Skip Over The Broken Bridge
(Post 2 of 4 for Transit Oriented Development)
Hi Project Planning Green family! Today is our dual release day and ALSO, very exciting, we will start including our podcast transcripts at the bottom of our blogs so everyone can access it. In this post, we are going to discuss the existing state of transportation and as it is related to our topic- Transit Oriented Development or TOD.
Transportation costs in terms of time and finances has become a big part of everyone’s lives today. According to the study from Auto Insurance Center , it is estimated that the average commuter in the U.S. wastes 42 hours and $960 a year in traffic. Given the statistics is the average, the amount of time and money wasted would be higher if you were to live in one of the largest cities in the United States. For example, if you live in Washington D.C. you would waste an average of 82 hours in traffic a year and if you live in Los Angeles you would waste an average of 72 hours in traffic a year.
On the air quality front, the EPA statistics show that the transportation sector in the United States contributes significantly to smog, soot, and other air pollution to our neighborhoods.
According to the EPA, the transportation sector is responsible for:
- Over 55% of NOx total emissions inventory in the U.S.
- Less than 10% of VOCs emissions in the U.S.
- Less than 10% of PM2.5 and PM10 emissions in the U.S.
(NOTE: This value does not account for the substantial amount of PM that is formed in the atmosphere from gaseous mobile source emissions)
Besides the cost and air quality impacts, there are also significant impacts to health when people do not have an active lifestyle. Because of all these impacts and more, there is a lot of attention in planning focused on improving the existing transportation infrastructure, which is one of the reasons why there is so much attention on potential solutions like the TOD.
As we know, development will never stop and we need development to provide housing, economic activity, and keep up with new technologies and infrastructure. But developing our neighborhoods in the right way goes a long way in ensuring everyone has a healthy and productive life. A basics for having a healthy and productive life includes having clean air to breath in and not having to struggle with congestion every day.
As discussed previously, TOD has been implemented at a lot of cities worldwide already and has seen many successes. Next week let’s dig in and look more deeply on the pros and cons of TOD projects.
See everyone next week.
Project Planning Green
Resources
- Auto Insurance Center- Jammed: How Much Time & Money Does Traffic Congestion Waste: https://www.autoinsurancecenter.com/traffic-jammed.htm
- Environmental Protection Agency- Smog, Soot, and Other Air Pollution from Transportation
- https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/smog-soot-and-local-air-pollution
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention- Adult Obesity Facts: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Podcast Transcription
(00:15)
Hi everyone. Welcome to project planning Green’s podcast. It is October 13th and I’m Christine Lan, your host. I will actually be at Atlanta, Georgia for the she podcast live conference when this podcast is published and I’m super excited for it. I hope I will learn a lot at the podcasting conference and come back to bring in even better content and sound to everyone here, which is all of you guys, but let’s get started. This month’s topic is transit oriented development or TOD for short. Haven’t heard of it? Well, no worries! That is why we’re all here. After all, just keep listening.
(01:01)
So what’s TOD or transit oriented development is a type of development that is centered around quality transit hubs like rapid bus line stops and light rail stations. The idea is this, if we build a large proportion of our housing shopping and offices around transit hubs, then people wouldn’t have to drive as much because they can just take transit instead to travel to where they need to go. The goal is to build these housing and commercial development within walking distance of transit hubs, which means within a half mile radius of the transit hubs so that people can get to the stations without driving to make taking transit even easier. Many transit oriented development includes multi-modal access that are built into the development itself. This includes providing access to park bikes, scooters, and having a site walk around the building to facilitate pedestrian travel. With the inclusion of multi-modal access, it makes a task of getting to the transit stations much less dumping with the hope that people will have more active lifestyles as well on top of taking transit two places at the same time, taking cars off the roads, decreasing hunger mission, improving our air quality and reducing unnecessary lane use and at the same time and using other positive benefits for our communities.
