Future of Transportation: Cities with Choices—and Less Parking

The one-size-fits-all, car-centric city is becoming a thing of the past, as evidenced by changes in Houston, Oklahoma City, and Charlotte, North Carolina, said panelists at the ULI Spring Meeting in Houston. More and more, transportation leaders treat transportation infrastructure as a real estate asset.

Cities still have cars, of course, but not every transportation decision is based on moving them as fast as possible. Innovations are popping up in surprising ways. City after city is figuring out how to make even small transportation improvements pay off big for economic development.

Yet, despite all the exciting changes, parking for those cars remains “the most difficult part to get right,” Danny Pleasant, director of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, said at the ULI Spring Meeting in Houston. Two linked sessions at the meeting tracked the speed of transportation changes in U.S. cities, including the thorny issue of parking.

Innovations discussed included the following:

* Imagine leaving your apartment in the morning and heading for your building’s transit lounge, where you sip coffee while keeping an eye on the big digital countdown display that tracks your train’s arrival, just steps outside. Buildings near Charlotte’s light-rail stations already provide this amenity, Pleasant said.

* Imagine shoppers for apartments and office space inquiring whether your development is certified as being served by high-frequency bus service. Houston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County is designing a pilot program to provide such endorsement, according to Kurt Luhrsen, Metro’s vice president of service planning and transit system reimagining.

* Imagine a popular radio program during which a young couple talks about the ins and outs of living car-free and “car-lite” in your city. In Oklahoma City, such a program, Carless in OKC, airs on the local NPR station, said Ian Carlton, executive director of the Institute for Quality Communities at the University of Oklahoma.

For Charlotte, being a city of choices means light rail and streetcar lines, 176 miles (283 km) of bikeways, and $5 million in funding from a November 2014 bond referendum to start a 26-mile (42 km) cross-city pedestrian and bicycle trail. Even street design has payoffs. Pleasant sees Charlotte’s streets as community living rooms serving the city’s growing market for walkable urbanism. Streets need to be part of the land development package, he said. ................(more)

http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/future-transportation-cities-choices-less-parking/