Ridership no factor in transit-oriented development

Ridership no factor in transit-oriented development

WRITTEN BY SAMUEL STALEY

THURSDAY, 28 MAY 2009 08:43 With high gas prices prompting a surge in transit ridership to 52-year-highs, there are calls to dramatically increase investment in public transit. The danger, however, is that transit advocates might take their argument about the successes of transit too far. Indeed, this may well be the case with the so-called claims about “transit-oriented development,” or TOD, where transit advocates often suggest that transit is a driver of economic development. For the most part, property values increase around transit stations. Often, the range of the increases is between 25 to 30 percent higher than the growth non-transit neighborhoods. Unfortunately, these same studies about property values have not examined the underlying causes of these price increases. Despite that, many observers simply assume proximity to transit is the most important factor. Lots of factors influence private investment, including public safety, access to jobs, quality housing, tax rates, financing, and zoning. Access to transit is likely far down the list compared to these other factors. A closer look at the numbers suggests that actual transit ridership has little relationship to the private investment around transit stations. Take the Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail network, or DART, which is often heralded as one of the most successful new systems in the country. DART’s light rail trains carried nearly 20 million riders in 2008, up 10 percent from 2007 and its website declares the system has “the power to drive land use and urban development in exciting and environmentally friendly directions.” An analysis of investment within one-quarter mile of transit stops - the standard rule of thumb for estimating maximum impact of transit - by economists at the University of North Texas at Denton estimated that the transit investments triggered $3.3 billion in new investment between 1999 and 2005. Unfortunately, the economists didn’t examine transit ridership. If they had, their conclusions might have been very different, or at least significantly tempered. The Mockingbird and downtown Plano DART stations, for example, attracted nearly the same level of investment - $270 million and $260 million in new investment respectively. Yet, their ridership is nowhere near the same. Plano’s annual transit ridership was just 22 percent of the level at Mockingbird.