(02:42)
The idea of transit oriented development really is not new. In fact, a lot of cities around the world are already built around. Transits enables people’s mobility and living in one of these many cities will pretty much allow you to go anywhere without your car. Some of these cities, inclu, Mexico city, Mexico, the city of Ottowa, England, Tario, Vancouver in British Columbia, New Jersey, nice States, and the city of San Francisco.
(03:15)
So even though the beginning of transit oriented development really depends on who you ask, people historically have always instinctively built around Trey routes, trails and water routes because the availability of trade really enhances people’s lives. And before cars came in the early half of the 20th century, there was only rail and mass transit available besides streetcars or horse drawn carriages. Naturally development often hasn’t traded around with transit hubs in the United States. Cars took over after the great depression and world war II in the 1930s in the 1940s the war in the great depression starve the railroads and mass transit of its financial sources. So the system at a time deteriorated over time because there was no money. The owner funded mass transit system created a space of opportunity for cars to take over. It first started with buses because personal cars were still expensive and the railroad systems worn developed well yet. But as time passes, cars got cheaper and the railway systems got better. In the 1920s to 1940s with federal investment, and in the 1950s Eisenhower became president and authorized the building of the interstate highway system, which made distance traveling so much easier for cars combined with personal cars. Flexibility is not a surprise that cars became the winning option. Well, no one had predicted was the congestion air quality impacts and consequences to people’s health, which is some of the reasons why we’re talking about building around transits again.
(05:10)
To dig just a little bit deeper, um, why we need to look at more transit oriented development. We need to look at the current impacts of our existing transportation system. Our lives in the United States. It is estimated that the average commuter ways is 42 hours and $960 a year in traffic, but that’s just the average. What this means is that most city duelers will be wasting much more time and money in traffic every year. To give some perspective to this. If you live in Washington D C you’re waste an average of 82 hours in traffic a year. If you live in Los Angeles, you always an average of 70 hours in traffic a year. What this means is that an average American, especially those that live in cities, can really benefit from a drastically improved transportation system on the air quality front. EPA statistics showed that the transportation sector in the U S contributions significantly to smog SU and other air pollution to our neighborhoods.
(06:25)
Just to paint the picture a little bit better for everyone, the transportation sector is responsible for 55% of the NOx or NOx emissions in the United States alone with significant amounts of particulates and missions of various air toxics. Besides sys monetary costs, time and air quality impacts, there are also significant impacts to health when people are not having an active lifestyle. The U S has over 40% of the people who are considered to be obese and being able to get people out of their cars will help with the health of individuals significantly because of all of these impacts that more there is a lot of attention in planning, focused on improving the existing transportation infrastructure, which is one of the reasons why there is so much attention on potential solutions like transit oriented development.
(07:25)
As we all know too well development will never stop as long as we have people around and we need development to provide housing, economic activity and keep up with new technologies and infrastructure. We also need development to keep up with our quality of life and the fact is we will keep developing, but we can think through our developments before we implement them. Developing our neighborhoods in the right way will go a long way in ensuring everyone has a chance at a healthy and productive life and the basics for having a healthy and productive life includes having clean air to breathe in and not having to struggle with congestion every day.
(08:16)
This concludes our podcast episode this week. Our next episode will be released on October 27th and we’ll look more closely at the pros and cons of transit oriented development projects. If you like our content, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and tell a friend about us. If you would like to tell us about a topic that you would like to hear about or if you have a question, please feel free to reach out to us on our social media sites or our website at project planning, green.com we will love to hear from you guys. As always, it is a pleasure to be speaking to all you and I look forward to our next conversation on transit oriented development on Sunday, October 27 have a wonderful Sunday. Music in today’s podcast is provided by our good friend DJ Kiraz. She is a Swedish DJ and you can check out her information in the show notes or look her up on SoundCloud or Instagram under Kiraz music. That’s K I. R A.Z music. Additional music is provided by Vexento and Joakim Karud. You can find Joakim’s music on YouTube under his name. Joakim Karud. That’s J. O, A K. I, M. first name and K. A R. U. D. last name. The information for the two artists can also be found in the show notes.
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