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July 2005

Roundtable evaluates impacts of transit corridors

Photo of Robert Cervero

Robert Cervero

The Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs' State and Local Policy Program, Hennepin County, and CTS held a public roundtable on evaluating the economic and community impacts of transit corridors June 15, nearly one year after the first leg of the Hiawatha light rail corridor opened in Minneapolis.

CTS director Robert Johns moderated the event, and Hennepin County commissioner Peter McLaughlin provided opening remarks. "We need to think about how we're going to change how we live, how we move about in this region, and how we support economic development and a strong community," said McLaughlin, before Johns welcomed keynote speaker Professor Robert Cervero of the University of California, Berkeley, to the stage.

Cervero studied San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system 20 years after it was built, comparing the situation at that time to the goals in the original proposal. Cervero found that San Francisco remained the center of the region for employment density. "BART managed to retain the primacy of San Francisco's central business district as an employment center and a retail center; that is, the share of regional jobs and retail transactions in the center stayed more or less consistent over the first 20 years, but [BART] was also a force toward decentralization," Cervero said.

Photo of the Hiawatha LRT in Minneapolis

The Hiawatha LRT in Minneapolis

This decentralization also contributed to the trend of positive commercial growth in San Francisco. "Without this radial system that delivered high accessibility to the center, we could not have supported the degree of employment growth in the downtown that otherwise would not have occurred," said Cervero. San Francisco created "privileged districts" around transit nodes that kept jobs from moving to the suburbs. "This is very much about community enhancement and place-making," Cervero said.

After looking at changes in population and employment among two groups of "superdistricts"—those with BART stations and those without—Cervero found that while BART managed to keep jobs in the city, it didn't change patterns of commercial growth in the suburbs. New commercial developments, evidenced by square footage of office space in the city and suburbs, continued to locate near freeways.

Corridors affect housing markets, Cervero said, but not always as expected. Four thousand homes were demolished to make way for BART, and the same number of new homes were built after BART—a net increase of zero houses. Still, although new housing developments continued at about the same pace, Cervero found they were being built near BART stations instead of freeways. What's more, land values increased with proximity to the stations, as did apartment rents. Those who chose to live and work closer to transit were 35 percent more likely to use it, and less likely to own a car. "This is clearly people choosing for lifestyle reasons to live near a transit station, get rid of a car or a second car, and free up more money..." Cervero explained. "They pay a high rent for that privilege."

BART was expected to rejuvenate weak real estate markets and economies in some communities, but usually didn't. "The problem here is problems on the street—crime and homelessness and disinvestment and decline—and accessibility is not going to change that," Cervero said.

Cervero then touched on other transit corridors in California such as one in San Diego, where there was a great difference in impact between a northern and southern rail line. The reason, Cervero said, was that the southern line connected downtown San Diego and the border of Tijuana, Mexico, with very few mixed-use developments along the way. The result was a ridership composed of day workers with no economic effect along the corridor.

Cervero said he wished he had "done 30 years ago in the San Francisco Bay area what you're doing today… I think we have enough benchmarks out there to guide our assessments, to begin to do these kinds of studies. Hopefully you can learn from the mistakes of others."

Following Cervero with three transit corridor evaluation cases were Professor Gerrit Knaap (executive director of the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education), Gary Foyle (director of Metra's Office of Planning and Analysis), and Cheryl Thole (research associate with the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research). You may download the PowerPoint presentations: