transit planning Archives - Transportation For America

King County’s blueprint for better bus speed and reliability

Transit rider at King County Metro bus stop

The Seattle area’s busiest transit agency released their “playbook” for better transit through smart incremental improvements and community partnerships. Focusing on bus speed and reliability, this guidebook is a valuable resource for any transit agency looking to build trust with riders.

In King County, WA (Seattle and its surroundings), transit demand is booming. The region has made forward-thinking investment and policy decisions that support smart development decisions, allowing them to maintain a high quality of life amid rapid growth. They’ve made a serious commitment to transit—not only through expansion, but through bolstering existing services—and built efficient infrastructure while incentivizing ridership. As a result, King County has grown a strong transit user base, reduced single-occupancy driving downtown, and cultivated stronger and healthier communities.

So when their busiest transit agency—King County Metro—released their comprehensive Bus Speed and Reliability Guidelines and Strategies in August, they showed the world what they call their “playbook” of operational tools and capital projects that save riders time and communities money. At a time when building public trust in transit is essential, it’s an excellent guide to the infrastructure and services that make transit trustworthy.

King County Metro (or just Metro) was one of America’s ten most-ridden transit agencies in 2019, and the busiest not to operate any rail services. They achieved this high ridership through smart comprehensive planning (and funding!) for services that run to the places where people actually go. They’re the core provider of local buses in King County, with a strong network of frequent routes in dense core neighborhoods, rapid routes that take riders between communities, and freeway express routes that run on dedicated lanes. Together with the regional agency Sound Transit, as well as agencies in neighboring Pierce and Snohomish Counties, Metro is a national leader in smart transportation planning.

What strategies does the report propose?

In the report, Metro details the incremental infrastructure strategies they implemented to gradually improve street-level bus systems. They provide design initiatives that help buses skip past traffic, including changes to street and intersection design, bus stops and routing, traffic flow alterations, and signaling improvements. The advantages and costs of each are outlined in a digestible format, along with guidelines and extensive examples from the region.

Street design improvements involve physical changes to the street itself, prioritizing buses in areas where cars often get in the way. Metro proposes dedicated bus lanes and short bypass lanes as projects where buses get their own space. Relatedly, changes to road channelization—that is, the flow of traffic, particularly approaching intersections and the size and design of turns—can have a tremendous impact on bus speed.

Metro also took a look at bus stop planning. The location and design of bus stops can inhibit the stopping and boarding process, slowing down the ride. The report explains how lengthening bus stops—to accommodate more than one bus at a stop at the same time—makes boarding quicker and more convenient for riders, as well as how lengthening stops can be integrated with other design strategies like bulb-outs that slow traffic and enhance pedestrian crossings. Thoughtful bus routes are integrated with these stops and avoid unnecessary turns and choke points.

King County metro bus at an intersection with a crosswalk and painted bike lane — *Flickr photo by* *Oran Viriyincy*

Changing traffic control through regulations and signaling is another strategy. Turn restrictions can work alone or go hand-in-hand with street design improvements to move buses faster through intersections, and strategically altering or removing parking frees up lane space and makes it easier for buses to access stops along a sidewalk. Metro explains a few ways that reprogramming traffic signals can also help. The timing of green lights on a street can be adjusted to match the pace of a bus as opposed to car traffic. And technology allows Metro buses to directly change signals, so buses don’t need to wait at red lights or behind cars at intersections.

With a roadmap for physical design in place, Metro also plans to bring communities to the table. Metro operates in many cities throughout King County. The roles of Metro and the appropriate jurisdiction are included in the report alongside key tasks for the planning, design and implementation, and performance management steps for both Metro- and jurisdiction-led projects. Metro lays out several principles for a general cooperation process and timeline, making the report an excellent starting point for other agencies to reference in planning their own partnerships.

“It’s important to build trust and a great working relationship with city staff,” says Irin Limargo, capital planning supervisor at King County Metro. “This effort can start with projects that offer a win/win for transit and traffic, then try to move to higher transit priority treatments.”

Why is it important?

King County may be among the first to publish such a report, but other transit agencies looking to increase reliability and ridership should take notice. Although its examples are centered around the Seattle region, its practices are applicable anywhere.

