| Issue
209 |
February
26, 1999 |
Transport Agencies Take Steps on Land Policy
As "smart growth" becomes a watchword for the turn
of the millenium, everyone wants to get in on the anti-sprawl act. Transportation
reformers have long pointed to car/highway transportation as sprawl's foundation,
and call for denser, mixed use development patterns that can permit transit,
walking and cycling to flourish. Transportation agencies in our region
have often told two stories about their relationship to land use. One the
one hand, they claim to have no jurisdiction over land use, which is formally
a municipal responsibility. On the other, they often justify highway projects
that will have clear impacts on land development choices in the name of
economic development. But now, agencies are taking first steps toward a
more integrated look at the ways accessibility, distance and density affect
transportation:
- As part of its Long Island Transportation Plan 2000 study, the NY State
DOT has invited some participants to identify how the study could consider
a scenario under which future development is distributed in denser, center-oriented
patterns. An inter-agency group that includes non-governmental planning
and policy groups is also seeking funding to develop such a scenario and
its transportation impacts in greater detail.
- NYS DOT's Staten Island Expressway study will attempt to show the effects
of induced traffic demand by examining "accessibility" as a function
of land use and transportation capacity. However, it appears in the Staten
Island case that DOT is moving away from earlier discussions of posing
alternative land use scenarios as part of the SIE study.
- The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the metropolitan
planning organization for the Philadelphia metro area (including four NJ
counties), is seeking federal funds to develop a "location-efficient
mortgage" program. The concept is that a household located where it
can do without a second car - near transit and walkable destinations -
would get better home-buying terms than it would in sprawling, car-dependent
areas where it would incur the expense of the second car.
- The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) has launched
four "pilot sustainable development studies" in the Lower Hudson
Valley. Although clear descriptions of the initiative have been hard to
come by, NYMTC says the projects (in Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester
Counties) will bring municipal officials, community leaders, and citizens
together to define transportation projects and land use policies that mutually
contribute to congestion reduction and efficient land use. At least two
of the efforts are underway. Officials and citizens along Route 303 in
Rockland and Routes 35 & 202 in Westchester are outlining sprawl and
transportation problems and will seek consultants for more detailed analysis
and recommendations.
