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Transportation Technologies for Sustainability pp 292–310Cite as

Bus Versus Rail Implications for Transit-Oriented Development

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Definition and Importance

Transit-oriented development (TOD) refers to mixed-use, medium- to high-density development around the transit station with pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly environmental design oriented to transit services. Integrating transit with land use has been a common practice in most European, Asian, and Latin American cities. It is not a brand-new idea in the USA either. In the streetcar era, for example, developments largely concentrated along transit corridors in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other streetcar communities. TOD began to regain popularity in the early 1990s when the US Architect Peter Calthorpe coined the term in his book The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream [1]. Other terms have been used by transportation professionals, urban planners, and the real estate industry to express similar development concepts, for example, “transit-sensitive land use” [2], “transit-oriented design” [3], “transit-focused...

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Abbreviations

BRT:

Bus rapid transit (BRT) refers to a variety of mass transit systems that utilize buses to provide faster, more efficient services than a conventional bus line. BRT runs on existing roadways or dedicated rights-of-way and offers such operational features as high-capacity, low-floor bus vehicles, traffic signal prioritization, and real-time information services.

LRT:

Light rail transit (LRT) refers to electrically propelled rail vehicles operating singly or in trains. It obtains power from overhead cables and runs on reserved but not necessarily grade-separated rights-of-way. LRT provides service capacities and speeds typically lower than metro rail.

Metro rail:

Metro rail typically consists of steel-wheeled, electric-powered vehicles operating in trains of two or more cars on a fully grade-separated right-of-way. Alternative names for metro rail include subway and heavy rail. It offers higher capacities and speeds than light rail.

New urbanism:

New urbanism refers to an urban design movement led by a group of architects and urban planners in the USA since the early 1980s. New urbanism promotes walkable neighborhoods and attacks suburban sprawl through nonconventional physical planning and design approaches. Traditional neighborhood design (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD) are two examples of new urbanist practice.

TOD:

Transit-oriented development (TOD) refers to mixed-use, medium- to high-density development around the transit station with pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly environmental design. The term was coined by Architect Peter Calthrope while other terms, for example, Transit-Focused Design and Transit Villages, have also been used to describe similar development concepts.

Transit ridership:

The quantity of passengers riding on the transit over a given period of time, for instance, a day or a year.

Transit value capture:

Transit value capture refers to the process by which all or a portion of increments in land value attributed to public transit investments are recaptured by the public sector. The idea can be traced back to the thinking of Henry George and his followers. The rationale states that transportation projects improve accessibility to the adjacent land. This improved accessibility is capitalized in property values, generating a windfall for private landowners. Public agencies can capture a portion of that windfall by utilizing a variety of methods. The captured value can then be used to finance transportation or other public infrastructure.

VMT:

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) measures the distance in miles that vehicles are driven over a given period of time, for instance, a day or a year.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Dr. Ming Zhang

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  1. Dr. Ming Zhang
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Correspondence to Ming Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Mehrdad Ehsani

  2. Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Fei-Yue Wang

  3. Center for Urban Transportation Research, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Gary L. Brosch

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Zhang, M. (2013). Bus Versus Rail Implications for Transit-Oriented Development . In: Ehsani, M., Wang, FY., Brosch, G.L. (eds) Transportation Technologies for Sustainability. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5844-9_327

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