“In our observation, improvements implemented in Downtown Seattle, even if providing just a few seconds of delay-reduction per trip, can rack up thousands of operating hours savings each year due to the large number of trips operating through that area. That said, our suburban and smaller city partners are equally important because transit operates as a system and routes cross city boundaries,” says Limargo.

The report offers tried-and-true strategies that go hand-in-hand with the core principles of smart transportation policy, safety, and accessibility. Coordination is a persistent theme in this report, and it goes beyond the six jurisdictions that worked together in its publishing. Their incremental approach gives new life to existing infrastructure and makes it more useful and long-lasting than a continued dedication to unsustainable driving patterns. It prioritizes safety by proposing improvements that intentionally slow down or decrease the influence of cars in a given area, and it makes pedestrian and transit infrastructure more publicly visible than it is today. And improving speed and reliability through small improvements can help riders reach more places more consistently.

Special thanks to Peter Heffernan, government relations administrator at King County, for getting us at T4A in touch with Irin Limargo.

How zoning keeps the number of low-emission neighborhoods artificially low

Many Americans want to live in walkable neighborhoods that are served by rapid public transportation. But these neighborhoods are few and far between and incredibly expensive to live in. That’s because in many cities and towns, building walkable neighborhoods is illegal, putting a premium on the few dense communities that exist.

A neighborhood in San Diego.

The following blog is adapted from an excerpt of Smart Growth America and Transportation for America’s recent report, Driving Down Emissions, which explores how changing transportation policy and land use patterns are key to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

It may appear that the United States’ typical car-oriented suburbs and exurbs that we’ve been building for the last 60-plus years—where often the only way residents can access what they need is by car—is the most in-demand style of neighborhood.

This isn’t true. For the past few decades, the demand for compact and walkable neighborhoods connected to jobs and services by transit has skyrocketed, but the housing market hasn’t kept pace. That’s because local zoning rules often make building more of these types of neighborhoods illegal.

In 2017, 62 percent of Americans reported that living near transit was important in choosing their home, and 54 percent cited their desire to live near bike lanes and paths, as found in the National Association of Realtors’ Community Preference Survey. And despite numerous news stories warning of a mass departure of residents from U.S. cities due to COVID-19, data has shown the opposite: Zillow’s research showed that, during the pandemic, “suburban housing markets have not strengthened at a disproportionately rapid pace compared to urban markets.” Even during an unprecedented pandemic, large numbers of people are not fleeing the cities for the suburbs, and cities will endure.

Millions more Americans want to live in compact, transit-connected communities than can find or afford a home in one. And those who do pay a premium to be there. Yet in many towns and cities, local zoning regulations artificially constrict the number of these communities that can exist. By limiting how densely housing can be constructed or requiring minimum lot sizes, zoning interferes and prevents the market from meeting the demand for walkable, transit-served communities. In fact, it’s illegal to build anything except single-family detached houses on roughly 75 percent of land in most cities—which might explain why in the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., walkable neighborhoods account for between 0.04 percent and 1.2 percent of land area.

The consequences of making housing like duplexes or multi-unit apartment buildings illegal are severe. For one, the artificial dearth of compact, walkable neighborhoods dramatically increases property values in these types of communities that already exist—often to levels that make them unaffordable to those who could benefit from them the most. This trend has pushed low-income people out of compact cities to more affordable suburbs, where fewer transportation options fail to thoroughly connect them to jobs and services. Their transportation costs immediately go up, sometimes wiping out the gains of the more affordable housing. One study found that residents in low-income suburban neighborhoods with some transit access can reach just 4 percent of metro area jobs within a 45-minute commute. This means many people without access to a car can’t reach most jobs, further trapping them in a cycle of poverty.

In addition, it’s an immense challenge to efficiently serve a neighborhood of only single-family homes by transit. This fact, combined with the way that destinations spread farther apart, trips become longer or more frequent, and roads become wider and less safe to walk along or cross, results in more greenhouse gas emissions. Driving contributes the majority of transportation sector emissions in the United States, making transportation the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions and the only sector of the economy where emissions are rising, not decreasing.

