Transit-Oriented Development, Parking and NMT

Zoning, pedestrian realms, street and path networks, density, mixed use, parking, setbacks, and urban design

Far East Mobility's work on TOD is carried out with support from a Rockefeller Brothers Fund contract, and in cooperation with BRT Planning International.

See our series on TOD in Ji'an, a small to medium sized city in Jiangxi Province:

Part 1 - TOD in China: challenges and opportunities in Ji'an (Aug 2017)
Part 2 - Ji'an TOD: best practices for station area zoning, mixed use, and density (Sep 2017)
Part 3 - Improving parking, setbacks, pedestrian realms & street networks (Sep 2017)

TOD in China

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in China is a matter of grave concern to the world. The problem of climate change is most critically dependent on what happens in the next few decades in the energy and transportation sectors in China. While certainly China’s energy sector, heavily dependent on carbon-intensive coal, remains the greatest single threat to the global climate, its transportation sector remains a close second. While in recent years China has been making impressive strides to reduce its reliance on coal-fired power plants and replace these with renewable and less carbon intensive energy sources, on the transportation side, the outlook is far grimmer. China, which used to be a country of bicycles and tree-lined streets, in January 2016 reached 172 million cars, and is now the largest passenger vehicle market in the world. This is more than triple the number of cars registered in China in 2007. With car ownership of only around one in three households and 310 million licensed car drivers, there is plenty of room for this figure to grow. While the transport sector in China accounts for only about 10% of its total CO2-e emissions, emissions in the transport sector are projected to rise by 3.5% per year.

In the meantime, bus-based transit is failing to keep up. The focus in many cities, including Ji'an, has been on converting the bus fleet to electric buses rather than on improving bus frequency and service, and this is reflected in stagnant or declining mode shares. (In Ji'an, while the fleet has been converted nearly wholly to electric buses, the overall city bus fleet has not increased signficantly since 2012.) In the short term, in small cities such as Ji'an, people are relying initially on electric bikes, and later on cars.

Much of this motorization rate is being encouraged by outmoded planning and building regulations. To give one example, most planning and zoning codes in China require the developers of residential buildings to include somewhere between 0.5 and 1 parking space for each new residential unit. That means China is building cities designed to handle about 0.5 to 1 car per household. This is not the only element that is dysfunctional from the point of view of encouraging transit use, cycling, and walking. Most of China’s planning and zoning regulations follow the textbook modernist approach of separating not only noxious land uses from each other but also separating buildings from the surrounding streets by elevating them and setting them back from the property line. While the separation of noxious industrial land uses continues to be a good practice, many land uses are considered compatible with each other, such as residences and offices, offices and retail, and retail and residences. Rigidly separating these land uses has tended to add needless distance to people’s everyday life, distances that invariably induce the wealthy and middle classes to embrace the private automobile when it becomes an economic possibility.

While zoning codes which rigidly separate even compatible land uses are considered outmoded in almost all of Europe and in a growing number of US cities, they are still the dominant paradigm in China. In China, however, the outmoded nature of these regulations is having a particularly damaging long term effect because China is currently undergoing the largest housing construction boom in the history of humanity.

The view of a new administrative district from the Ji'an Municipal Government building illustrates many of the problems mentioned above, including gated single-use developments with large setbacks, discontinuous streetfronts, car parking yards between buildings and streets (with excellent landscaping underlining the priority given to car users), large pedestrian- and bike-impermeable blocks, lack of any bus priority measures, and a generally unattractive environment for transit, walking and cycling.

TOD and BRT

While TOD is well-established as part of mass transit rail projects as an excellent way to maximize the benefits of such large investment, TOD approaches in the field of BRT have not yet been achieved or even approached in any systematic way. BRT projects generally proceed without any TOD planning. While TOD planning was carried out in Guangzhou, Lanzhou and Yichang by ITDP and by the Energy Foundation in Jinan, Chongqing and Kunming, the approach was probably too design-focused in the former cities, and the BRT systems were unsuccessful in the latter cities. Some positive results were achieved in Guangzhou, Lanzhou and Yichang, but generally on an ad hoc basis in some selected station areas. Some of the achievements, such as the Tangxia BRT station area improvements, followed from a district-level urban village improvement project rather than from any direct relationship with the BRT station or corridor.

Far East Mobility's work in TOD aims to build upon and learn from the earlier approaches, with the goal of creating 'demonstration' best practice examples which can then be emulated by other cities. Ensuring that high quality station access and station area development improvements are incorporated into high capacity BRT corridor planning requires technical, policy, design and planning inputs which usually go beyond the boundaries of how a particular project is defined, since this work involves TOD, non-motorized transport, urban design, parking, traffic management and other aspects in addition to the transit elements.

Documentation of best practices in urban development

Far East Mobility also documents best practices and impacts of TOD and NMT measures.

Basic concept of BRT station area development, including a special zone around BRT stations (source: Li Yang).

TOD and urban development best practice case studies are documented here, including the following:

Greenfield/Brownfield ---- OCT, Shenzhen
Transit node ---- Shipaiqiao, Guangzhou
Mass transit ---- Guangzhou BRT
Waterways ---- Donghaochong greenway
Historical quarter revitalization ---- Lizhiwan canal, Guangzhou
Urban village regeneration ---- Tangxia Village, Guangzhou
Housing estate revitalization ---- Liuyun Xiaoqu, Guangzhou.

