Help my Bedroom Community Survive

August 22, 2008 10:34 AM

Help me with this Urban Planning problem. I live in your typical bedroom community on the perimeter of a large metropolitan area. We have about 30,000 residents and a lot going for us in terms of community and location. We're going to get hooked up on the regions new commuter rail system, but it's on the far side of the community and I don't see it getting much use without a feeder system of some kind. Our regional mass transit system sucks otherwise; so we're on our own to develop an intra-community system that will keep our community vibrant, green, and support commuter rail.

With cities everywhere turning inside out bedroom communities will become a thing of the past. Ours has a lot going for it, so I hope it survives, and it's getting a commuter rail, which might provide a lifeline. But I don't think that will be enough. I think it will need an internal mass transit system to move people around cheaply and efficiently and connect to the commuter rail.

We have about 30,000 residents and aren't likely to grow much soon. So I'm looking for examples of communities of about the same size that have great mass transit systems. How do they work? How are they funded? What could they do better? How would you design a system that works for a community of that size?

Some things about our community that constrain what type of system would work the best.

One, it would have to be covered as we get lots of rain and bad weather.

Two, it has to come close to breaking even as there will be little or no government subsidy.

Three, it has to be timely. You can get across the community by car in 10-15 minutes. Therefore no one is going to wait more than 10 minutes to get somewhere or they might as well have done it themselves. But you can drive from the center of the community to the edge in 10 minutes.

The community is set up with the commerce located mostly in the middle, apartments nearby and then small self contained single-family dwelling neighborhoods radiating out from there. There are two commerce centers, so picture a venn-diagram and you have our community.

There is a small possibility that we could get the speed limit lowered to 35 MPH throughout the community and encourage everyone to use NEVs when driving locally. This would be greener, but not exactly mass transit.

I'm putting together a proposal for the local board, so anything you suggest is helpful. Thanks

posted by IndigoSkye to travel & transportation (14 comments total)

You should probably ask this question here.
posted by sandking at 10:43 AM on August 22, 2008

Providing fixed route transit is expensive. Also, service like this will not break even - let alone on operating costs, not to mention the initial capital cost.

Communities of 30,000 generally don't have great transit systems unless they are dense with a walkable core. Check out TCAT and Ithaca, NY for instance.

The best bet for this sort of place would probably be some sort of dial-a-ride service (see DART's Oncall or Flex service). With plenty of parking at commuter lots, feeder service is going to be slower and a non-optimal choice.

Sorry.
posted by waylaid at 10:47 AM on August 22, 2008

I live in a bedroom-community-within-the-city in Toronto. We have one bus route that loops one-way through the whole community. Each loop takes about 17 minutes, and you're never further than about a 5 minute walk from the bus route. Bus starts at around 6:30AM, last loop at 12:30PM. Just one bus, two drivers. Could something like that work for you?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:47 AM on August 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

Also, the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute has some great reports about providing small urban and rural transit service: UGPTI
posted by waylaid at 10:49 AM on August 22, 2008

If your community members are technologically savvy and you can get a developer to build the application, Lifehacker has a featured entry in their "Big Idea" post about a social networking/carpool mashup that might work for you.
posted by bryanzera at 11:05 AM on August 22, 2008

Why do you feel that rail ridership will be poor without feeder routes? I grew up in a bedroom community of ~40k north of Toronto, where most people who take the regional commuter rail system (GO Tranist) to work simply drive to the station, park, and get on the train. Now that the parking lots throughout the network are at capacity, there is pressure to improve feeder access... but it took decades to build ridership to the current level.

In my time, local transit was used mostly by high school students to get to/from school, although service has improved somewhat since the various municipal transit systems in the region were amalgamated into a single regional network.

A community of 30k people with no existing mass transit and a commuter rail station within 10 minutes of anyone's home? Sounds like a parking lot at the rail station should do the trick.
posted by onshi at 11:34 AM on August 22, 2008

You should define your goals: do you want people to just have one car instead of two, one of which sits at the train station all day? do you want less traffic? or just more people on the train? safer streets? more "close-in" development? an easier life for the carless, who you see walking home with fifty pounds of groceries? You can probably achieve one or two of these, but not all, without starting up a bus line.

Think about looking into something like a bike-friendliness/traffic-calming program to encourage people to use their own power to get around to local community destinations, especially in the denser (and by virtue of having apartments, perhaps lower-income?) core or the town. Look at cities in Europe as well as in the US for examples of how to meet this challenge.

And think about the possible users of the system, whatever it turns out to be. Users of mass transit in the suburban regions of the States tend to be driven by necessity rather than convenience, so make sure that low-income, disabled, and young and elderly people are being well served as well as the nuclear families of the outer reaches of town.

And half the battle is letting people know the system exists: Make sure information is ubiquitous, multilingual, and available in a number of ways: online, printed on bus stops, printed on schedules mailed out quarterly, available via automated text/phone service. Sponsor prizes at local fairs and festivals, get out to schools and libraries and police departments and spread the transit message.

If you do get a bus line, DNAB's loop route sounds like a winner; if the bus has more frequent schedules at rush hours designed to meet/precede train arrivals/departures, you'd be way ahead. Financially...I don't know if you could run a system and make money without assistance. But that assistance might be there if your town lobbied for help from the state or county. Here's a similar system in North Platte, Nebraska - population 24,000! - which costs 75¢ a ride. Give them a call and see how they work.

A keyword for your search might be "micropolitan" - small urban areas (fewer than 50,000 people) relatively removed from larger metro areas. Might not exactly fit your area, but worth a look.
posted by mdonley at 12:12 PM on August 22, 2008

Why don't you think your rail system will get used? I bet if you put a bunch of car parking there, it'll get use. Not that that's ideal.

What about bikes? Safe bike parking (so bikes won't get stolen) could make or break whether people use it. If you can cross the community by car in 10-15 minutes, if your traffic is anything like ours, I'm guessing you can cross by bike in 15-20 minutes. That's realistic.

Hmm, but since you do have a commercial center, why not a frequent free shuttle back and forth from the train? Along the lines of that, or of a loop bus, look into the Emery-Go-Round in Emeryville, CA, and the free shuttle that Walnut Creek, CA provides. Fixed rail is too expensive to be worth pursuing.
posted by salvia at 12:26 PM on August 22, 2008

Oh, in terms of funding. I'd ask a friendly city or county planner there to help you think it through. But some quick ideas: your local metropolitan planning organization or Coucil of Governments or Congestion Management Agency (the MPO gets federal $), county sales taxes (a lot of Bay Area transportation stuff is funded this way), city general fund, tax increment financing (might be possible particularly if there's a redevelopment agency) and business improvement districts or chambers of commerce (the Emery-Go-Round is funded by the business district, which large apartments also help fund).
I work in California, so plenty of this may not apply in Florida.
posted by salvia at 12:35 PM on August 22, 2008

A community of 30k people with no existing mass transit and a commuter rail station within 10 minutes of anyone's home? Sounds like a parking lot at the rail station should do the trick.

Yes.
To expect 10 minute headways on a non-subsidized route for a community of 30,000 is asking a lot. Parking lots and bike parking and pedestrian improvements to allow for easy access to the station are much more viable. And fixed rail is completely out of the question.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 12:46 PM on August 22, 2008

Thanks for the great comments so far. Let me try to address a few of them.

Our community is ranked very low for walk-ability. And bikes won't work for reasons exactly like this week where Fay dumps a ton of rain.

Adding a large parking lot at the station is certainly a solution, but it doesn't eliminate the need to use cars to get around the community otherwise. The dream system would be a door to rail solution. But that's unrealistic.

If I had to chose one goal, it would be to allow a non-walkable community the ability to get around in a reasonable time-frame without use of a car. That's probably not realistic unsubsidized.