One solution? Permit the construction of more housing and neighborhoods that people want by reforming zoning rules to allow more homes, and more types and sizes of homes. More housing near transit and communities where people can live, work and play is needed to meet the demand and reduce the price pressure.

Many cities are already updating their zoning to help build these walkable neighborhoods. Consider this:

In San Diego, where housing prices have gone up 70 percent in the last six years, the mayor is seeking to address this issue by making it easier to build more housing near transit.
Minneapolis also passed a comprehensive plan in 2018 that allowed duplexes and other types of housing citywide and eliminated parking requirements, which together could have a substantial impact on transportation emissions in the region.
South Bend, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s former domain, eliminated parking requirements citywide, halting the practice of requiring developers to build expensive extra new parking that residents often don’t want or need but which ends up being rolled into the cost of a new home or apartment.
In Portland, OR, the city recently moved to allow up to six homes on almost any residential lot.

In these cities, anyone is free to continue building single-family homes in almost any neighborhood, but now more home types are legal. These changes will encourage compact urban development and make it more affordable to live in these cities, mitigating future sprawl and the additional driving it would cause.

However, local zoning regulations don’t exist in a vacuum: many zoning decisions are made in response to federal incentives. Federal transportation policy’s disproportionate investment in highways encourages many local governments to double down on sprawling land use patterns that best accommodate the high speed roads their state is building everywhere, pushing destinations further and further apart.

Federal transportation policy can help reverse this trend by allocating funding to programs that increase access to jobs and services the most, regardless of mode—as is the case in the INVEST Act, the surface transportation bill passed by the House this past summer. The federal government can also commit to funding public transit and highways equally.

Cities and towns should reform their zoning so that everybody who wants to can live in a walkable neighborhood connected to jobs and services by transit. Allowing the market to meet the demand for more homes in places that naturally come with lower emissions is a powerful climate change strategy. We’ll never reduce our carbon emissions, dismantle barriers to opportunities (particularly those faced by people of color), or rebuild our economy if we don’t make it easier and more affordable to live in great places.

Ongoing training academy brings together key leaders from three ambitious regions

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be reuniting in Indianapolis this week to continue the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

(This is a slightly updated version of the post we published in conjunction with the first workshop in Raleigh in early March that kicked off the Academy. – Ed.)

Similarly sized regions of 1 million-plus, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Raleigh all have notable plans to expand their transportation systems with additional bus rapid transit or rail service. In partnership with TransitCenter, T4America has created a new yearlong academy for a select group of key leaders from each region that was selected to participate. The academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) will be in Indianapolis on Thursday and Friday this week for the second of three two-day workshops with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities are hosting an academy workshop, focusing on the particular specifics of that city while also learning valuable lessons that are applicable back home. The participants will also take a trip together to a fourth region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Would you like to follow along and hear some of the great insights participants are picking up in this week’s Indianapolis workshop? Follow @t4america, @TransitCtr and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy on Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

The diverse group of members, assembled by each region’s team lead, recognizes the fact that making any big plan to invest in a new transit line or system requires buy-in from more than just a mayor and/or a few citizen groups. There has to be a shared vision with support from a wide range of civic players. In some regions, there might be a huge university presence. In others, it might be a big medical institution that anchors the local economy.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 3

In Indianapolis, the host of this week’s workshop, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including higher education, healthcare and IT industries) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

“Supported by a strong business community, an ambitious heartland city wins the ability to let citizens decide their own transportation future.” Read our detailed “can-do” profile of Indianapolis.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of the first workshop in March in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

Adjoining Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Wake County Commissioners, meanwhile, had not allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members replaced four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County. Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, who helped kick things off in the workshop this morning, has long supported a regional plan for transit.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employers is one of the few major metro regions lacking a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016.

In Nashville, local advocates and elected leaders are still smarting from the setback on last year’s effort to kick-start a bus rapid-transit network with a line that would have connected neighborhoods and major employment centers along an east-west route through the city.

Inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce chose transit as a top priority six years ago, second only to improving public education. Local leaders there, including the recently departed Mayor Karl Dean, wanted to get out in front of the issue, rather than waiting 10 years after gridlock has overtaken the booming region. The business community and the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization have both been a key part of crafting the plan to make bus rapid transit a reality in Nashville, and members of the MPO, the Chamber, a and several businesses are all represented in their academy group.

Along with TransitCenter, we’re excited to see what the year will bring for these 21 participants and the up-and-coming regions that they represent. We’re going to have much more on these three cities this year, so stay tuned.

New training academy brings together key leaders from three ambitious regions

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation gathered today in Raleigh, NC, to kick off the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

Sheila Ogle of Ogle Enterprises (Raleigh), left, Shane Douglas of Collier International (Nashville) and Juan Gonzalez of KeyBank Indiana (Indy) go through an exercise led by Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) where teams design a transit network for a fictional city with a set budget — one way to experience the real-life trade-offs that transit planners and cities have to make.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) are in Raleigh this week for a two-day workshop with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities will host an academy workshop, focusing on the particular specifics of that city while also learning valuable lessons that are applicable back home. The participants will also take a trip together to a fourth region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 3

In Indianapolis, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure that would raise revenue from changes to local income taxes — a challenging revenue mechanism to say the least.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including a booming healthcare industry) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families who think Chicago is too expensive and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of this week’s workshop in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

New grant program to support smart development around transit lines is open for business

Webinar info updated below: A program created in the 2012 transportation law to help communities plan for transit-oriented development is open for business — and T4America is ready to help your community win some of that grant funding.

Building structured parking, public amenities and pedestrian-safe streets are part of the public infrastructure needed for successful economic development around transit.

One of the few bright spots in MAP-21, the 2012 update of the federal transportation program, was the creation of a small pilot program of competitive grants for communities trying to support better development within their new transit corridors — one smart way to boost ridership and support local economic development. *Funds can also be used on projects that increase capacity on existing transit lines, but for the most part, these funds will support planning for new transit lines.

It’s a small program, but one that could have a huge impact in the recipient communities. The Federal Transit Administration announced late last week that they’re now accepting applications from transit agencies until November 3, for a total of almost $20 million in available funding (for the two years since MAP-21 passed).

(Speakers updated 9/23) With the FTA open to receive grant applications, T4America has organized an online session to explain the program, how it works, and what kind of applications FTA will be looking for. We’ll have Homer Carlisle, professional staff for the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee, John Hemplemann, Founding Partner of Cairncross & Hempelmann, as well as experts from Transportation for America to discuss this new program. Find out more information about this webinar taking place on Friday, September 26, and register today right here.

According to the notice from FTA, “the grants will fund comprehensive planning that supports economic development, ridership, multimodal connectivity and accessibility, increased transit access for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and mixed-use development near transit stations.”

This type of planning has been used successfully in transit corridors such as the Foothill Extension of the Gold Line which connected 11 small cities east of Los Angeles, the West Corridor that connects Denver with the suburban community of Lakewood, and the Green Line which connects Minneapolis to Saint Paul. As shown in these cases, planning for development along the entire corridor – rather than just one station area at a time –can attract private-sector interest as well as stronger community consensus by creating a complete picture of the development opportunities presented by the new transit line.

Rail and rapid bus lines often cross multiple jurisdictions, which can make coordinated planning of development at stations difficult. As an example, while most would agree some share of housing along such lines should be affordable to low-wage workers, what if none of the cities along the line choose to provide for it as part of new development at their station areas? What if one of the cities chooses not to allow walkable development at all around their new station, undermining the ridership potential of the entire line? Coordinated planning involving all of the jurisdictions along a corridor can help to address these issues at the front end, to capture the maximum development potential of the line.

FTA will focus on funding the kind of planning that would not occur without federal support. Grants will fund planning around an entire transit corridor, not just individual station areas, particularly corridors where there are significant challenges to transit-oriented planning, low levels of existing development, or limited local financial capacity.

Transit agencies that are building new transit systems or upgrading existing ones will be eligible to apply for new planning grants, in partnership with local land use agencies and the private sector, to help them efficiently locate jobs and housing near new transit stations, boosting ridership and increasing the amount of money gained back at the farebox.