NMT and Complete Streets

"Complete Streets are streets for everyone. They are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities" (definition from Smart Growth America). Far East Mobility works on road design and planning including complete streets and high quality pedestrian & bicycle facilities and policies, often as part of a BRT project.

TOD in Ji'an

Recent work in Ji'an has documented challenges and opportunities for TOD implementation together with the BRT corridor currently being planned and designed. See the part 1 article setting the context, the part 2 article looking at density, mixed use and station area zoning, and the part 3 article looking at setbacks, pedestrian facilities, road networks and parking.

Other cities

Far East Mobility experts' earlier work on TOD included intensive inputs to TOD planning along BRT corridors in Guangzhou, Lanzhou, and Yichang, as well as to BRT systems in planning in Vientiane, Johor Bahru, Tianjin, and other cities. More recently our TOD inputs are concentrated in Ji'an (as part of the BRT planning), Ulaanbaatar (as part of the BRT planning), Guiyang (also as part of ongoing BRT planning), and ongoing TOD best practice documentation.

Far East Mobility supports the TOD principles developed by an expert panel convened by ITDP and published in the TOD Standard (version 3), though their application needs to be adapted to the context of each city.

News & links

U.K. Government Boosts Bicycling And Walking With Ambitious £2 Billion Post-Pandemic Plan
Amidst a pandemic of pandemic-related prognostications of future transport trends, an article that focuses on the main point: what infrastructure is being provided? Without boosts to bike and walking facilities, temporary gains may be ephemeral if a Covid-19 vaccine is developed. The UK is providing a model for other cities, allocating 2 billion pounds (USD2.436bn) to walking and cycling. Though it is not actually new funds, but part of a bigger package announced for buses and cycling in February. The £2 billion plan starts with £250 million to enable local authorities to pay for “pop-up” cycling and walking infrastructure to cater for physical distancing during lockdown.
Forbes, 09.05.2020

Europe’s Cities Are Making Less Room for Cars After Coronavirus
With limitations on transit density cities are accelerating measures to promote cycling and walking, including downtown pedestrian priority and long-distance cycleways.
Citylab, 22.04.2020

Playing out: Waverley's kids are reclaiming the streets from cars
Districts in one part of Sydney can request road closures for a few hours each week so people can use the streets. It's proven very popular.
Sydney Morning Herald, 14.03.2020

广州塔南广场要建珠江两岸人行景观桥,串联新中轴线景观节点
Spectular pedestrian bridge to be built in Guangzhou. "人行桥跨中总宽 20米,其中西侧桥面宽6米,东侧桥面宽8米,中部梯道宽6米。整个工程占地面积约15025.9平方米,其中 占河道约9329.6平方米、陆地约5696.3平方米。总投资约19486万元。"
金羊网, 11.03.2020

Cash top-up allows boardwalk along Parramatta River
"Located opposite the ferry wharf in central Parramatta, the three-metre wide boardwalk will be a "river-level path" that will allow pedestrians and cyclists to access the foreshore on the river's northern bank. The project includes stairs from the boardwalk to Stewart and Macarthur streets." Unfortuntately Parramatta is also building an LRT.
Sydney Morning Herald, 01.03.2020

Estimated car cost as a predictor of driver yielding behaviors for pedestrians
The science is clear: drivers of expensive cars are jerks.
Science Direct, 29.02.2020

Oslo saw zero pedestrian and cyclist deaths in 2019. Here’s how the city did it.
"Perhaps most remarkably, no children under 15 died in roadway crashes anywhere in the country of Norway during 2019, which has a population of about 5.3 million."
Curbed, 03.01.2020

Minneapolis’ tight rules usher in a new era of window shopping
Window theory and rules.
Minneapolis Post (Minnpost), 11.12.2019

The City That Cycles With the Young, the Old, the Busy and the Dead
"Some 49 percent of all journeys to school and work now transpire by bicycle, according to the city, up from 36 percent a decade ago. When the municipal government recently surveyed Copenhagen’s bikers on what inspires them to bike, 55 percent said it was more convenient than the alternatives. Only 16 percent cited environmental benefits."
New York Times, 09.11.2019

E-Bike Craze Continues Unabated in Holland
A survey of 318 dealers suggests half of all new bike sales in Holland are e-bikes.
Bike Europe, 24.10.2019

Sydney's new 65km walking track stretches from Parramatta to Penrith
Ambitious greenway network planning - 65km walking route.
Sydney Morning Herald, 13.10.2019

Pedestrian detection systems don’t work very well, AAA finds
Dismal results in all but the least challenging scenarios.
Ars Technica, 08.10.2019

北京首批公务电动自行车投用 解决10公里以内的出行难题
"短途公务出行一直是交通痛点。此次亮相的公务电动自行车,解决的正是10公里以内的公务出行难题,既能保障公务出行的效率和安全,又能降低行政成本。使用者无需缴纳押金,由骑行者所在单位集体购买服务或公务出行卡,个人信息和单位信息经过平台审核后就能正常骑行,目前已与近20个国家部委及单位签约。"
北京日报, 02.09.2019

国务院发文要求取消汽车限购 北京称没接到通知
Cities under pressure to remove car registration restrictions. 国务院发文要求取消汽车限购 北京称没接到通知,买车仍需摇号
经济观察网, 29.08.2019

Skateboarding does not need Games validation, says Hawk
“Skateboarding has so much more to offer young people in terms of self confidence, in terms of identity, in terms of setting their own challenges. And that is not competitive-based.”
Reuters, 11.08.2019