Ryan Griffin-Stegink, MPC
Panelists respond to an audience question at MPC's latest roundtable about bus rapid transit.
Chicago is investing millions of dollars in improved public transportation service on Ashland Avenue, with a new bus rapid transit (BRT) line scheduled to open from 31st Street to Cortland Street by 2015. Better transit service alone may result in transit-oriented development (TOD), but public sector support is necessary to ensure new construction along the corridor.
The Metropolitan Planning Council’s most recent roundtable, BRT: Moving People, Driving Development, set out to discuss what approaches are most effective in spurring development, and how that development can be as equitable as possible. A group of esteemed panelists, including Melinda Pollack of Enterprise Community Partners, and Walter Hook and Annie Weinstock of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), shared their knowledge. Each emphasized the potential for BRT to spur new development in neighborhoods surrounding stations, but noted that the places that have been most successful in encouraging construction have had significant support from the public sector.
MPC has, for several years, been the Chicago region’s most prominent advocate of BRT service and has been successful in working with the city to develop a BRT plan that is appreciated by the city’s residents. Peter Skosey, MPC Executive Vice President, noted that MPC’s work is now evolving to encompass TOD. Bringing more development to areas around transit is an essential way to encourage more people to use public transportation as a part of their daily commutes, thereby reducing automobile vehicle miles traveled and cutting down on pollution. Those new riders also make transit systems more effective, since a bus operating at half capacity is less efficient than one that is full.
Skosey unveiled MPC’s new Ashland Avenue BRT mapping tool for the first time at the roundtable. The interactive tool provides developers, community residents and government a new way to explore information about the Ashland Avenue corridor. The tool offers information about zoning, land use and community assets, and also incorporates MPC-calculated data on the potential for new development at existing sites, both under current floor-area ratio (FAR) standards, and under the City of Chicago’s proposed TOD ordinance.
With regulatory reforms in the works for Chicago, developers are likely to be more inclined to build in transit-adjacent areas, said Weinstock. Noting the results of ITDP’s new study, More Development for Your Transit Dollar (out publicly Sept. 28), Weinstock emphasized that BRT has been demonstrated to result in billions of dollars of development in other regions that have built new lines, from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. She argued, however, that much of that development was made possible not only by the investment in improved transportation, but also in the willingness of cities to alter the way they regulate new construction and change the way they invest their discretionary infrastructure dollars.
Just getting new development near transit is only half of the equation, Hook said. New TOD projects must be friendly to pedestrians, provide a mix of uses and offer easy access to transit—or they will miss out on the opportunity to foster transit-supportive environments. ITDP’s new TOD Standard, a report presented by Hook during the roundtable, provides an empirical method by which to measure the degree to which new development is adapted to the needs of transit areas.
MPC has been working for decades to ensure that the Chicago region strives for more equitable development that strives for improved housing and transportation for all of the area’s inhabitants. As such, while plenty of development near the city’s new BRT lines is an exciting prospect, it is essential to ensure that new construction responds to the needs of people across the income spectrum.
Investments in TOD loan funds in cities like Denver have produced hundreds of affordable housing units near transit, Pollack noted. Enterprise’s new study compares outcomes across metropolitan areas as diverse as Atlanta and the Bay Area. Pollack said that the report shows that new financing tools can make affordable housing a major component of development near transit—but only if there is strong civic and public sector support for such a program. A similar fund in Chicago’s South Suburbs that MPC helped created with the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association is currently negotiating with private partners to build several new housing projects.
BRT in Chicago provides a unique opportunity to develop in new areas of the city. MPC’s roundtable panelists clearly showed that that development is likely to be most successful with the strong support of the public sector, combined with good urban design and financing tools that emphasize equity.
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