I like the idea of a community bus on a loop and then a shuttle from commerce to commerce to commuter rail station. Are there any technologies out there that make operating a bus or shuttle cheaper and greener?
posted by IndigoSkye at 1:07 PM on August 22, 2008

Adding a large parking lot at the station is certainly a solution, but it doesn't eliminate the need to use cars to get around the community otherwise. The dream system would be a door to rail solution. But that's unrealistic.

Look, the only real (cheap) option is to build a parking lot near the station. Build bike parking as well.

The Orlando commuter rail only runs (at peak) once every 30 minutes. Off peak, once every two hours. So you're talking about buying a single feeder buses (which are very expensive to maintain and run, by the way - and not particularly ) for access to commuter rail that basically runs 10 times a day, if even that. Very few people with any other options are going to take that, unless they can't drive. If the bus is late, they will miss their train, and then they'll have to wait 30 minutes to 2 hours for another one.

A small transit van could work as a community circulator - but again, no one besides the elderly or poor would opt for a service that is going to require them to wait outside, pay a fare that would probably cost more than the gas, stop multiple times on the way to the stop, and possibly cause them to miss an infrequent commuter train.

Look, I work in the transit industry. I don't even drive, and I'm incredibly passionate about transit. I'm not saying these things because I like them. But that is the reality in an exurban community like yours.

Transit can work well. But it is expensive to run - even buses- and it takes high ridership to make it even come close to recovering some of the cost. Don't forget you have to spend tens of thousands on bus stops, as well as getting a vehicle, paying drivers, etcetera.

If I had to chose one goal, it would be to allow a non-walkable community the ability to get around in a reasonable time-frame without use of a car.

That goal is going to be difficult to achieve. Transit works well because it is situated in dense, walkable communities where taking public transportation is frequent and parking is scarce.
posted by waylaid at 1:29 PM on August 22, 2008

And bikes won't work for reasons exactly like this week where Fay dumps a ton of rain.

See...I disagree. For virtually nine months of the year - the risk of torrential rain around Orlando is really small (though you might get some here and there). Bikes are incredibly powerful tools for short commutes, have a tiny carbon-dioxide footprint compared to cars, can be used by people of all ages, and make the roads safer for everyone - drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians - by reducing the number of cars on the road.

If you're really invested in long-term sustainability, forget about the bus. Work with your city council to open up corner shops and neighborhood businesses outside of the central core area. Make sure the rail station is near the center of town so people can access it without a car if they choose to do so. Try to get schools to sponsor bike safety classes. Set up a regional bike race. Build a BMX track for local enthusiasts and youth. Give tax incentives to local bicycle shops and to businesses who set up bike racks, hand out free helmets, locks, bike GPS units, and anti-theft stuff, work to create a network of lighted, paved, well-maintained bike trails through the "backs" of housing developments. Be the Davis, California of the region: between 15 and 20% of commutes are made on bikes there. Get cops on bikes in the core area.

If everyone in town has to drive five miles to get groceries, no one's going to take a bus. But a one-mile bike ride takes less than 15 minutes, even with kids, and if there are trails and safe crossings - and safe riders and drivers - there's no reason why you couldn't perhaps double or triple the number of active cyclists in your area in the long-term. You're also telling the young people of the area that biking is a feasible way to get around, period - something their parents didn't grow up with, necessarily.
posted by mdonley at 6:42 PM on August 22, 2008

If I had to chose one goal, it would be to allow a non-walkable community the ability to get around in a reasonable time-frame without use of a car. That's probably not realistic unsubsidized.

What's the demographics of your community? Most people don't WANT this even if it were available, unless they're too poor to afford cars. Besides, is there anywhere to GO in your community, besides the train station and shopping? Where I live, I have to drive to the next town over even to do grocery shopping. It's just not economically feasible to provide transit to a community like mine. The required density doesn't exist.

Personally, I'd encourage development near the train station. The Chicago suburbs have a lot of interesting shopping and condo development centered around commuter rail that seems to be very attractive to many people.

Check out the CarFree cities website, which also has a forum.
posted by desjardins at 3:06 PM on August 23, 2008