Along the Tracks

TRAINS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A KEY component of the development of America’s West. During the frontier days, trains were the steel-grinding, coal-burning, whistle-blowing behemoths that hauled freight and passengers across the open country. Much as these early trains shaped Western growth industries like mining and ranching, a new kind of train—light rail—has begun to shape modern urban development. More and more former frontier towns—Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City—have found that with the influx of millions of people come major transportation and land use issues similar to those first tackled by their eastern counterparts generations ago. While East Coast cities tended to use subways and commuter rail to address these problems, Western cities have increasingly turned to light rail, usually built at street level along fixed routes, to move urban dwellers in, out, and around their booming metropolises. Across the West, the notion of automobile transportation and freeway construction providing the sole answer to transportation and land use problems has mostly been abandoned—even in cities like Houston, Phoenix, and Los Angeles where new rail construction would have been unthinkable a generation ago. 

Light rail has the potential to transform the transportation habits of hundreds of thousands of users. Additionally, by decreasing congestion, conserving fuel, and reducing emissions, transit creates a public good that benefits even those who choose not to use it. Already, light rail has had a significant impact in the West. In some places, like Portland, it has affected new development, with Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) light rail lines expanding into previously undeveloped areas and shaping those areas’ characteristics. In other areas, such as Los Angeles, where the Gold Line connects downtown to Pasadena, light rail has focused on convincing commuters who utilize highway corridors—in this case the 110 freeway—to alter their travel patterns. And finally, some light rail lines, like the ones that compose Salt Lake City’s TRAX system, have spurred reuses of existing developed areas—in the form of increased density and changes in land uses near stations.

Perhaps the most ambitious Western light rail plan is in Denver, where voters in 2004 approved a $4.7 billion system expansion that will include 119 new miles of light rail and 18 miles of bus rapid transit. These plans present an historic opportunity to reshape Denver’s development patterns. Denver’s expansion is being compared by many to the commitment by Washington, D.C. to develop the Metrorail system starting in the 1970s. Washington’s experience demonstrates just how much a transit system can transform a metropolitan area’s land use.

A Growing Need for Transit

Already considered one of the most congested cities in the United States, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, the Denver metropolitan region is expected to gain almost one million new residents and approximately 600,000 new jobs by 2025. Along with this predicted population growth, the weekday vehicle miles of travel are expected to increase by 64 percent, from 58 million miles in 2001 to 95 million miles by 2025. This congestion poses a threat to the region’s vaunted quality of life, which spurred the region’s growth.

The Denver region has attempted to use light rail as a tool to cope with its projected rapid population expansion, while reducing the area’s dependence on the automobile. Light rail was first implemented in 1994 and for years stagnated at two rail lines. Just three years after the system first opened, a proposal called “Guide the Ride” would have funded a major expansion. However, this proposal failed to obtain the necessary public support, receiving 42 percent of the vote in a referendum of Denver metro-area voters. According to Theresa Donahue of Transit Alliance and Elena Nunez of Environment Colorado, “after Guide the Ride went down, the [pro-transit] coalition decided to change strategies, instead of just going for the ‘home run’ of a regional transit system, they decided to ‘just hit singles’ and pursue a few smaller transit victories.” Towards this end, the coalition promoted the election of pro-transit members to the Regional Transportation District (RTD) board and launched a region-wide transit education campaign.

From these small building blocks, the pro-transit coalition grew. In 2004, the coalition scored a major victory with voter approval of a $4.7 billion expansion, dubbed Denver FasTracks. RTD Board Chairman Bill Elfenbein attributes FasTracks succeeding where Guide the Ride had failed to the plan being “greatly enhanced and much better defined,” along with having “much more community response.” If the 12-year project is completed as planned, 119 miles of new light rail and commuter rail and 18 miles of new bus rapid transit will be constructed, along with 31 new Park and Ride lots and the conversion of Denver Union Station (DUS) into a truly multimodal facility. After the planned upgrades to DUS are completed, the station will provide access to regional and local bus service, Amtrak, Greyhound, the new Downtown Circulator, and almost all of the FasTracks transit corridors.

A Comparative Approach

The Washington, D.C. Metrorail system opened its doors in March 1976, and has since grown to become the second largest rail transit system in the United States, currently consisting of 86 stations and 106 miles of track. The original purpose behind creating a rail transit system in the nation’s capital was to shuttle federal government employees to their jobs in the downtown core; this group of riders today makes up nearly half of peak-hour ridership. Over the years, the Metrorail’s importance to the greater-Washington, D.C. region has broadened, with total trips in fiscal year 2004 reaching 190 million, and private housing and employment patterns increasingly being shaped by the system.

