Traffic congestion is a popular topic of conversation and too often a point of major frustration for people living in major metro areas such as greater Atlanta.
With population in the Atlanta region expected to increase by nearly 2.3 million to more than 6 million in the next 25 years, and with the number and length of vehicle trips rising, we must actively connect land use decisions to what certainly will be an unprecedented level of transportation system planning and management.
The Atlanta area will need more transportation improvements over the next 25 years than the funds we have available for such projects. Simply building more roads and expanding existing ones will not solve our congestion problems. Critically important components to the solution include integrating transportation investment with appropriate land use, creating walkable communities and expanding the use of transit. Peoples choices of travel are highly dependent on development patterns that can make it easy or difficult to use various forms of transportation. Car use for non-work destinations now account for 73% of all trips.
To see if the region could achieve better transportation performances through smarter growth decisions, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Quality Task Force retained experts to model two different growth scenarios for the region of 2030.
It is obvious that land use greatly impacts the performance of our transportation system. This is one of the major reasons why the Livable Communities Coalition advocates for greater densities in the area’s centers and transportation corridors. Creating critical masses of housing (7 units per acre or more) and employment (125 employees per acre or more) helps to create feasible places where walking and transit work well as options to driving cars.
Development that is designed with transit in mind is referred to as Transit Oriented Development (TOD). As mentioned in Transit Villages in the 21st Century, the places that result from TOD are “compact, mixed use communities, centered around the transit station that by design invite residents, workers, and shoppers to drive their cars less and ride transit more.”
But what else can be done? There are other solutions to transportation problems that can promote quality growth. According to the ULI’s Making Smarth Growth Work, there are several recommended quality growth transportation efforts available to improve mobility and accessibility. These efforts include:
Invest in Transit
Maintain and improve transit in appropriate areas so that transportation is provided for those who cannot drive or do not have cars, those who prefer to ride transit, and those that choose to avoid crowded highways and arterials. Types of transit systems include:
Linkage among all forms of transportation systems must be attempted at several levels including the transportation agency level, community level, and project level.
Implement supportive parking strategies
Quality growth approaches to parking include the use of the following:
Maintaining and improving road capacity is critical for every metro area because of the heavy use of car travel and the investments provided for this infrastructure. Quality growth approaches to maintain and improve capacity include the following:
ULI states that the manner in which transportation facilities are financed and priced to users affects travel modes. The quality growth approach favors exposing transportation costs and subsidies so that users better understand the total cost of each mode of travel. The quality growth approach to transportation also encourages the practice of ”matching cost to use“ so that the timing of payments is closely related to the type of travel mode. Highway toll collection is an example of matching cost to use.
The Livable Communities Coalition supports a balanced approach to transportation and a greater emphasis on matching transportation investment with land use.
For further information visit this link on the site Surface Transportation Policy and the transportation section on Smart Growth America.
We have included the case study by Professor Arthur C. Nelson of the Georgia Institute of Technology, titled A Tale of Two Cities: Portland, Oregon and Atlanta, Georgia, From Smart Growth America’s brochure, Americans Want Smarter Growth Here’s how to get there.
Housing Parks Water Density Debate