decent usage around it.  
 
>We need this sort of stuff (high density development) in planning
>before a lot of money spent on transit makes sense.  
 
In other words, you are saying that we need to have high density 
*before* we have transit.   Whereas I am saying that transit is 
necessary to create the high density development in the first place.
 
People need to get to development, either by transit or by car.  If 
you build development *without* transit, you're going to have to 
provide a parking space for everyone who gets there.  Parking lots are 
so much cheaper than parking garages that garages simply are more 
expensive than buying twice as much land for the lots.  Boom! -- low 
density.  Only by providing the transit first can this be avoided.

You are afraid of "white elephants" -- large, unused transit systems.
Given that you seem to be most interested in the Santa Clara light rail
system, this is understandable.  But large unused transit systems can
be "retrofitted" with high-density development around them.  This is
what is happening to BART now, with high-density developments around
suburban stations like El Cerrito Del Norte, Fruitvale, and some
others.  Moreover, they can be retrofitted by the *private* sector,
because the transit system makes it desirable *economically* to build
high- density development around it.  This is inhibited a lot of times
by NIMBY suburban zoning regulations since suburban cities are
controlled by small homeowners who want to "preserve their
neighborhoods".

But it is impossible to induce developers to build high-density
development without any means of transportation to that development.
It simply isn't economical for them; they will lose money, and either
build low-density development if zoning regulations allow, apply for a
zoning variance, or simply sit and wait until they can buy a new city
council.

Santa Clara's 13% farebox recovery is definitely too low, and this is
unfortunate.  But it is not necessary for SCCTD to make a profit.
SCCTD's purpose is to provide transportation services to the community,
not to make money off of transportation.  Providing the infrastructure
that allows high-density development to exist is precisely what SCCTD
should be doing.  It is also, however, incumbent on them and on the
cities through which SCCTD lines will run to zone correctly to allow
and encourage that kind of development.

>The worst thing 
>we could do would be to raise the sales tax and build a big transit 
>system that then only gets 13% of operating costs from fares, because 
>little or no development was built around it.  We have to try to ensure 
>that we don't build white elephants.  The current plan doesn't.

I agree that we have to ensure that "we don't build white elephants,"
but strange as it may seem the time for doing this is *not* necessarily
before the transit is built.  Transit *allows* high density development
to be built.  Certainly the planning of routes should encourage transit
in locations that already will provide some amount of ridership (such
as downtown San Jose), but the way you ensure ridership is to build
development around the transit afterwards that is dependent on it.

>I would add that the real need is to build housing, shops, and industry 
>with regard to serving it via transit.

Yes.  If this were a central planning economy, you'd build the housing,
shops, industry, and transit all at the same time.  (Central planning
economies, of course, never seem to work out correctly.) It's not, so
something has to come first.  It's not likely that a private
entrepreneur is going to build a building in the expectation that SCCTD
will someday bring a light rail line there.

>Vancouver, BC (bc.transportation again, Aaron)

You know, Vancouver is *not* the transportation paradise that's been
pictured here.  Buses are slow and mixed with very heavy automobile
traffic on arterial roads.  Bus frequency is good in Vancouver city
proper but is not so hot in the suburbs, particularly the suburbs most
comparable to our suburbs in the Bay Area: Surrey, Delta, Coquitlam.

> has a lot of relatively low density neighborhoods, yet
>the transit service through them is frequent and good. 
 
Vancouver proper has no low-density neighborhoods comparable to those
in Santa Clara County, and even that bus service isn't all that
frequent and certainly isn't fast.  Out in Vancouver's own outer
suburbs transit is barely there.  (And there are freeways and all the
rest of it.  SkyTrain's end station, Scott Road in Surrey, is a lot
like Daly City BART station; people drive there and take the train the
rest of the way.  It's in the median of a freeway.) I'd say BC Transit
in Surrey and Delta and the like is about comparable to SamTrans.

 =Aaron=
 
-- 
Aaron Priven, fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu
  Bring in the workers, and bring up the rails;
  We're gonna lay down the tracks, and tear up the trails. 
  Open her heart, let the life-blood flow,
  Gotta get on our way 'cause we're movin' too slow.
    -- Gordon Lightfoot, "Canadian Railroad Trilogy"