In many metropolitan areas, transportation planners find themselves in a position of reacting to sprawl and its related congestion problems, producing public transportation systems that fail to capitalize on their potential to shape future development patterns and instead try to get people living amongst sprawl to use transit. Some Metrorail stations—Shady Grove, at the northwest end of the Red Line in Maryland, for example—have followed this example, focusing on herding commuters from surrounding areas to massive park-and-ride lots. But along most of the Metrorail, Washington-area planners have taken a different route, encouraging stations to serve as catalysts for development or redevelopment of surrounding neighborhoods.

Perhaps the best example is the growth of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington, Virginia. Prior to the arrival of the Metrorail Orange Line in 1979, the two square mile area that makes up the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor was a low-density commercial center with decreasing retail sales and a declining population. In fact, the corridor lost approximately 36 percent of its population during the 1970s. The arrival of the Orange Line and a concerted effort by the county government to spur development has changed the composition of the area dramatically. This bustling corridor now contains roughly 30 million square feet of commercial development and contributes an average of over 80,000 weekday trips to the Metrorail system. In addition, Arlington, in large part due to the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, boasts a population density (about 7,700 people per square mile) that exceeds the densities of cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.

The recent opening of the New York Avenue Station on the Metrorail’s Red Line illustrates Washington’s commitment to using transportation projects to stimulate development. The new stop was the first infill station, located between two existing stations and not at the end of a line, added as part of a system expansion. The station, located north of the U.S. Capitol, is in an area home to industrial sites, train yards, and low-density development in a crime-ridden neighborhood. The result of a public/private partnership aimed at attracting new development in an otherwise blighted part of Washington, the plan appears to be working; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has begun construction of its new headquarters adjacent to the station, and XM Satellite Radio has decided to expand its current headquarters nearby. However, the decision to build the station was not without risk: it has not yet attracted the forecasted volume of passengers, but it has shown an upward trend.

Washington’s successes and difficulties can provide lessons for Denver’s planners. According to Bill Elfenbein, chair of the Regional Transportation District, “we do know already that the growth patterns will follow the path of the FasTracks project. Most of the suburban cities are planning their growth along the FasTracks corridors, as is the city of Denver.” Indeed, the Denver region may follow the example of Arlington County, countering the negative aspects of rapid population and employment growth, by focusing on transit-oriented development (TOD) at many of the planned rail stations. These projects can promote the increased use of transit by residents and help to reduce the number of overall vehicle miles traveled. “RTD is doing everything to help with the coordination of the TOD projects that are being planned in each corridor,” Elfenbein adds. The agency currently has a staff position dedicated to guiding the coordination of TOD projects and ensuring that the city works with all neighborhoods and corridors, and not just with those that already contain higher density development. “We want to help guide good development of TODs which means working directly with each city and developer as needed.”

As Washington is doing with New York Avenue, Denver also has an opportunity to use transit to revitalize flagging neighborhoods. One portion of the FasTracks project calls for extending transit southeast towards the Lone Tree area in an attempt to spark development in this historically low-income and low–density neighborhood. In addition to providing residents in the region who do not have access to a vehicle with affordable transportation, this effort, know as the Transportation Expansion Project (T-REX) could potentially bring new life to an area that has been traditionally depressed and lacks development that is dense, diverse, and well-designed. Expected to be open in December 2006, this corridor southeast of Denver is under construction by the RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation, and as of 2005, construction continues to be done on budget and on time. The line in its whole will be 19.1 miles and will include thirteen new stations. Lone Tree is currently just one of many low-income neighborhoods in metro Denver that suffers from a problem identified by representatives of Transit Alliance and Environment Colorado: “a lack of good transit options between the parts of the region with the most affordable housing and the parts of the region with the strongest job growth. FasTracks helps to address that disconnect by increasing bus and rail service between housing and employment centers.”

“Pioneering” Transit

While not a perfect comparison—the two cities are different in many ways—Washington’s transit experience can teach Denver’s planners how to foster development through transit. Traditional transit development has focused primarily on creating systems where a significant number of riders already exist. But the region’s planners, who have already eclipsed traditional hands-off Western approaches to growth in managing complex projects such as the Coors Field baseball stadium and surrounding development, should carefully consider their ability to shape development patterns in a prospective manner. This “pioneer” model is inherently risky; it requires a substantial initial investment in hopes of a future payoff that may or may not be realized. In the end, however, understanding and effectively harnessing the complex and varied relationship between transit and development might just help win the showdown between sprawl and well-reasoned growth. In any case, it will be a mean duel.