Ely Portillo at the Charlotte Observer wrote a great piece on how light rail in the city has not gotten people out of the cars yet. This is the pitfall of transit-oriented development. The idea that people will give up their cars because they live near the transit system. As shown in Charlotte, this is not the case. The demand for parking is just as high for those living in TOD as it is in the suburbs of the city. This is likely the case in most cities with light rail that does not effectively cover a majority of the city. NYC has an extensive subway and tolls people that drive into the city. Even then, people still drive.
What adds to TOD’s difficulty is that as you build these large parking structures, they last for many, many years, and encourage residents to continue using cars for a long time.
Frankly put, transportation is not so much an infrastructure issue as it is a behavioral issue. To encourage people to embrace transit and get them out of cars, you have to speak to people like those moms who take their three kids to swim practice – providing them a car-free option that is just as convenient as the single occupancy vehicle (SOV). You have to talk to the late-night worker at the restaurant that taking a bus or a train (if he/she lives in a system that runs 24 hours) is just a good as a SOV. You can change the behavior partially through tolling/congestion pricing, but the mom and the late-night worker will consciously decide to pay the price because using a SOV to get from point A to B is easiest.
This will be difficult to break in a society dominated by suburbia and SOV driving like the United States is.
Leave a Reply